Website Design in South Bend: A Site That Switches Between an Ordinary Week and a Home Game Weekend

Updated November 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

On a home game Saturday the hotels around South Bend can sell out, and on the Tuesday before, the same hotel needs a meeting planner. Website design in South Bend has to serve both days from one set of pages. Local officials put a home football game at about $35 million for the area, so the weekend is worth planning for and the words on the page are worth checking, because Notre Dame’s names and marks need permission. This page shows a site with two modes and a table that switches them. It is for hotels, restaurants and shops. Progression is based in New York and takes South Bend projects remotely, with on-site sessions on request.

A Saturday with no rooms left

The front desk of an invented hotel gets the same call forty times by noon: do you have anything tonight. The website could have answered all forty, and it would have taken one clear page.

That page is half of this one. The other half is the Tuesday afterward, when the same hotel needs a planner to book twelve rooms and a meeting space, and the sold out message at the top of the home page is wrong.

Website design in South Bend for two kinds of week

WSBT’s February 2026 report on 2025 tourism says each football game generated about $35 million for the local economy, and it quotes the executive director of Visit South Bend Mishawaka citing $36 million for a home football game. Those are county officials’ figures for the whole area, not for any one business, and they show why the game weekend deserves its own treatment.

Hotels and restaurants gain the most, and shops, parking lots and rental owners gain too. The same businesses also live through the other weeks of the year. A hotel owner who wants more on the hotel side can read our hotel website design page, and this page covers the switch between the two modes.

The switch table

A site that switches is still one site. The table lists the parts of a page that change with the mode, what each says in each mode and who flips it.

A site that switches needs one owner. Name the person in the log, give that person a backup, and write the flip dates down for the season. A switch nobody owns turns into a Saturday banner still showing on Tuesday.

Mode one: the ordinary week

Most of the year is not football. Meeting planners, parents visiting students, medical visitors, conference attendees and local regulars make up the rest of the calendar, and their pages should never read as an afterthought.

South Bend web design for the rest of the year

The pages that carry ordinary weeks are the meetings page, the rooms and rates page, the dining page and a clear contact path. They should load fast on a phone and answer the planner’s first questions without a call.

• A meetings page with room sizes, a request form and a response time.
• A rooms page that says what each room type includes.
• A dining page with hours that match the Google listing.
• A page for visiting families, with directions and nearby services.
• A calendar of the season’s weekends so planners know which dates are busy.

What a two mode site costs

A two mode site is a normal small business site with a few extra blocks and a short checklist. What drives the price is the number of pages, whether booking lives on the site, and how many outlets have their own hours. Web design in South Bend is priced the way it is elsewhere, with no local premium.

Bands for a hospitality site

Each row below runs from the typical low to the published high in the US market for that kind of work.

Prices Progression lists for a site

On the Progression page about website design and development, the fixed-scope table starts at $1,400 for a landing page and $9,500 for a brochure site of five to eight pages. A business site of ten to sixteen pages starts at $18,000, and a site with a content program of 30 to 60 pages at $36,000. Ecommerce starts at $34,000 under 200 SKUs and $78,000 with integrations, and accessibility remediation at $4,000.

Mode two: the game weekend

On a home weekend the questions are narrow and urgent: is there room, where do I park, what time does the kitchen open. The game mode answers those first and moves everything else down.

• A sold out notice that says so in the first line and names the dates.
• A short list of other ways to stay or eat nearby, if you are comfortable sending guests elsewhere.
• Walking and parking notes in plain words, with a map link.
• Game day hours for every outlet, in one list.
• A phone number that gets answered, and a form that confirms by email.

What should a no rooms page do?

Say plainly that there are no rooms, then be useful: offer a waitlist, a different date or a nearby option. A dead end sends the guest to the next search result, and that result may be an app that keeps the booking.

A page that must survive a sudden surge should be light and mostly static. Use the same short pages with caching switched on and a form that does not depend on a heavy third party widget. No traffic figure is claimed here, because the right size depends on the property.

Words a local site should not borrow

The University of Notre Dame protects its names and marks. Its On Message trademark page lists its trademarks, including “Notre Dame,” “University of Notre Dame,” “Fighting Irish,” “Irish,” “ND,” and “What Would You Fight For?” and icons such as the leprechaun, the shamrock, the monogram, the seals and the depiction of the Dome.

The page also says that use of the marks in print, multimedia, advertising and promotional material, or on clothing or other merchandise, requires the express permission of the University. The Licensing page adds that use of any trademarks or identifiers, including the University’s colors, on merchandise or in relation to goods and services requires express permission.

What can a business say instead?

Plain words that describe the day and the place: football weekend, game day, home game, and the name of the street or neighborhood. A plain statement of location such as near campus is a true statement about where you are. For anything beyond that, or for your own business name, ask Notre Dame Licensing and ask counsel.

• Describe the weekend in your own words.
• Use a map and street names for location.
• Leave the University’s logos, icons and colors out of ads and pages unless permission is in hand.
• Keep any permission letter with the page’s records.
• Ask before ordering merchandise or signs.

Two tables a local owner keeps

Two small tables run the whole system. The first is the season list, taken from the athletics schedule each year, with a dated row for each home Saturday. The second is the change log.

Beyond the stadium

The same switch fits other busy stretches: campus move-in, graduation and large conferences. Each one asks for the same few blocks, a banner, a rate note and a set of hours, with its own start and end date on the log.

Dates for those events come from the organizers, and they move. The log keeps the site honest when they do, and the same marks rules apply to any event that uses the University’s names.

How is a spring conference different from a game weekend?

A conference usually books on a longer lead time and wants a room block form, where a game weekend books at the last minute and wants availability. The same two modes can carry both with different banners.

Who answers the phone when the site says sold out?

A notice on the page does not stop the calls. It changes what the call is about, so the people answering need the same words the page uses.

• Give the front desk a one line answer that matches the banner.
• Tell reservations which dates the site shows as sold out.
• Put the waitlist form where the notice is, not two clicks away.
• Send form submissions to one inbox that someone reads every hour.
• Reply to waitlist requests the same day, even if the answer is no.
• Take the notice down the minute rooms open up.

Does a waitlist form need a different design from a booking form?

Yes. It asks for dates, party size and contact details, and nothing about payment. Keeping it short gets more people to finish it.

Should each game weekend get its own page?

Usually not. A banner and a short list on existing pages keep your search rankings in one place, and a fresh page every fall has to be built and redirected again. A single, permanent game weekend page that you update works better.

• One permanent page named for game weekends, updated each season.
• A banner on the home page that links to it during the mode.
• A short note on rooms, tables or hours pages that points to it.
• No dates in the address of the page, so the link survives the year.

Related services and guides

Pages that sit beside this one:

• Website design and development
• Hotel website design
• SEO company in Indiana
• Web design by city

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