Web design and marketing for boat dealers. Smooth out the seasons, Scale your operation.
I work with marinas, boat dealers, charter operators, and outdoor recreation businesses in the Orlando and Tampa area. I build the tech you need to handle seasonal ups and downs, track inventory without manual work, and fill your calendar with bookings.
The headwinds holding your business back.
You're running a marine business, not a software company. Generic tools weren't built for the way you actually work.
Seasonal Revenue Swings
Summer you're slammed, winter you're watching cash flow dry up. Without predictive planning, you're constantly stressed about how to keep the business running through the slow season.
Inventory Complexity
You've got boats, parts, accessories, and service gear spread across multiple locations. Tracking it manually means you're constantly overbought on slow-moving stuff and out of stock on what your techs need right now.
Booking Coordination
Charters, rentals, slip reservations, and service appointments coming in through phone calls, emails, and walk-ins. You've had double-bookings before, and each missed reservation costs you money and customer trust.
Weather Disruptions
Tropical storms, afternoon thunderstorms, and rough seas force cancellations with no notice. When you're scrambling to call customers and rebook slots manually, that lost revenue adds up fast.
Technology built for life on the water, not just behind a desk.
AI Integration & Strategy
The marine buying cycle is long and the inquiries arrive at the worst possible times: Saturday afternoon, a bank holiday, the middle of a boat show. AI covers those hours, takes the model and the question, books a walkthrough or a service slot against real availability, and keeps a winter inquiry warm until spring without anyone remembering to chase it. More on how AI agents cover weekends and keep off-season leads warm.
Weekend cover
When buyers are actually on the dock
Books walkthroughs
Against real availability
Service and slip enquiries
Handled without a callback
Off-season nurture
Winter leads still there in spring
Spec questions answered
Layouts, power, draft, capacity
Feeds your dealer system
Where the deal already lives
Fractional CTO
Marine businesses tend to accumulate technology rather than choose it: a dealer system inherited from the manufacturer, a website from whoever built it years ago, a listing subscription nobody has re-evaluated, and a booking tool for slips that lives on its own. I work out what earns its place, get the rest talking, and give you a straight answer before the next renewal. Here's how fractional CTO works when nobody on staff owns technology.
What earns its place
And what to stop paying for
Systems that talk
Site, service, and dealer system
Listing spend assessed
What it actually returns
Attribution you trust
Spend to sold hull, not clicks
One technical contact
Instead of five vendors
Senior help, seasonally
Heavier before the season
Web Design & Custom Software
A marine site has to do two things the listing platforms never will: sell the ownership experience properly, and make service and storage findable. That means model pages with layouts and real specs, downloadable brochures worth the email, a locator that routes by territory, and service pages built for the searches people make in October rather than May. See what goes into web design and custom software for dealers and builders.
Model pages with substance
Layouts, specs, and real photos
Service and storage found
The searches nobody optimises
Dealer locator by territory
Not a PDF of addresses
Brochures worth the email
Gated where it earns a lead
Fast on marina wifi
Where it gets viewed
Custom tools when needed
Configurators, quote builders
Boating is seasonal. Your pipeline doesn't have to be.
Most marine businesses market hard from March and go dark in October, which is precisely backwards. The buyer who steps aboard in May started looking in January.
The decision happens in the off-season
Nobody wakes up in June and buys a boat that afternoon. They spend the winter comparing hulls, reading forums, watching walkthroughs, and quietly deciding what they want before they ever contact a dealer. If your marketing switches off in October you are absent for the part of the cycle where the choice actually gets made, and present only for the part where you compete on price.
Service is the half nobody rents
Listing sites will take your inventory traffic and charge you for it. What they cannot touch is service, storage, winterisation, and repower, which are local, searched locally, and steady when unit sales are not. For most dealers that is the most under-built part of the website and the easiest place to win.
Builders and dealers want different things from the same page
A manufacturer needs the buyer to fall for the boat and then reach the right dealer with enough context to close. The dealer needs that handoff to arrive as a real lead rather than a name in an inbox. Getting that seam right is most of the work, and it is the piece I built for EdgeWater Boats.
Here's what actually gets better.
When you get the right tools in place, you see real improvements in how much you make, how fast you work, and how customers experience your business.
Plan for the slow months before they arrive
Charters and rentals confirmed without a phone call
Rained-out trips rebooked automatically, not by hand
Inquiries answered while you're out on the water
Am I the right person for your dealership?
I'd rather tell you now than three calls in. Here's where I do my best work, and where you're better off calling someone else.
Where I do my best work
Your weekends. An inquiry lands Saturday afternoon and sits until Monday. By then they've walked two other docks.
Your traffic. Buyers spend weeks on the big listing sites before they ever learn your name.
Your service side. Slips, storage, winterisation, and repower are steady money, and almost nobody markets them properly.
Your season. You spend hard in spring and go quiet in autumn, when the next season's buyers are actually researching.
Your website. It looks fine and produces almost nothing.
Where I'm the wrong call
Your dealer software. You need Dockmaster, Lightspeed, or your manufacturer's dealer system administered and supported. I build around those and feed them, I don't run them.
Your yard. You need someone on site, or a tech when a workstation in the service building gives up.
Your scope. You just want a cheap brochure site. A template will do that for less.
Your budget. Lowest quote wins. That's a fair way to buy, it just isn't how I work.
Your timeline. You need it live before the boat show and nobody can spare an hour for it.
Questions dealers and builders actually ask.
How much does a boat dealership website cost?
Can we outrank Boat Trader or YachtWorld?
Do you work with Dockmaster or our manufacturer's dealer system?
We're a builder, not a dealer. Does this apply?
What do we do in the off-season?
We're not in Florida. Does that matter?
Who do you work best with?
Brands and businesses I've built for
Work in a neighbouring field? I also help other manufacturers and tourism and hospitality businesses, and the problems overlap more than you would think.
Let's build the right tech stack for your marine business.
I work with marinas, boat dealerships, charter operations, and outdoor recreation companies in the Orlando and Tampa area. If you're ready to stop doing manual work and start scaling, let's talk.
No pressure, no pitch deck. Just an honest conversation about your goals.