Here on Cruiser Forum a few days ago someone posted asking for a tad of
advice from us keyboard pirates about a listing on
YachtWorld. An innocuous enough post certainly, and quite common here on CF.
I clicked the link, nothing special stood out about the
boat, certainly nothing worth me commenting on. And as is somewhat of a bad habit, I then searched that same site for vessels listed by the same
designer as my own. (And yes I do like to keep one eye on the market.) I’d guess many of us here do the same thing periodically, and also you’ve likely looked at countless numbers of listings on a variety of sales orientated web sites too.
There was only a
single yacht listed like mine and she had a dozen or more photos and some narrative etc. Nothing remarkable at all. In fact quite the opposite, a dull and featureless listing. There was nothing to excite the viewer, no standouts presented about the
boat. Nothing was featured, (by whoever set the listing up,) that even enticed me to look a little more closely because
this is a fantastic boat, no wow factor. The advert was definitely saying I am bland so ‘swipe left’.
But the thought struck me, as it has many times before. Why don’t owners/brokers take more care with their listings? Firstly, to at least complete the information
panels (Hull,
Engine, Specifications etc). Why not a little herstory? Give me a picture of how great I'll be feeling if I buy this boat, the dreams, the islands beach parties.
Also photos are often subpar, but more irritating, never have captions. So the viewer doesn’t really know what the seller's intentions of presenting the
photo were for. (Sometimes it's not even clear what the
photo is of.) And it is a simple matter to add photo captions.
Any photographer will tell you too that having attractive people in a photo will add interest, yet almost every listing I've ever seen is devoid of people. In contrast take a look at
Greg Elliot's web site. Virtually every photo has people, is interesting and evokes movement. The photos draw the viewer in, ask us to dig a little deeper.
And then to periodically review their listing to give it some street appeal, make it stand out from the market crowd, keep it fresh. I mean let's face it, if the boat has been listed for more than 3 months and you've hardly had any interest is it not obvious that the advert leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps instead of dropping the
price by 10 grand, an alternative is to put up a few decent photos (with captions) and some fresh and interesting narrative.
Do you have any pet peeves? Agree or disagree with my post? Perhaps you’re a
broker and spend considerable time preparing and
posting listings, so what’s your take?
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