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A Heritage of Kingdom Impact
Established in 1948, Lake Ann Camp stands as one of the most respected and enduring Christian summer camps in North America. As part of a recent camp website redesign, the ministry set out to create a digital front door that truly reflects their physical campus. Operating out of the pristine Northwoods of Michigan, the camp draws campers, retreat groups, staff, and families from all fifty states and beyond. Across more than seven decades, Lake Ann has served as a sacred setting where generations of young people have encountered Jesus, developed lifelong friendships, discovered personal calling, and even met their future spouses.
“People have really fond memories from growing up and going to Lake Ann… It’s kind of a magical place“
When the camp entered an intentional season of leadership transition, its team recognized that their digital presence was long overdue for a strategic overhaul. The existing website was nearly six years old. Beyond being visually dated, it felt rigid, fragmented, and transactional, failing to capture the warmth, vibrant community, and life-changing impact that defines the physical camp grounds.
The opportunity first came to Tim Vandlen, founder of Michigan-based tinytv studios. Tim had partnered with Sonder on shared clients before, and when Lake Ann reached out to him about a new website, he knew this project called for more than a fresh coat of paint. He called Matt.
Lake Ann Camp wasn’t seeking a surface-level makeover; they needed a strategic, Kingdom-aligned digital ecosystem built to honor their legacy while stewarding their future growth well.
The Phygital Disconnect: A Barrier to Trust
In person, Lake Ann Camp offers an immersive, high-value experience defined by warm hospitality, top-tier facilities, and deep relational care. However, their legacy web presence created a significant phygital disconnect: the physical reality of the camp grounds was completely out of sync with its digital representation.
This disconnect created four key challenges for the camp’s leadership:
- Erosion of Digital Trust: For first-time parents and church leaders who had never visited the Northwoods of Michigan, the original website failed to reflect the safety, professionalism, and excellence present on campus.
- Loss of Vibrant Camp Life: The legacy site felt static and rigid, failing to capture the dynamic energy, joyful atmosphere, and authentic community happening on the grounds every day.
- Operational Friction: Crucial information, such as safety protocols, housing details, and medical procedures, was buried under complex navigation, forcing staff to handle preventable inquiries manually.
- Missed Stewardship: The old website treated visitors as anonymous web traffic rather than individuals with specific needs.
Closing this gap required more than a visual refresh; it demanded an architectural rebuild designed to translate the heart and quality of the physical campus into the digital space.
“When you go through the camp, it’s beautiful. You’re in the vast and beautiful Northwoods of Michigan. Their old website just wasn’t doing justice to what they offered.“
Forming a Specialized, Relational Team
To steward this transition faithfully, Sonder and tinytv studios brought in experienced web developer Jake to assemble a small, specialized team. Rather than one agency trying to do everything, each partner owned a distinct lane:
- Tim (tinytv studios) – Creative Direction, Storytelling & Project Management: Tim brought a decade of experience as a creative director along with deep roots in Michigan. He owned the story and the creative direction, ran point on project management and client communication, and worked alongside Lake Ann’s team on the photo and video content that gives the new site its energy. His job was to make sure the narrative felt relational rather than corporate, and that the whole experience held together from page to page.
- Matt (Sonder) – Strategy, Design & Audience Architecture: Matt led audience discovery, empathy mapping, page-by-page design, and SEO. Rather than treating web traffic as generic clicks, his role was to identify the exact human needs of distinct archetypes, from anxious parents to church retreat leaders, and translate those insights into intuitive site architecture and beautiful design.
- Jake – Custom Web Development: Jake coded a custom solution from scratch rather than starting from a template. Because he had a personal history with Lake Ann Camp (he met his wife there, and the two were married on the grounds) and had even worked on a prior version of their website, he brought specialized technical knowledge of the camp’s complex operational needs.
On the camp side, the team had one main point of contact: Caleb Winegardner, Lake Ann’s Marketing Director. Polished, buttoned up, and clear about what he wanted, Caleb delegated well and kept the project moving from the inside.
The team approached Lake Ann Camp as Kingdom partners, prioritizing relationship, prayer, and deep alignment from day one.
“It was kind of fun to create this small scrappy team to go in more so as specialists rather than generalists. We brought in dedicated experts for each piece, from story and creative direction to layout, strategy, and custom web development.“
“I managed it, Jake coded it, Matt designed it. It was a dream team.”
The Empathy-Driven Archetype Workshop
Walking through Lake Ann Camp in person is an inspiring experience. Set amidst sprawling pine forests and lakefront views, the campus balances top-tier professional excellence with an approachable, “blue jeans” comfort.
That vibrant, living environment was lost in translation on the old website. Essential information was buried within complex navigation menus, creating unnecessary friction for parents and pastors trying to explore what the camp had to offer.
To solve this, Matt, Tim, and Jake traveled to Traverse City, Michigan, to conduct an intensive, full-day Archetype & User Journey Workshop with camp leadership. tinytv studios handled the on-the-ground logistics and brought insights from their initial intake and sitemap audit, while Sonder led the audience discovery exercises. What began as a strategic planning session quickly turned into a profound moment of shared ministry and empathy mapping.
Rather than treating website traffic as abstract demographics or anonymous clicks, the workshop focused on defining real human needs, personal motivations, and spiritual journeys. The team mapped out seven distinct archetypes, ranging from Kingdom-minded donors and supporters to local neighbors just down the road, and from first-time parents checking safety protocols to pastors planning retreats and guest groups renting the facilities for their own programming. Every pathway on the site would be intentionally designed to serve one of these groups.
