ReadyAbout was a booking referral platform designed to help small UK boatyards reach more customers. Many yards relied on basic websites or third-party systems that offered poor SEO and limited visibility. This project aimed to bring their listings together, improve search and discovery, and provide them with marketing insights they would not otherwise have access to.

Why I Built It

Smaller, family-run boatyards often struggled to compete online. Their sites were hard to find, their booking systems fragmented, and they lacked the resources to track performance. ReadyAbout was built as an invite-only service that aggregated boats from third-party APIs and web scraping, then re-presented them in a searchable, user-friendly platform. For boatyards, it offered referrals and metrics; for customers, it made finding and booking rentals much easier.

What It Did

• Integrated with third-party APIs and web scraping to pull in boat listings
• Provided a unified search experience so users could compare rentals more easily
• Offered referral-based booking links to drive customers to yard websites
• Delivered real-time metrics and insights to participating boatyards
• Supported local filtering by region, creating tailored views for specific areas
• Included admin tools for managing listings, referrals and promotions

What I Learned

This project was one of my first large-scale attempts at building a product for a specific industry. I learned a lot about scoping, prioritising features, and avoiding “idea overload” by focusing on an MVP. On the technical side, it gave me experience integrating multiple data sources, handling marketing analytics, and deploying with modern tools like Docker and Nginx. More broadly, it taught me how to design software that solves practical problems for small businesses.