How to Build a Website for a Surf Camp in Costa Rica

Someone booking a surf camp is committing to a week with strangers, in water they've never seen, at a level they're often nervous about.

Two questions decide it, and most camp websites answer neither directly. Will the waves suit me? And who else will be there?

Everything worth doing on the site follows from those two.

Say who the camp is for, out loud

A beginner and an intermediate surfer are shopping for different weeks, and a page that tries to reassure both at once reassures neither.

So be explicit. Which levels are catered for, in which conditions, and what a typical day contains. If beginners get the smaller beach section in the morning while the advanced group heads up the coast, say it. The person who needs that will book precisely because you said it.

Vagueness here reads as evasion, even when it isn't.

Show the water honestly

This is where video earns its place.

A clip of the actual wave at the actual level does more than any adjective. Someone unsure of themselves needs to see people who look like them standing up, not a pro in a barrel. Someone experienced needs to see something worth the flight.

Both can go on the same page, clearly labelled. It costs you nothing and it filters bookings towards people who'll be happy when they arrive.

Show the people

A week at a camp is a social decision as much as a sporting one.

Photos of meals, of the terrace in the evening, of the group walking down with boards. Those tell someone whether they'd feel comfortable. So does a page with the coaches on it, with names and a sentence each about how long they've been surfing there.

Anonymous camps are hard to commit to. A face and a name change that entirely.

Answer the practical questions before the payment step

The list is short and it's always the same. What's included: boards, food, transfers, insurance? What happens on a flat day? Are rooms shared or private? What's the cancellation policy? How do you get there from the airport, with realistic times?

Someone who has to go hunting for one of those loses momentum, and momentum is most of what a booking is made of.

Two languages, read by a human

English carries most of the international bookings on that coast, Spanish is the language of the country. Two well-written languages beat four machine-translated ones: an unreviewed translation shows immediately and undoes the trust the photographs just built.

Seasons, said plainly

Costa Rica's Pacific coast runs a dry season roughly December to April and a green season from May to November, with rain in the afternoons and generally more consistent swell.

A page that explains what each season actually means for a guest sells the quiet months instead of leaving them empty: bigger waves, quieter camp, cheaper flights, wet afternoons. Hiding the rain doesn't stop people finding out; it just means they find out from someone else.

Make the site light

Guests browse from phones, often on uneven coverage, sometimes already in the country.

Large photographs are almost always what makes a camp site slow, and compressing them properly is an afternoon's work with no visible loss. It's unglamorous and it's usually the biggest single gain available.

Where the video sits

Not one long film. A few seconds in the right places: the walk down to the water on the homepage, a session at the level a beginner would get, the terrace filling up at the end of the day.

Short, silent by default, light enough not to slow the page, and shot vertically too. Most people will see it on a phone. Filmed knowing where it will sit, rather than trimmed later to fit a space it wasn't made for.

One thing to test

Give your phone to someone who has never surfed and ask them to find out whether your camp would take them, and what a day looks like.

Watch without helping. Whatever makes them hesitate is your first job.

I move to Santa Teresa in September, and I both film and build. The two options are on this page.