Amateur Chess Organization (ACO)

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The Amateur Chess Organization (ACO) hosts exclusive chess world championships at vacation destinations like Crete or Kos.After the severe restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear: to ensure survival and stand out, a massive investment in professional marketing was necessary.However, the existing website looked like it was from the 2000s, utilizing an outdated blue and white color scheme that would be unimaginable for the company today.The entire business model hinged on this platform: from tournament information and hotel videos to event clips, the booking process, down payments, and invoicing—everything ran through the website.

"Update Hell" and Server Anxiety

‍The WordPress system in use, hosted on their own servers, proved to be a "ticking time bomb".

• Weekly State of Emergency: The team felt they had to write "SOS" to their developer once a week because errors occurred.

• The Plugin Dilemma: As soon as WordPress updates were installed, they frequently crashed installed plugins because the developers hadn't released compatible updates yet.

• Existential Risks: Since ACO was responsible for the hosting themselves, there was a constant fear that choosing the wrong tariff or a setting error could take the site offline—meaning immediate loss of revenue and customers.

The Expensive Detour via the Cheap Agency‍

To save their last financial reserves after the pandemic, ACO initially decided against marketer UX and went with a cheaper provider, despite a professional initial consultation. This turned out to be their biggest mistake.

• Wasted Resources: Six months after starting, the budget was gone, yet there was still no final result.

• The Height of Audacity: The collaboration was characterized by frustration and poor quality. Especially shocking for the client: One year after the escalation and termination, this agency actually called to ask for "feedback" on why ACO was no longer a client—behavior the customer found absolutely incompetent.

• The Consequence: CEO Tobias Hirneise pulled the plug and returned to marketer UX, realizing: "Instead of buying cheap, we had to buy expensively twice".

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The relaunch with marketer UX had to achieve two goals: absolute technical stability and branding that lives up to the quality of the events.

Design & Rebranding

‍Chess grandmasters are perfectionists. Falko Bindrich and Tobias Hirneise do not accept half-measures.

• Visual Realignment: We said goodbye to the old-fashioned club look. A new, elegant color scheme in Black and Gold now conveys the exclusivity of the 5-star tournaments.

• Safety through Prototyping: To overcome the founders' skepticism, we visualized the entire experience interactively in Figma before development began.

Technology Switch: From WordPress to Webflow

‍We migrated the entire marketing presence to Webflow to eliminate the hosting risk. As a "No-Code" platform, Webflow offers enterprise-grade hosting (AWS-based), rendering maintenance work and security updates obsolete.

Localization with Weglot (For 70 Nations)

‍With participants from over 70 countries, perfect translation was essential.

• Solution: Integration of Weglot.

• Advantage: Instead of tediously cloning separate pages for each language (as is often common with WordPress), Weglot enables automated translation into German, English, French, and Spanish.

• SEO: Each language received full visibility in search engines via a subdomain setup (e.g., de.amateurchess.com).

Content Automation with Zapier

‍At the time, the Webflow CMS had limits (50 fields) that were insufficient for ACO's complex tournament data.

• The Workaround: We built a "bridge" using Zapier. ACO manages their massive amounts of data (winner lists, pairings) comfortably in Google Sheets. Zapier automatically syncs this data into the Webflow CMS. This keeps the frontend chic while the backend remains powerful.

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ACO has completed the digital transformation from "Amateur Mode" to "Grandmaster Level." The website is now just like their chess game: strategically thought out, flawless, and world-class.

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