Whitelam.Media
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For shipping lines, freight forwarders, port services & maritime logistics

Shipping and maritime websites built for global cargo customers.

Customers shipping containers, project cargo or bulk are international, time-pressed and credential-driven. The site has to perform in twenty markets, prove certifications fast and route inquiries to the right desk.

Brief us on your projectSee the maritime sites we benchmark against
The problem

Why most shipping and maritime sites fail their customers.

Maritime is one of the most globally distributed industries on earth and one of the most poorly served by its websites. The customer is in Singapore, Hamburg, Houston or Buenos Aires. The site loads slowly, doesn't reflect local trade lanes and routes every inquiry to a sales@ inbox. Five patterns we see most.

  • 01

    One-size-fits-all global site

    Customers in Singapore see the same homepage as customers in Hamburg. Trade lanes differ. Regulatory frameworks differ. Services differ. The site doesn't reflect any of it.

  • 02

    Slow load times on global mobile

    A 4-second load in São Paulo or Lagos is lost business. Site infrastructure isn't built for global edge performance.

  • 03

    Certifications and licences invisible

    IMO, ISO 28000, AEO, C-TPAT, FIATA. The certifications are the credibility. The site never surfaces them where buyers can find them.

  • 04

    Service descriptions written by marketing

    Customers want to know if you handle hazmat, refrigerated, project cargo, oversize, RoRo. The site says "we deliver world-class logistics solutions."

  • 05

    Inquiries dumped into a generic inbox

    A logistics inquiry from a Vietnamese garment exporter and one from a US oil major hit the same form. Neither gets the right desk, fast.

What we build instead

A site engineered for global cargo customers.

Multi-region performance. Trade-lane and service clarity. Certifications surfaced. Inquiry routing built in. Multilingual at scale.

  • Global edge hosting with sub-second load times in every major market
  • Trade-lane and regional landing pages
  • Service taxonomy covering cargo type, mode and special handling
  • Certifications, accreditations and licence matrix
  • Multilingual support (EN / ES / ZH / DE / AR / PT common)
  • Inquiry routing by region, cargo type and shipment size
  • Fleet, network and capacity reference pages
  • ESG and decarbonisation reporting
  • Schema markup, sitemap, Search Console wiring
  • 30 days of post-launch optimisation against real traffic

Three sample budgets

What a $20k, $50k and $100k maritime site actually buys.

  1. Mid-market build8 weeks

    $20k to $35k

    12 to 18 pages. Service taxonomy, certifications matrix, trade-lane pages, inquiry routing, multilingual support up to 3 languages. CMS your team can run.

    Best for: Mid-market freight forwarders, regional carriers, specialised port-service firms. $20M to $200M revenue.

  2. Carrier platform10 to 12 weeks

    $40k to $70k

    Everything above, plus discovery sprint, fleet and network reference pages, capacity and schedule reference, customer portal entry, multilingual up to 6 languages.

    Best for: Carriers and large freight forwarders. $200M to $2B revenue. Multi-trade-lane operations. Active customer-facing booking and tracking systems to integrate with.

  3. Global platform14 to 18 weeks

    $80k to $130k

    Parent firm site plus dedicated surfaces for major regional businesses or service lines. Customer portal integration. Multi-jurisdiction regulatory disclosures. Decarbonisation reporting at the asset level. Multilingual at scale.

    Best for: Global carriers, large 3PL/4PL operators, integrated port-operator groups. $2B+ revenue. Multinational. Public or institutionally backed.

These are real ranges from real projects. We don't do hourly billing. We don't hide costs in change orders. The number we quote is the number on the invoice.

Adjacent work

Work in adjacent industrial and technical verticals.

Maritime sites share DNA with environmental and consulting builds: technical credibility, regulatory clarity, restraint. The instincts that ship those carry across.

The process

Six weeks from kick-off to launch.

Most projects in this space take three to six months because most agencies are still scoping discovery as a Phase 0 paragraph and treating production as the work. We invert that. Discovery is two weeks of real work. Production is four. Launch isn't the end of the engagement.

  1. 01 · StepWeek 1

    Discovery

    Working session with the operator (not just marketing). Audit of the existing site, competitors and search behaviour. The brief comes out of this week, not into it.

  2. 02 · StepWeek 2

    Strategy & content

    Positioning. Architecture. Copy for the homepage and the project case study template. Photography brief. Sector pages mapped to buyer search intent.

  3. 03 · StepWeeks 3 & 4

    Design

    Visual system, page designs, brand application. Designed in code rather than Figma so the team sees the real artefact, not a flat mockup.

  4. 04 · StepWeeks 4 & 5

    Build

    Next.js production build. CMS configured. Project case studies migrated and rewritten where needed. Analytics, schema, Search Console wired.

  5. 05 · StepWeek 6 plus 30 days

    Launch & optimise

    Go live. Daily review of real user behaviour for the first 30 days. Two or three rounds of changes against what the data shows. Most agencies stop at launch. We don't.

Frequently asked

Questions maritime firms ask.

Can the site perform in every major market?
Yes. We host on global edge infrastructure (Vercel, Cloudflare). Load times under two seconds in every major shipping hub including Singapore, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Houston, São Paulo, Lagos and Mumbai.
How do you handle multilingual at scale?
Next.js multilingual routing. We've shipped EN / ES / ZH / DE / AR / PT in production. Translation workflows can integrate with your existing language service provider. Pricing scales linearly with language count.
Can we integrate with our booking and tracking systems?
Yes. We've integrated CargoWise, MercuryGate, BluJay and bespoke booking platforms via API. Customer portal entry from the marketing site. Authenticated content for shipper customers.
How do you surface certifications and accreditations?
Dedicated certifications matrix page. Per-service certification flags. Customers can filter services by required certification (e.g. hazmat, AEO, C-TPAT). Procurement teams pre-qualify you from one page.
Will the site work for ESG-mandated cargo customers?
Yes. We've designed decarbonisation reporting pages for cargo customers with Scope 3 mandates. Per-route emissions data, fleet performance, biofuel availability. This is increasingly table-stakes for Fortune 500 shippers.
Can we keep our existing platform?
If it works, keep it. We can do a design and content refresh on your existing platform for $15-25k. We tell clients honestly when a rebuild isn't the right call.
Let's talk

What are you trying to make happen?

Most projects start with a 15-minute conversation. We listen to the brief, ask the right questions and tell you straight what we can handle and how. No retainer required to start.

Or email us directly at info@whitelam.media.