Why Strafford Media and the Eddie Aikau Foundation chose Duda to power the website of “The Super Bowl of Surfing”
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500k
500k simultaneous site visits with zero downtime or hiccups
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70%
70% increased organic traffic
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2x
2x merchandise sales
The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational is one of the world’s biggest surfing events, bringing together top big wave surfers to showcase their high-performance surfing at Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.
Named in honor of the late
Eddie Aikau and dubbed “The Super Bowl of Surfing,” the event only takes place when waves reach a minimum height of 40 feet. In 2023, the event ran for only the 10th time since its inception in 1984, amassing over 2 million streaming views from 195 countries around the world.
The need for a fresh new digital presence
Ahead of their 2023 event, Linda Ipsen, Eddie’s former wife and the President of the Eddie Aikau Foundation, recognized the need to update and modernize the event’s website.
“We needed to bring the website into the current century,” says Linda.
For one, they needed a site that could handle large surges of traffic from global viewers with no hiccups and no downtime. They also wanted to create an intuitive user experience for their site visitors, so people could easily navigate the site and find what they were looking for.
The team also needed an eCommerce store to drive conversions and sell all kinds of merchandise–from T-shirts to bumper stickers. Finally, as a non-profit that depends on the support of their sponsors, the Eddie Aikau Foundation needed to make sure the event website would provide good visibility and an excellent experience for their sponsors.
That’s where Chris Wall, and the team at Strafford Media, came into the picture: to rebuild the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational website.
The search for an “unbreakable” website builder
Chris had been building websites for almost 2 decades, starting with RapidWeaver software, then moving to WordPress.
“That was the beginning of our sorrows,” Chris chuckles, recalling the endless updates, time spent restoring backups of broken sites, and desperation to find a better tool to build client sites.
Around 2015 or 2016, Chris found what he was looking for: an unbreakable website builder called Duda. After just a few months, Chris decided to build all of his client sites exclusively on Duda – and he hasn’t looked back!
While clients will occasionally push back or specifically request a WordPress site, Chris handles their objections by showcasing the performance and stability of Duda websites compared to other website builders.
For example, all Duda sites provide 99.9% uptime with AWS hosting. In addition, the platform allows agencies like Strafford Media to set granular roles and permissions, so clients can easily update content on their own sites without the risk of breaking them.
In addition, Duda has topped the Core Web Vitals leaderboard since 2021. Chris frequently shows this graph to prospective clients, while emphasizing the impact this level of performance can have on other KPIs like leads and conversion rates.
Core Web Vitals Technology Report (cwvtech.report)
“Why use WordPress,” says Chris, “when you can use a platform that was built for performance, supported by an army of people to make sure it’s unbreakable.”
The true test: A massive wave of site visitors – 500k strong
The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational website is just one example of an incredible, high-performing site Chris’ team has built on the Duda platform.
The SEO-optimized site ranks highly in search for relevant search terms and offers visitors responsive, intuitive user experience. It’s easy for people to find what they need–whether they want to get info about the event, donate to the foundation, or buy merch from the online store.
In addition, the new site gives sponsors great visibility and a positive brand experience.
Linda describes working with Chris on this project as “very rewarding.” But the true test would come on the day of the 2023 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.
Since the event depends on the height of the waves in any given year, the event has only been able to run 10 times in the last 40 years.
Needless to say, the stakes were high.
While Duda websites are stable out-of-the-box, Chris wanted some extra assurance that the website could handle the level of traffic they were expecting. So, the day before the event, Chris got in touch with Duda’s award-winning customer support team to make sure that the site would be as viewable as possible.
The 10th Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational ended up running in 2023 and drove more than 500,000 hits to the event’s website.
“We had no downtime. No glitches at all,” says Linda, “Everything worked perfectly!”
While the event did not run in 2024, the Eddie Aikau Foundation continues to reap the benefits of their new website, including more than doubling their merchandise sales since launching their new online store.
