The challenge
Peak Nation needed a site that tells a young rugby league player, and the parent beside them, who Korey Gibson is and what he holds his athletes to, and gives them one clear way to put their name forward.
Where they started
- Korey's own written standard, P.E.A.K.: Person, Excellence, Articulate and Kaitiaki, with three lines under each word.
- Three documents he had written himself: his story, an information book about the retreats, and the testing protocols.
- The official NRL and RLPA accredited player agent lockup, and a photograph of Korey against the Canterbury ranges.
- Enquiries come in by email and an introduction form. By choice, no phone number or street address is published.
The research
On 19 August 2026, before any design work, we read three player management and sports agency websites. We then opened Korey's three documents page by page and turned them into text, so every fact on the site could come from him.
Sites we studied
What we tookProof placed up front, and the discipline of one restrained accent colour.
What we leftThe institutional voice, which suits a large firm rather than one named agent.
What we tookThe application treated as a designed moment of its own, not a contact form.
What we found
- The larger agencies in the category lead on scale: numbers of agents, offices and countries.
- Korey is one named, accredited agent with a written standard, so the site is built around the person and the standard rather than a firm.
- His information book holds the depth: why rugby league, the Mountain Model of thirty athletes on each of two mountains, and the full entry testing.
The strategy
Lead with the person and his standard, written for the parent to read and the player to act on, and put everything he has written on the site itself.
Korey presents himself as the calm adult in a loud category, and the site has to feel like that before it says it. Green marks the standard. Gold marks where to act, and nothing else is gold.
A named person with a standard is what sets him apart. He is looking to his left in the frame, so his eyeline leads into the headline. A second hero led by an unnamed player was sketched and rejected.
Split in two, the standard runs both ways instead of reading as a list of demands on a teenager. Korey kept the split and rewrote his side of it, including both headings.
As pages they open on any phone, and search engines can read them. Publishing every testing standard lets an athlete prepare before they put their name forward.
The first choice read as a default sports font. Syne's wide capitals echo the wordmark, and every heading was measured for clipping at four screen widths.
The build
A React and TypeScript site served by Cloudflare, live on peaknation.co.nz since 11 September 2026: home, the standard, retreats, Korey's story, entry testing, about, contact and the introduction page, plus privacy and terms.
The signature moment
The P.E.A.K. standard on the home page. The section holds still while each letter, P, E, A and K, takes the screen in turn, with what Peak Nation is here to build on one side, what the athlete can expect on the other, and a counter showing how far through you are. On phones, and for visitors whose device is set to reduce motion, it becomes four blocks that read straight down.
A question box that answers from Korey's own material and nothing else. Common questions are matched against answers drawn from his documents, with no AI call at all.
A short first step: name, contact details and anything Korey should know. Referees and physicality numbers are optional and folded away, so an athlete who has not tested yet can still put their name forward.
Two mountains, one for wāhine and one for tāne, each holding thirty athletes across three tiers from the foundation to the peak, laid out on the home page in his own words.
The introduction and contact forms send through C.E.A Forms on Peak Nation's own keys, each with a hidden trap field that catches spam bots.
Search
- Page title 'Peak Nation Player Management | Christchurch', with a description naming rugby league player management from Christchurch and Korey's NRL and RLPA accreditation.
- SportsOrganization schema that records the accreditation as a credential recognised by the National Rugby League.
- A sitemap of the ten public pages, and a robots file that keeps the owner admin page out of search.
Results
We have not measured introductions before and after launch, so this study makes no results claim.
Study last updated November 2026