One thing that isn’t changing in 2026 is solid excellent website design. We started the year by looking at some bike-related sites and settled on AllTrails as our award winner. A popular app and website for discovering and navigating outdoor trails, AllTrails features a free and paid membership.
What Industry Is AllTrails?
At first glance, AllTrails could be considered a travel site. However, that isn’t exactly the case, as it pulls up trails around where you live. It could also be cited as an activity-type site, since users are going out and seeking trails. The staff here at Designerly feel the site falls more into a software as a service (SaaS) business model.
While most SaaS companies serve other businesses in a B2B format, AllTrails is more of a B2C brand, serving consumers. The program is available online or on your mobile device. We share more about the features and which are free and paid below.
A Little About AllTrails
AllTrails has beautiful, big hero images and detailing. At the same time, it has a minimalistic feel that ensures it is user-friendly and easy to navigate. The use of earth tones in the color palette is a nice nod to outdoor adventure.
The SaaS industry was estimated at $408.21 billion in 2025, and projected to reach $1.25 trillion by 2034. Organizations with useful tools are likely to see growth based on the huge increases in projected revenue.
The platform features over 500,000 curated trails and 90 million users. The sheer scope of their catalogue of trails is impressive. However, as you dig deeper you learn just how serious they take their advice. They even staff a medical advisor, a physician, to ensure they’re categorizing trails. The company also contributes part of its annual revenue to organizations that work to conserve and protect the great outdoors, including Camping to Connect, The Conservation Alliance and Leave No Trace.
Why AllTrails Won a Designerly Website Design Award
The staff at Designerly use a pattern each month to select a winner. Obviously, we can’t scour through millions of websites at a time. What we do is select a category, pull up information on the industry, narrow down options until we hit a core specialization. We then look at top-ranking sites as well as small businesses without as much traction.
We keep narrowing the selections based on things such as layout, user experience, navigation, color palettes, mobile-friendliness and typography. Once we have three or four sites that excel in the basics, we start looking at the more obscure things that make a site fabulous. AllTrails ranked high on all those things and also in overall feel and tone.
A Website That Reflects the Experience
You may remember a previous 2025 Designerly Award winner, Globus, a travel provider. We praised them for creating a site that reflected the experience of going on one of their tours. We see some similarities in the AllTrails site in this respect. Images of walking paths, people biking and sweeping landscapes set the tone.
Navigation
The simple layout of AllTrails ensures users can easily move from one section to the next. The design is based on a grid, with specific locations in convenient boxes with an image and description. Click on any and it opens into more detail. On each trail page is a limited number of options, including:
- Overview
- Conditions
- Reviews
- Hit the Trail
- Nearby
Click on the brand name and you return to the home page. The footer is also detailed enough to allow for quick navigation from the bottom of the page to the top.
Mobile Responsiveness
Because AllTrails is app-based, the mobile version works as well, if not better than the desktop. The site loads at lightning speed with undetectable lag times. Images scale down to suit a smaller screen perfectly.
Typography
The site uses a sans serif font that makes the design clean, sharp and modern. A typographical hierarchy helps the user see at a glance which information is most important and how the site is laid out. You can land on the home page and immediately understand where to go next, making the site extremely user-friendly.
Color Palette
As mentioned above, the site uses an earth-tone color palette. The choice of browns and greens works perfectly for a site dedicated to helping people spend more time outdoors on trails around the United States. The splash of lime green in the design is a pop of color that grabs reader interest. It also is repeated in the logo and on each page of the site, but only as an accent color.
Consistency
Another element that is subtle but can keep users on your site longer is a consistency throughout. Readers know what to expect as they load each section of your site. For example, AllTrails lists each trail on its own description page.
At the top is a photo of the location, a map and a second, smaller image. Just under is the same info, including length of trail, elevation, estimated time to hike or bike and how many exits there are. The site also includes top sites in the area. At a glance, you can see if it is beginner-friendly, moderate or advanced. The site also features user reviews about the location, so you can get first-hand insight into the trail.
AllTrails Membership
The site is a membership-based one. While you can gather some details from the publicly published pages, if you want true insight, you must sign up for an account. This benefits the company because they now have your information for their mailing list and future communications.
The site offers two plans. Plus is $35.99 per year. Peak costs $79.99 per year. Both plans feature a free seven day trial offer so you can see what you think. The base plan for the app is always free. You get a spot to make lists, save trails and navigation for the trails. Each of the other plans adds features like downloading offline maps, looking at tour photos along the trail and previewing terrain in 3D.
What We Would Do Different
Content is still king. We would add a blog section to this site and share helpful articles about what to pack on a hiking trip or bike ride, best bikes for different terrains, favorite moments from readers, and similar pieces of interest.
Overall, AllTrails is a unique site that packs in a ton of value for little effort. Anyone who enjoys biking or hiking will appreciate this one, and there is a lot to be learned about keeping design simple and focused on a singular purpose.
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