So it is now 2013 and we are now not only reflecting on 2012 but planning for 2013. 2012 was a difficult year for everyone hit hard by the confidence within the industry. Here at MarineDex we believe 2013 is going to be a better year for the industry not a huge bounce back to the superyacht hay days but a slow crawl out of the dark. We are planning how to shape MarineDex it a more useful tool to help businesses get back into the game as well as yacht to find great deals.

Thinking back over the last two years at MarineDex we quickly developed this mammoth website and its frame work without a lot of planning or thought sometimes. In 2012 we did slowed down development to attempt to understand what we have built and how people use it so that we can improve the current system. With everyone’s support we did identify a number of bugs that where missed during testing as well as some issues that made the site a less intuitive for users to navigate and access our contact database. We would like to first apologise to those who visited the site and found it difficult and confusing and ensure them that we are working to improve the site before we start any further development. The hit list that we know we have to deal with in the next few months includes;

• Merging of categories into a single search
• Adjusting fonts and page layouts to be more clearer to read
• The ability to move forward and back through search popup box
• To start new search without returning to the home page
• We would like to make the site more sociable and allow members to comment on articles, photos and videos
•  Improve registration of business or new users to make quicker and easier
• Update to the voucher system to push great deals to visitors and help businesses drive traffic to their doors
  

2013 is going to be big year for MarineDex with a shift away from new features on the site to more content. Our aim this year is to add more news articles, photos and videos to the site this year continuing to build on the contact database which is now over 7000 registered businesses. We are still working hard to make MarineDex a powerful and useful tool for all in the industry. Our resolve has not changed and we will continue to giving people not only local contacts that provide great services but also useful information from first-hand experience on board as well as the low down from trade shows that we visit.

We have already made a start these holidays with a number of new categories in the “safety and security equipment” section. This include a separate category for

• Survival suits
• Fire fighting equipment
• Fixed fire system
• Fire extinguishers
  

Apart from a promise to add more content to categories as well as new businesses we will aim to add a few new top secret features to the site at the during the summer of the 2013. These new features will hopefully be ready for launch at METS in November so stay tuned.

Best of luck to everyone in 2013 we promise we will be here slowly moving forward

Safe sailing from the MarineDex team