Shadow Boats, Brundall

[Paul]

Are they still "going", I note their website has not been updated since Noah ran aground.

 

[NorfolkNog]

Hi, yes very much so! Shadow is the boatbuilding arm/brand of Swancraft. Paul gets most of his work through personal recommendations and contacts and I know he is very busy! I'm sure he will get around to the website at some point but if anyone wants any work doing best bet is to give Paul a bell or email him.

Incidentally I had a look at the restoration he did recently on the ex Alpha boat, Firefly. A really first class job and probably a better advert than a website!

[ChrisB]

I have always liked the Shadow 26. It was originally built by Westerly but they went into admin soon after launch. It had two hull forms with keel, displacement and without semi-planing both were very heavily layed up so very strong and will stand the test of time.

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[Chelsea14Ian]

Indeed he has done a great job on firefly.

[JawsOrca]

I've been in and out of shadow craft the last few weeks and I must say the finish on firefly is spot on and a very happy new owner is enjoying being aboard. A few other alpha boats are looking brilliant too.. So nice to see them being reborn! Top work Shadowcraft!

[SwanR]

I get updates on them occasionally from their Facebook page. I just like to see what they are doing. 

[NorfolkNog]

On ‎27‎/‎07‎/‎2017 at 19:21, SwanR said:

I get updates on them occasionally from their Facebook page. I just like to see what they are doing. 

I'm not a great Facebook fan but like Jean I do have a look at the Swancraft page. I'm sure Paul wont mind me nicking these photos but I though this is a really cracking repair (excuse the pun)  - I think the before and after are pretty impressive and really do show the quality of the work.

[SwanR]

I saw that as well. Amazing!

[LondonRascal]

I like the fact you can get a brand new Shadow 24 for £70,000 - these are well designed well built quality craft with a production quality I think is above the likes of Shetland and Viking cracking boats in my view.

Despite the fact I too keep tabs on their Facebook updates, I just don't get businesses who don't keep their website updated and understand how important this can be.

For a good time now they are going to be busy, their can focus solely on new-builds, repairs and looking after their returning customers - not that I feel any of this will dry up suddenly, but it would be an advantage to have a nice website that is updated - from what work you undertake, past examples you have completed and so on because you can punch way above your weight in the online world than you physical premises might appear in the real world.

I know a lot of business on the Broads is through recommendations and returning customers - you see it a lot here. Someone will ask for any recommendations for some GRP work and then you will note 5 or 6 replies telling the poster how good the work was with ABC and another saying they always use XYZ. But then you've got to get the phone out, start calling around and frankly you are in the dark only going on what people have said - if you have a nice website and a bunch of testimonials, actual photos of works and so on it suddenly makes your operation stand out more 'oh that does look nice' thinks the customer.

I just worry when small places don't do this because the old guard are getting older and new more 'tech savvy' boat owners are coming up whose first port of call will be Google not the phone.

 

 

[LondonRascal]

Furthermore, if you use the likes of Wix, you've got to take a lot of time and effort to do it - and what usually happens is a website that looks pretty poor and links that don't work.  I mean, you could be foolish (such as those who run my office) and pay a 'web developer' a a few thousand pounds to come up with a new website and logo to move us forward.

What happens is a Wordpress template, stock images of the central London, my text pasted into it and then me literally having to email step by step instructions to the guy on how to FPT the files into our host to get the thing live.  You could not make it up, but no the bill really did come through and it is already out of date - but nobody wants to pay the fee to have some text removed and new text put in its place.

What would help a lot of small business, like those in Norfolk who effectively all carry out much the same work on boats is a 'template' website that can have their branding and a certain feel to it, x number of pages and they do the text which can be edited down to be more 'sharp' and on point to their particular need - then host the site over on the NBN servers with AWS and charge the business a flat rate for the design and the traffic costs.  The website would then be able to have our logo on 'in partnership with the Norfolk Broads Network' type thing, nice and easy simple and cost effective helping all parties involved. 

Right John, that is your moonlighting sorted then ;)

[Bound2Please]

28 minutes ago, Jonzo said:

then host the site over on the NBN servers with AWS and charge the business a flat rate for the design and the traffic costs.  The website would then be able to have our logo on 'in partnership with the Norfolk Broads Network' type thing, nice and easy simple and cost effective helping all parties involved. 

Or even lease a sub domain for their pages????????

Charlie

[Bound2Please]

John good points John.

Charlie

[JamesLV]

I do sometimes struggle to see how some of the web designers can charge what they do, I'm currently in the process of putting together a new site for my employer, sum cost has been $50, and a month and a bit (on and off) of my times, we now have a site that hits page 1 on google for 60 out of 80 of our chosen terms, hits top 3 for 40 and number one for 20. It also score high eighties on Y Slow and 90s on Page speed.

based on WP but a lot of custom work to get it how we want...

 

[JamesLV]

I always use a completely clean/fresh browser for checking SEO results, not logged into google or anything, also do a lot of checking with various IP addresses to ensure the results aren't tainted

[JamesLV]

That's what I mean by clean fresh browsers!

[JamesLV]

I do try, I've been involved both web and print design since around 1999, so try to keep to good practices!

[Matt]

I reckon it's about time Thunder had a web page................

:-)


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[Matt]

We have a Chair who volunteers people- that's his job :-)

 

An AGM discussion perhaps?

 

I did once start a Google one but lack of time and knowledge beat me!

 

 

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