Marine Connection wanted more than a better-looking website. They wanted customers to keep moving (pricing, offers, sea trials and deals) even after the dealership had gone home.
Best Website
Praised by the judges for a premium, easy-to-navigate experience, strong content and measurable business impact.
Marine Marketers of AmericaA six-figure website that paid back its total project cost in under 90 days from launch.
New site launched summer 202484% of the project cost came back from customers we’d never spoken to, using features that didn’t exist before.
Within 90 days, sales from View Pricing, Schedule a Sea Trial and Request Transfer, all from customers with no prior contact history, covered 84% of the investment. All website leads combined paid it back in full.
“Our showrooms close at 6 p.m. The buying process doesn’t. Most of our offers come in after hours, when customers are ready to move forward on their terms. For them, it’s as easy as placing an order on Amazon.”
Like most dealer websites, marineconnection.com was built around inquiries.
A customer could research a six-figure boat at 10 p.m. But the moment they wanted to actually do something, the experience stopped.
Marine Connection wanted something different.
Let customers keep going.
See the price. Build the deal. Make an offer. Schedule the sea trial. Start financing. On their time.
In 2023, every website lead was “ask a question.” Once buyers could price a boat, book a sea trial or make an offer, most of them did, and they spent 82% more time on listing pages doing it.
Buyers didn't suddenly become more serious.
We finally gave serious buyers somewhere to go.
A new customer submits a sea-trial request online.
Under deposit within hoursA shopper who hadn’t been in touch for over a month builds out a Sea Hunt 265 and requests a quote.
Under deposit in under an hourTwo deals worth several hundred thousand dollars, before the site was two weeks old.
These buyers might have called eventually. The website let them move the moment they were ready.
Four pages covering the investment payback, lead-mix shift, ROI, first sales after launch and the methodology behind the results.
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Manufacturer rules make real online pricing harder than simply putting a number on a page.
So the experience was built around them.
Buyers start with manufacturer-approved advertised pricing.
Eligible customers verify themselves in a few seconds.
Powered by VerifiedBoater.
Then they unlock the dealership's actual showroom price.
Discounts, accessories, taxes and fees. The real number.
And the price arrives with the salesperson who'll honor it.
Customers can work through a real offer around the boat they're considering and confirm their intent with a card.
Nothing is charged unless the dealership accepts.
We braced for lowballs.
What we got were buyers who’d done their homework and made fair offers. Plenty came with a deposit already attached, and a lot of mornings started with “yeah, we’ll take that.”
Most offers come in after hours.
Today's boat buyer is increasingly digital-first and self-directed.
Ipsos · 2026Marine Connection's own behavior data showed the same thing: buyers were willing to move much further through the purchase process when the website let them.
So we stopped making them wait.
Thirty-second walkthroughs that play right from a text-message preview, so a buyer can send the boat to their spouse without sending them shopping.
Enter a ZIP code and the website becomes local: nearest store, the team there, a way to call, text or book a sea trial. Try a ZIP above.
Assigned by year, make, model or engine package. Matching listings update on their own, expired promotions disappear, and customers RSVP from the boat they're already looking at.
The website wasn't built as another system for the dealership to babysit.
Pricing, quotes, offers, sea trials and customer activity flow into the systems the sales team already uses.
The work the customer does online becomes the salesperson's starting point.
No re-keying. No starting over. No lead disappearing in the handoff.
See how it works on the Websites page →The website returned three times what Marine Connection’s best third-party marketplace did in 2025.
Traffic, engagement and sea-trial conversion are in the full case studyBuyers were ready all along.They just needed a way to move.
The site pulled shoppers away from other dealers because it made buying easier. The bigger lesson: buyers were ready to move forward all along. They just didn’t have a way to do it.
marineconnection.com was built while Untanglead founder Jani Gyllenberg was at Marine Connection, most recently as Innovation and Business Development Manager, working inside the dealership alongside the people using the platform every day.
Real inventory. Real manufacturer restrictions. Real sales teams. Real customers.
The work later became part of the foundation behind Websites by Untanglead.
The marineconnection.com website was a six-figure project. It paid back its total project cost in under 90 days from launch, and 84% of that came from features the old site didn’t have (View Pricing, Schedule a Sea Trial and Request Transfer), used by customers with no prior contact history. The same technology is now available to other boat dealers from its creator, Untanglead, at untanglead.com/websites.
marineconnection.com was designed and built by a team led by Jani Gyllenberg, then Marine Connection’s Innovation and Business Development Manager. Jani went on to found Untanglead, which offers the same platform to boat dealers as Websites by Untanglead.
The new site launched in summer 2024 and paid back its full project cost in under 90 days. Two in three leads (68% in 2025) came from high-intent actions like viewing pricing or scheduling a sea trial, and the site won the 2025 Neptune Award for Best Website.
Yes. Websites by Untanglead puts the same technology to work for other boat dealers: real inventory, real pricing, quotes, offers and sea-trial booking, connected to your sales team. It starts at $895 a month for one location on a 24-month agreement, and you can get a free mockup of your own site in three days at untanglead.com/websites.
See what the same technology could look like for your dealership.
No generic demo. No template pitch.