The Winnipeg Santa Claus Parade is a cherished event in our City. Started in 1909 by Eaton’s, it has become a holiday tradition for many local families. In 2018 the parade was ready for a modern look, which would incorporate existing brand elements and style. The refresh would spread across their branding, website, and multiple design materials.
Services
Client
Challenge
The goal was to create a website that felt bold, fun and brand-forward, without sacrificing the core principles of a modern web experience. We needed to balance striking design with usability, speed and accessibility. The client wanted something that stood out without falling into the trap of style over substance.
Approach
We leaned into playful design elements and big branding, while ensuring everything still performed effectively. Santa Claus Parade became our benchmark for proving that personality and performance don't have to be at odds. It's proof that a website can be beautiful, functional, fast and accessible, all at once. When people say the web has lost its personality, we point to this website and say, "You can still make something unique without giving up what matters."
Brand and theme focused design
Our designers created a vibrant, fully custom website featuring unique interactive elements such as an event countdown timer and animated falling snow that moves with the cursor. These playful yet purposeful details helped create an engaging user experience while maintaining clear usability. This website is where spectators go to learn everything about parade day, time, parade route, what to wear, how to get there, where to park, and what to expect on site.
Custom sponsor grid
We built a custom, CMS managebale sponsor grid tailored to the parade's needs. It features easy updates, automatic image resizing, and caching for optimal performance. It was designed for long-term stability and scalability.
Long-term partnership
Our focus is on building lasting relationships with our customers. A website is more than a build process, it becomes a long-term representation of a brand. A properly build website should be able to stand for years, continuing to serve the needs of the client and the visitors.
We partner with the Santa Claus Parade as a sponsor, ensuring that the website continues to meet their needs. This included an upgrade and audit performed in 2025 to modernize the website without the need for a complete rebuild.
Performance and speed
This website needed to perform well year-round despite being dormant for long periods of the year, followed by a huge spike in traffic around the holidays. This requirement led us to implement performance solutions to handle the surges in traffic. The site uses Cloudflare for security and CDN services, and DNS. It is hosted on a dedicated Cloudways server featuring multiple caching layers, including Memcached and Varnish. The CMS handles performance optimizations like responsive image tags, indexed databases, WebP image caching and more to ensure fast, consistent load times.
Homepage regularly achieves DOM-content-loaded in 354ms, and full page load in 468ms.