The site korabel.ru was created in 2002. It was purposed to be an Internet resource uniting the specialists in marine business, i.e. ship-builders, ship-repairers and seafarers. Naturally, such unification is only possible on the base of professional information provided by the web-site. We seem to manage with this task. At present, about 10 000 people visit our site every day.

 
            The active users (actually, our partners and authors) are the chief designers of the leading domestic design bureaus (Vyacheslav Shatalov and Yuri Rabazov from the Vympel design office, Gennady Yegorov from the Marine engineering bureau, Nikolay Tyrtyshny from the Stapel central design bureau, Georgi Taritsa from the Petrobalt design bureau, Mikhail Frantsev from the Neptun engineering company and other); the executive officers of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (Messrs. Venkov, Kireyev, Ionov and other); the directors of large shipbuilding enterprises (Alexandr Ilyichev from the OJSC Krasnye Barrikady shipyard, Sergey Konovalov from the Nizhegorodsky Teplokhod Shipyard, Aram Arutyunyan from the Proletarsky Zavod JSC, and other). Sensitive issues are discussed by a number of domestic and foreign specialists (of Ukraine, the Baltic States, China, Korea, Norway, etc.), from non-management engineers to the top executives and the heads of large departments. All these facts give us promise that our site has taken its firm place in the Russian Internet segment.

                         It is natural, that the enterprises interested in distribution of their products within the shipbuilding and shipping industry benefit from such information space. Dozens of companies have been being our good partners for several years. These are ship-building yards (e.g. Krasnye Barrikady, Nizhegorodsky Teplokhod, Nevsky Ship-building & Ship-repair Plant and others), manufacturers and suppliers of equipment and materials (Morskaya Tekhnika, Danfoss, MNS, Jotun, etc.) and companies providing other services to the market (Uralsib Insurance Company, Soglasie Insurance Company, BV, DNV and other).
For a small fee they, firstly, get possibility to inform directly their potential customers about themselves and their products, and secondly, add to their image: since a firm can afford such advertisement, it must be a secure and reliable enterprise and not a fly-by-night company.
            On our website, one can obtain various information: from current news of marine business, informative and analytical articles, to contacts of the marine enterprises. These are shipyards, ship-owners, suppliers of equipment, contractors, designers, i.e. all who are one way or another involved in water transport industry. And this is the possibility of getting such information we would like to clarify in the present article.

            News module. Everyone who has ever visited the main page of our site saw that the first header there is ‘Latest News’. Below there is a block of articles written by our authors the topic of the day, or informing our readers of the issues that haven’t got much press. To the right, there is the current news feed. Here you can see the news of the day concerning the marine business, published in different media or provided by press services of our partners. Of course, all published material is archived and remains available at any time. All you need is to enter the Archive from the page News and choose the required date, or enter the key phrase, a company’s name or a person’s surname in the search box, check the News window, and click OK.
Together with forming the news database, the Persons database is also being completed by our specialists with information on people mentioned in the news or other sections of the site. This information is not only obtained from news but also from the companies’ sites and other sources available to us. Therefore, everybody who wishes to get information on a particular person can do it either at the Persons page where his or her CV is published or by entering the person’s surname in the search box and checking the News window – thus you get access to all materials from our news archive that mention this surname. Presently, the Persons section contains information on 600 persons, and this database is constantly replenished. We highly appreciate when the site visitors add new records to this database, providing information on the notable persons in your companies or veterans who contributed greatly to the development of ship-building, ship-repairing and navigation. It’s a shame when outstanding men are forgotten by successors.
            Move on through the site sections. Let’s explore the pages Equipment, Products and Materials. Here you will find the list of equipment, products and materials as well as their suppliers. The section contains about 32,000 of entries. To find a supplier of some equipment of product, you only need to enter this section, select the required mechanism type, and you will see the potential supplier. You’ll get all the contacts, the link to the supplier’s site, while our partners publish also the supplier’s logotype. It needs no saying that first in the list go the companies that placed advertisement on a paid basis. Such companies are, in our opinion, the most reliable ones, as they take seriously their image and market intelligently their products. The information in this section is regularly updated, so you don’t risk seeking contact with company gone into liquidation.

However, I must say that we are extremely unsatisfied with the representation structure of this section, because its content management was, for a long time, was assigned to the companies themselves and to the managers of Korabel who did not always have the idea of the advertised product. Today, we’re trying to put the things right, we have elaborated the representation standards, we are revising all entries, so I believe that in the first quarter of 2010 this section will be better structured and easier to use. I emphasize that the above-said concerns only the data representation structure, and by no means the reliability of information. 

            The next section is Directory. It contains all enterprises of the marine industry known to us which makes about 6,000 companies: from education institutions and trade union organizations to shipyards, ports and management companies. On our site, you’ll be able to obtain their addresses and contact information (the company’s telephone and fax number, e-mail and web-site). All information in the base is up-to-date, as our personnel at well-defined intervals contact these companies, monitor the changes of addresses and telephone numbers and delete the liquidated firms from the database. Our in-house database contains also the full names of the central figures and the summary of all conversations with the company’s representative. The last can be quite informative. You must admit that if a company conducts constructive dialogue, provides news and press-releases, forge partnership and never delude – it is one situation, and if an executive assistant or other contact person would tell you, time after time, ‘we’re not paid at all, everyone is fired, the CEO comes at work twice a week, etc.’ (a real situation!) – it is quite another one! I realize that having read this, some managers would prevent their employees from talking to our personnel, but such an approach will just help us to delete bankrupts or near bankrupt enterprises from our lists. At the same time, we don't hurry to grant free access to this database to wide audience, as we understand that this information may become a serious weapon in the hands of unscrupulous competitors. But it would be absurd to keep the database without using it. We need to think up something.

            Another important element of our portal are the special-purposed sections, such as INSURANCE, WELDING EQUIPMENT, TRANSLATION SERVICES, NAVIGATION. Their main purpose is to be of help for the professional audience. However, we soberly realize that at present moment these sections are not as effective as we’d like them to be. We’re going to improve them. We’ll also develop the current sections and create new ones segmenting the site. We would especially like to make specialized sections for ship-builders, designers and ship-owners. And here we come to the main question: what are the needs of our audience? We have failed as yet to organize the dialogue with you. Yes, we have several tens of respondents who are in constant conversation with us. But for the current audience of 17,000 registered users it is for sure a drop in the ocean. An article can be read by 2,000 men while only 5 give a feedback. It is not normal, and needs to be changed. We greatly appreciate that you read us and (as it turned out after the meetings in the exhibition NEVA-2009, for example) have respect for us, bur we don’t know your needs. See about, probably you will find a time to let us know what are you expecting from us – and we’ll do our best.

 

 

A. Ivakin, General Director