Marine and Yacht
How Much of a Marine Product Should Be Configurable?
Not every detail needs to become an option. Learn how to decide which choices deserve interactive configuration, which features should be visually explained, and which specifications can remain part of the supporting product information.
How Much of a Marine Product Should Be Configurable? details
Short Answer
Not every specification should become a configuration step.
A useful marine configurator gives customers control over the choices that meaningfully change the product, while keeping supporting technical information available without turning the experience into hundreds of decisions.
Separate Choices From Specifications
A boat or yacht may contain hundreds—or far more—individual specifications, components, and technical details.
But they do not all serve the same purpose in the buying experience.
Configure
Choices where the customer actively selects between meaningful alternatives.
- Layouts
- Exterior finishes
- Interior materials
- Upholstery
- Equipment packages
- Selected propulsion options
- Electronics packages
Explore
Features customers may not choose directly but benefit from seeing or understanding.
- Storage systems
- Convertible furniture
- Deck features
- Mechanical functions
- Distinctive engineering solutions
These can be communicated through:
- Focused views
- Animation
- Hotspots
- Supporting information
without becoming another configuration step.
Inform
Technical information customers may need to reference but do not need to interactively configure.
- Dimensions
- Capacities
- Technical specifications
- Standard equipment
- Supporting documentation
This information can remain accessible without interrupting the primary configuration journey.
- Configure
- Explore
- Inform
Give More Weight to High-Impact Decisions
A material selection that changes the character of an entire cabin deserves more attention than a minor specification that has little visible or experiential impact.
Similarly, a layout change may deserve more explanation than a small equipment choice.
Does this choice meaningfully change what the customer sees, uses, experiences, or pays for?
If the answer is yes, it may deserve a stronger role in the configurator.
Avoid Recreating the Specification Sheet
Moving a long option list from a PDF into a series of dropdown menus does not necessarily make configuration more intuitive.
Customers still have to interpret the same complexity.
A customer-facing configurator should reorganize product information around decisions that make sense to the buyer while preserving the necessary product rules behind the interface.
The configurator should translate product complexity—not simply digitize it.
The Right Amount Is Product-Specific
There is no ideal number of configuration steps.
A boat sold through several carefully designed packages may need relatively few.
A yacht with meaningful choices across layouts, materials, equipment, and systems may need considerably more.
The question is not:
How many options can we put in the configurator?
It is:
Which decisions will help customers understand and choose our product with greater confidence?
Not sure which options belong in the configurator?
We can review your product options and help separate what customers should configure, explore, and simply reference.
Review My Product Options