Overview
TC Jet Pilots is the official AWA chapter for personal watercraft riders in Minnesota and the surrounding states, and the host of The Sortie, a 20-year-running annual gathering at Hok-Si-La Park on Lake Pepin. For years the event lived inside a Facebook event page and the club's Facebook group, which worked but constantly buried the basics, dates, camping costs, schedule, what to expect, behind a feed of comments and photos. We are big standup jet ski fans ourselves, so we built them a fast, cinematic AstroJS single-page site that pulls every piece of information riders actually ask about into one curated landing zone, while keeping the RSVP path firmly inside the existing Facebook event where the social momentum already lives. The site runs at the top of a single scroll, hero through schedule, gallery, club, merch, and location, with clean GA4 event tracking on every meaningful action so the club can finally see how riders are engaging.
Services delivered
- Event Marketing Website Design
- AstroJS Single Page Build
- Custom Cinematic Visual Design
- Curated Photo & Video Gallery
- Lightbox Image Viewer
- Schedule & Pricing Information Architecture
- Facebook Event RSVP Integration
- GA4 Custom Event Tracking
- Mobile-First Responsive Design
- Hosting & Ongoing Maintenance
The problem
The Sortie is one of the longest-running jet ski weekends in the Midwest, but the event's digital home was making it harder than it should be for riders to plan and commit:
- Critical Info Buried in a Facebook Feed. Dates, camping costs, schedule, and directions all lived in a Facebook event page that scrolled past every new comment, photo, and reaction. First-time riders had to dig through threads to find basics that should have been one tap away.
- The Same Questions Every Year. Returning riders and newcomers were asking the same questions in the group every spring, what does it cost, where is camping, when does the buoy course run, is it kid-friendly. Without a single source of truth, organizers were answering the same DMs over and over.
- Twenty Years of Photos with Nowhere to Live. The Sortie has two decades of incredible riding, camping, and crew photos, but they were scattered across Facebook albums and personal phones. There was no curated gallery that told the story of the event to someone deciding whether to drive out for the first time.
- A Phone-First Audience on a Feed-First Surface. Most riders make the call to come on their phone, often standing in a garage or at a launch. Facebook is fine for socializing, but it is not designed to hand someone a clean, fast page that says here are the dates, here is what it costs, here is how to RSVP.
TC Jet Pilots needed a real landing zone for The Sortie, fast, on brand, mobile-first, and built around the questions every rider actually asks before showing up.
Our solution
We built a fast, cinematic AstroJS single-page site that consolidates every piece of event information into one curated experience while keeping the social glue on Facebook where it belongs:
- Cinematic AstroJS Single-Page Build. The site is a single, full-bleed Astro page with a hero, about, four-up experience grid, full-screen day-by-day schedule, photo and video gallery, club section, merch, and location. Static-first, deploys in seconds, and loads instantly even on a phone tethered to a campsite signal.
- AstroJS static build, deployed to fast hosting
- Full-bleed cinematic design that matches the energy of the event
- Single-page architecture, every section reachable in one scroll
- Mobile-first responsive layout from hero to footer
- One Landing Zone for Every Event Question. Every question riders kept asking in the Facebook group is answered on the page, exact dates, what each day looks like, camping cost and check-in, where to launch, what the raffle costs, how to get there. The information is curated and structured, not buried in comment threads.
- Curated Photo & Video Gallery with Lightbox. Twenty years of Sortie photos finally have a home. We built a responsive masonry-style gallery with a lightbox image viewer powered by Swiper, plus inline autoplay video clips, so the energy of the event sells itself before anyone reads a word of copy.
- Responsive masonry gallery with featured large tile
- Swiper-powered lightbox with keyboard and touch navigation
- Autoplay muted background video clips inline with the gallery
- Curated alt text for accessibility and SEO
- Day-by-Day Schedule as a Visual Story. Thursday through Sunday each get a full-screen split section with imagery and copy explaining what that day is actually like, arrival and camp setup, the buoy course, the main event with raffle, and the glassy Sunday morning send-off. Riders know exactly what they are signing up for.
- Facebook RSVP Integration, No Duplicate Funnel. Instead of fighting Facebook, we lean on it. Every RSVP button on the page deep links straight into the existing Facebook event so the social momentum stays intact, and a second CTA routes new riders into the TC Jet Pilots Facebook group to plug into the wider community.
- GA4 Custom Event Tracking End to End. We wired up custom GA4 events for every action that actually matters, RSVP clicks, Facebook group joins, outbound clicks, section views, scroll depth, video plays, mobile menu toggles, gallery image opens, merch card clicks, and nav clicks. The club can finally see what is converting instead of guessing from pageviews.
The process
- 01
Discovery & Rider Empathy
We started from the rider's perspective, not the org chart, because we ride too:
- 02
Information Architecture for a Single Scroll
We organized the entire experience as one decisive scroll, not a multi-page site:
- 03
Cinematic Visual Design
We built a visual system that matches the energy of the event itself:
- 04
Gallery & Lightbox Build
We turned twenty years of photos into a curated, browsable archive:
- 05
GA4 Tracking & Launch
We launched the site with custom analytics built around real engagement, not vanity metrics:
Outcomes
The Sortie now has a digital home that matches twenty years of run history and gives riders a real landing zone instead of a buried event post:
- One Page That Answers Everything. New and returning riders can hit the site, scroll once, and get the dates, the cost, the schedule, the gallery, the location, and the RSVP path without ever opening Facebook. The repeat questions in the group dropped because the answers are now one tap away.
- A Cinematic Front Door to a Twenty Year Tradition. The new site captures what The Sortie actually feels like, full-bleed imagery, day-by-day storytelling, and a curated gallery that lets the riding speak for itself. First-time visitors get a clear sense of the energy before they read a single line of text.
- The Photo Archive Finally Has a Home. Two decades of Sortie photos were scattered across Facebook albums and phones. They now live in a curated lightbox gallery anyone can browse, share, and use to convince a friend to make the drive.
- Facebook Stays the Social Hub, Site Carries the Info. We kept the RSVP and group links pointed at Facebook so the existing community momentum is preserved. The site is the information layer, Facebook is the social layer, and the two reinforce each other instead of competing.
- Real Visibility Into How Riders Engage. Custom GA4 event tracking surfaces RSVP clicks, FB group joins, video plays, gallery opens, scroll depth, and section views. For the first time the club can see exactly which sections are doing the work and where to invest next year.
- Built to Roll Forward Year Over Year. The AstroJS architecture makes annual updates trivial, swap dates, refresh the gallery, drop in new merch, and redeploy. No CMS overhead, no plugin treadmill, just clean content edits each spring before the season opens.