Web design and marketing for boat dealers. Smooth out the seasons, scale your operation.
Boats sell in season. The website works all year. I build the sites, the local SEO and the systems that get marinas, boat dealers and charter operators in the Orlando, Tampa and Sarasota area found, with inventory that displays properly and leads that land where you will see them.
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 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
Marine inquiries arrive at the worst possible times. Saturday afternoon. A bank holiday. The middle of a boat show. So I build the thing that covers those hours. It takes the model and the question. It books a walkthrough or a service slot against real availability. And it 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 on the dock
Books walkthroughs
Against real availability
Service and slip inquiries
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 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. A slip booking tool living on its own. I work out what earns its place. I get the rest talking. And you get a straight answer before the next renewal. Read 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 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. Make service and storage findable. That means model pages with real layouts and specs. Brochures worth the email address. A locator that routes by territory. And service pages built for what people search in October, not 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 optimizes
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. That's 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. The winter is when they decide, and most of it happens without you.
Comparing hulls
Yours against three others
Reading forums
Where you have no say at all
Watching walkthroughs
Usually somebody else's
Quietly choosing
Before they ever contact a dealer
Switch the marketing off in October and you're absent for the part of the cycle where the choice gets made. You show up for the part where you compete on price.
Service is the half nobody rents
Listing sites take your inventory traffic and charge you for it. The service side they cannot touch, and it's local, searched locally, and steady when unit sales are not.
Service
Searched by people already nearby
Storage
Steady when sales are not
Winterization
Seasonal, and predictable
Repower
High value, almost no competition
For most dealers that's the most under-built part of the website, and the easiest place to win.
Builders and dealers want different things
A manufacturer needs the buyer to fall for the boat, then reach the right dealer with enough context to close. The dealer needs that handoff to arrive as a real lead, not a name in an inbox.
Model pages that sell
Layouts, specs, real photography
A locator that routes
By territory, not by guess
Context travels with it
Which boat, which options
It lands in the system
Not in a shared inbox
Getting that seam right is most of the work, and it's the piece I built for EdgeWater Boats.
The off-season stops being dead time.
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
Draft, power, capacity: the sale starts before anyone reaches the dock.
Four things to ask anyone.
Worth settling before we talk. Ask them of anyone you're considering, me included.
I don't use templates.
Designed from scratch, coded by hand. Every decision has a reason behind it. That part is non-negotiable.
I don't outsource.
The work happens here, at my desk. That's a limit as much as a promise, and it's why I turn down more than I take on.
You'll always get me.
Not an account manager. Not a different one next quarter. I build it, and I'm the one who picks up two years later.
You own all of it.
Domain, code, ad accounts, analytics. In your name from day one, and it stays that way if you ever leave.
How I work with boat dealers and marinas.
I'll save us both the discovery call. The work that suits a dealer or a marina, and the work I'd hand to somebody 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, winterization, 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 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.
What builders and dealers 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 neighboring field? I also help other manufacturers and tourism and hospitality businesses, and the problems overlap more than you would think.
Let's talk before the next renewal.
Tell me what's breaking and I'll tell you whether it's worth fixing. Marinas, dealers and charter operators, in Florida and well beyond it.
An honest conversation about your goals, and a straight answer either way.