Together, the team prayed over each audience group and shared stories of real individuals whose lives had been transformed on camp grounds. Matt reflected on how deeply the session resonated with everyone in the room:
“The outgoing director and the incoming director were there, and they pulled me aside at lunch and said, ‘We just canceled all of our afternoon meetings because we want to stay. We want to be a part of this.’ There were tearful moments… These guys weren’t just seeing future groups of people; they were going backwards and seeing specific people whose lives were changed. That moment of stewardship, where they realized understanding the audience wasn’t just ‘who is this website for?’ but ‘who are we serving and how can we love and serve them better?’, changed the trajectory of everything.“
The workshop produced more than a sitemap. Sonder followed it with a communications matrix, an internal cheat sheet Caleb and the camp’s communication staff could use for any message going forward, mapping what each archetype needs to hear at each stage of their journey. Clarity is kindness, and segmenting an audience so each group receives the right message is good stewardship.
“Matt and the Sonder team helped us clarify our strategy before getting started on anything else. They walked us through an enriching audience discovery session that led us to a deeper understanding of who we serve and how we can serve them best. That session is still paying dividends today.”
By grounding the digital architecture in empathy, prayer, and deep audience mapping, the team ensured that the website served as a natural extension of the camp’s heart for ministry.
From Archetypes to Architecture: Executing the Camp Website Redesign
With the audience defined, Sonder moved into wireframes and then a month of page-by-page design, overlaying the archetypes and messaging work onto a real look, feel, and vibe. Tim worked closely alongside that process, guarding the big picture.
“We collaborated very closely with Tim at tinytv in that process. He was really good at the big picture, making sure the flow fit. If we’re designing something this way for this page, it should be mirrored on that page, even if it had slightly different information for a different archetype.”
The single biggest structural decision was the menu. Instead of trying to be everything to everybody, the new site presents three main pathways at the top (Summer Camp, Retreats, and Plan Your Event) with a compact secondary menu for deeper exploration. Every one of Lake Ann’s offerings was sorted into one of those three buckets so any visitor can get started without being overwhelmed.
The second was solving the phygital problem head-on. Tim and Caleb led the content effort so that the site now shows the camp instead of describing it.
“Caleb and Tim did a great job with the content. Now when you go to the site, you see pictures of action, bright color filters, lots of smiles, high fives, laughter, all four seasons, zip lines, blobs, all the fun stuff you’d experience at camp. The language is meant to create a vibe that says: we’re here, we’re cool, we love your kids, we’re going to protect them and take care of them, and we’re going to have a ton of fun.“
As each page was designed, Jake began building it out in custom code. He was also intentional about preserving the SEO equity Lake Ann had built over decades online, carrying indexed page titles and structure forward so a brand that predates the internet didn’t lose ground in the rebuild. Sonder selected focus keywords and key phrases up front, so the site launched fully optimized rather than merely “SEO ready.”
Before launch, Caleb took the archetypes and ran with them. He split the entire Lake Ann staff into seven groups, taught each group their archetype, and had them review the beta site through that lens, submitting feedback through a form Sonder built. Each group could then stack hands and say the journey made sense from their perspective. The tweaks were minimal, and the site launched with the whole staff behind it.
Kingdom Stewardship & Measured Impact
Operating across multiple time zones, the team held weekly syncs to refine designs, streamline copy, and optimize technical infrastructure, launching the new platform in time for the upcoming summer camp season.
The resulting custom digital platform eliminated prior navigation hurdles, accelerated load speeds, and brought true digital cohesion to Lake Ann Camp. Today, their digital front door accurately reflects the beauty, excellence, and heart of their physical campus.
The strategic SEO foundation, intentional empathy mapping, and custom camp website redesign yielded immediate, measurable growth following launch:
- 47% Organic Traffic Increase: Comparing the 2–3 months prior to launch against the 2–3 months post-launch in February 2026, organic website traffic surged by 47%.
- Sustained Engagement: This elevated traffic performance wasn’t a short-term spike; it has sustained steadily throughout 2026.
- Measurement for the First Time: The old site had no analytics in place. The rebuild gave Lake Ann Camp a working analytics foundation, so the team can now see where traffic comes from and how visitors move through the site.
Just as important, Lake Ann walked away equipped. With archetypes in hand, the team can build as many personas as they need, for a single event or a whole season, without starting from scratch. Sonder also consulted on the camp’s Google Ads account setup and keyword research, then handed the reins to Caleb to run in-house. That’s the Sonder model: partnership, tactical support, and a handoff that leaves the organization empowered to carry the mission forward.
“Matt, Tim, and the Sonder team are a collective of creatives you can trust. They kept the project on time with clear deliverables at each stage, while bringing well-rounded expertise in graphic design, UI/UX, brand consistency, and visual storytelling. That combination led to a finished product that will serve us well for years to come.“
By removing digital friction and grounding every user journey in clarity and empathy, Sonder and tinytv studios helped ensure that Lake Ann Camp’s website doesn’t just display information: it serves as a welcoming gateway for people to encounter Christ, experience genuine community, and take their next step in faith.
“At Sonder, we don’t just help organizations build websites. We help them clarify what they are building and why it matters, creating the digital infrastructure so the right people can see it, trust it, and step into it.”
To learn more about Lake Ann Camp, check out their website HERE.
To learn more about tinytv studios, check out their website HERE.
To explore more of Sonder’s work, browse our full library of marketing case studies HERE.
