The problem
Curanipe Surf is a surf school on the coast of Chile's Maule region, outside the country's major tourist circuits. Its owners, Paula Jarpa and her husband, won a grant to grow the business. Until then they operated without a website: inquiries came in through WhatsApp and word of mouth, and it was hard to stand out from the town's informal instructors. They wanted more students, to position the school as an academy, and to capture the tourist who plans the trip from a computer before arriving.
What we did
We designed the identity and layouts in Sketch and built the site on WordPress with one clear focus: turning visits into contacts to book classes. Visual storytelling with the surf spot, the instructors, and real students; sections designed to present the school as an academy, not a freelance instructor. We handed Paula a friendly CMS so she could upload photos, news, and milestones without paying agency hours for every change. No online booking or payment gateway: just the minimum needed to validate demand without spending the entire grant on software.
The outcome
In the first six months, class bookings went up by around 80%. Groups started arriving from Brazil that previously didn't even know Curanipe existed — the tourist who plans the trip by searching on Google. The site has been live at curanipesurf.cl since 2018, with no redesigns since, maintained by the owner through the CMS. Proof that a well-conceived website for a small tourism business lasts years, not months.
