MWC Hydraulic Controller

MWC Hydraulic Controller is made by M W Cudmore Marine Electronics at Tura Beach on the Sapphire Coast. Matthew Cudmore hand-builds electronic control stations for Danfoss PVG 32 and PVG 120 hydraulic valves, the proportional controllers that run longline drums, winches and cranes on working boats. They are an Australian-made alternative to the Danfoss PVREL, and some have been in continuous service on commercial fishing vessels for more than fifteen years.

The brief

The original site was an ageing CMS build with an online shop bolted on, selling a single controller through a checkout that almost nobody used. Matthew wanted the shop retired and the site turned back into what it should always have been: a clear, credible shopfront that explains the product to skippers and engineers, proves it works, and gets them on the phone.

The audience is narrow and technical. Someone arriving at this site already knows what a PVG 32 is. They are not looking to be sold to, they are looking to check that this thing will do the job on their boat and that the person who makes it knows what he is talking about.

What we built

A fast static site with a coastal, working-boat character rather than a product-catalogue look. The hero puts the promise up front and the phone number within reach on every page, because in this trade the sale happens in a conversation, not a cart.

Separate pages for each of the two control stations, written so the specifications answer the questions an engineer actually has, plus a dedicated page for people searching specifically for a Danfoss PVREL alternative. Real customer testimonials from working vessels, named boats and ports, carry the credibility a spec sheet cannot.

The shop came out entirely. Eleven old URLs were redirected to their nearest equivalent so the search traffic the previous site had built up was not thrown away, including the two Danfoss landing pages that were doing most of the work.

The whole site is a static build, so pages are served as flat files with no database and no CMS to keep patched. The one dynamic piece is the enquiry form, which runs through our central anti-spam pipeline, logs every submission to disk so nothing is lost in a mail failure, and tells a sender plainly if something goes wrong rather than quietly swallowing the message.

The result

An enquiry-only site that reads as specialist rather than generic, loads immediately, and puts a working skipper one tap from a phone call. Matthew now sells the way he actually sells, by talking to people, with the site doing the job of getting him found and taken seriously before the phone rings.

What was involved

• Custom website design built around a technical marine product and the people who buy it
• On-page SEO for Danfoss PVG and hydraulic controller searches, with the old site's rankings carried across on redirect
• Custom development for the enquiry form, on our central anti-spam pipeline with full submission logging
• Australian hosting with real local support
• Ongoing management to keep the site current