Name of your website?marinesurveysplus.com
Your name?
Donald Quina
Your Location (city, etc)
Miramar
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Our website provides south florida boaters with useful information concerning the care and use of their vessel as well as providing the means for boaters to schedule repairs, surveys or to sell their boat on our site. We have 27 years of serving boaters needs here in south florida from the palm beaches to the keys
What inspired you to launch your own website?
wanted to provide a simple informative method for boaters to be able to care for their boats
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
1995 i launched the boatstore.com, a 40,000 item online marine catalog featuring the inventories of south floridas 3 largest distributors at the time
How did you decide on a name for your website?
During the past twenty years, i have been performing pre-purchase marine inspections and repairs for a company which bought and sold 350 boats a year. So i wanted to use that knowledge to provide marine surveys in additiion to the repair work that is my main business.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
experience, knowledge. I am the webmaster as well as the company owner, so i have a much more direct input into what gets put on the site. I know my business and the information boaters are looking for rather than an seo team that knows web building.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
grow and expand the business
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
with the economy as it is everyone in this business is starving. I remember when i first got into this business in 1978 when Jimmy Carter was Pres, it was the toughest time i can remember but i got through it. When times get tough you just have to work harder.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Thats a tough question. I have learned over the years that at least with businesses on the web, that a fool and his money are soon parted. o i would have to invest more into the physical expansion as income called for it.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
The barrier would be the time involved in training service techs on how to do their jobs. I feel i could keep up with the potential growth however.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
fuel costs, until recently have threatens this industry. SEO has gotten much more difficult. Other ventures i created in the past were much easier than this has been.
What has been your biggest challenge?
SEO and traffic generation to levels required to be successful has been the biggest challenge. I have over 30 targeted keywords and phrases of which i now have top 30 listings on over half but the traffic has been slow and conversion has been even worse. So i spend a great deal of time personally going out to meet new customers. I have set goals for customer base growth which are beginning to show results.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Going out and talking to people personally at the marinas here in broward and Miami Dade. It takes a lot of time but it is the best i have found for getting new customers.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Back in 1995 i got 500 emails a day from visitors which totaled 100k per day on theboatstore.com and i was getting over 1 million per day on usboating.net back in 2005. Granted these sites were targeting a different market which was more expanded but now it is much tougher to get quality traffic.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
The previous sites i had developed were much more generalized than this site is. They required a much more demanding input of time for the return they provided and so i closed them. I do regret closing the first site as it was years ahead of its time and would have generated greater profits today. The site i have now is much more targeted, by selling a service, every sale is a growth potential as our customer base increases. It also is a benefit to our customers in the form of a convienence. Customers can use the interactive web tools to schedule service, surveys etc.
What is your website address?
marinesurveysplus.com
