Young’s Boat Yard, a well-establish Baltimore marina catering to small and medium-sized sailboats and the do-it-yourself boater, came to OGS in the winter of 2013 to update its website. To gain increased searchability and over-all increased presence in the Baltimore-area marina space, OGS proposed not only a modern mobile-friendly website on a new hosting provider, but also a re-think of their current web content and structure.
USP & Content
Instead of focusing on YBY’s existing service proposition of “a place for the do-it-yourself boat owner,” OGS suggested they focus on the benefits of their unique location at the mouth of the Patapsco River — dubbing YBY as being “Perfectly Situated at Baltimore’s Gateway to the Chesapeake.” This location puts YBY customers in perfect striking distance to all the middle bay has to offer which is conveniently located no more than a few hours sail away. Our secondary or supporting focus was to leverage the Bay lifestyle and family-friendly / family-owned history of YBY, which dates back to the late 1940’s.
This new direction enabled us to develop a new tagline, a direction for image selection and above all, content creation and a blog section to be filled with SEO-friendly original content — highlighting multiple destinations within just a few hours sail of YBY and some of the great stories in the YBY historical archives — which of course included stories of the father-to-son legacy of owner, Phil Young and his well-known father.
The inclusion of this new engaging content should not only increase time on site but, as it is written with search engines in mind, it should also increase the site’s potential for increased search engine visibility and therefore unique traffic.
Site Features
The YBY site is built on a fully responsive layout that looks and functions nicely on multiple screen sizes and devices. It features eye-catching parallax image treatment and custom hand-drawn icons on the homepage, a large slideshow with Bay lifestyle images, multiple calls to action to contact forms (with spam protection) and related content. An improved pricing table for rates and services, a clean filterable masonry featured image gallery, robust weather station powered by Sailflow, and of course testimonials sprinkled throughout the layout. Top this off with social media integration, improved SEO plugins, caching and analytics and this site should begin to see increased traffic and search engine love in no time!
Family owned and operated since 1948, Young’s Boatyard has been a staple among the saltiest of sailors and boaters from the Baltimore area and beyond. OGS was more than happy to give this long-established business a fresh look and increased accessibility.
View the site at, youngsboatyard.com
