Before and after: Sunset Sail Key West's new website
Captain Seth sails three classic boats out of Key West, and his new website just went live. Here's what changed, and four decisions behind it that work on any charter's site.
Jon Persson
Co-founder, Websites & Systems ·
Captain Seth has sailed Key West since 2010. His company, Sunset Sail Key West, runs three classic boats: When and If, the schooner built for General George S. Patton in 1939; Malabar X, the schooner the yacht designer John G. Alden built for himself to win the Bermuda race; and High Tide, the green sloop that became Key West’s first charter sailboat. They run shared and private sunset sails, day sails and snorkel trips from two docks, the Historic Seaport downtown and the Perry Marina on Stock Island.
His new website went live on sunsetsailkeywest.com on November 3.
Sunset Sail Key West
Key West
Before
- Old site:No Book button
- Old site:No reviews
- Old site:A wall of text
Here are four things we thought about while we built it. None of them is special to Seth.
1. Put your reviews on the first screen
Seth has 4.9 stars from 1,287 reviews on Tripadvisor and 4.8 from 377 on Google. His old homepage showed the Tripadvisor rating, but below the headline, a long paragraph and the Explore Trips button, past the first screen. Now both ratings sit in the opening photo, under the Book now button, on desktop and on a phone.
A guest who’s never heard of you will trust 1,600 strangers more than anything you write about yourself. If you have the reviews, don’t make anyone go looking for them.
2. Sort trips by what the guest wants
The old site split its trips into Private and Shared. That’s how the business sees them. A guest is thinking “a sunset sail,” “a boat for our group” or “somewhere to snorkel.”
So the new homepage groups the sails that way: the schooner sunset, a sunset of your own, into the water, and a day under sail. Each sail shows its boat, how long it is, when it goes, which dock it leaves from and what it costs.
3. Say which dock, on every trip
Malabar X sails from the Perry Marina on Stock Island. The other two boats leave from the Historic Seaport downtown. A guest who books Malabar X and drives to the Seaport misses the sunset.
Every sail on the new site names its dock. The FAQ gives both addresses, where to park and where on the dock each boat ties up, and the booking confirmation says it again. If you sail from more than one dock, or your meeting spot is hard to find, put it on every trip, not only on the contact page.
4. Tell the story only your boats have
Key West has plenty of sunset cruises, and only one of them is on General Patton’s schooner. The old homepage mentioned Patton once, halfway down, and didn’t name Malabar X at all. The new one introduces the fleet as “boats with a past” and gives each boat its history: who built it, when, and why.
Yours might be a captain who’s fished the same reef for 30 years, or a boat built by hand. Whatever it is, it’s the reason to pick you over the boat next to you, so put it on the homepage.
See it for yourself at sunsetsailkeywest.com. If you’d like us to go through your site the same way, book a call.
