mablethorpe.infoEarlier this week, I was asked to provide an update for a meeting of the Coastal Community Team (CCT) regarding the current status of the Mablethorpe and Sutton on Sea websites, published below for the interest of site users and supporters.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all the businesses that continued to support the sites throughout the pandemic. This was key to their survival given that, as a sole director working from home, I was ineligible for any financial support.
The pandemic and resulting staycations likely increased interest in mablethorpe.info and suttononsea.info, which both continued their trend of year-on-year growth in traffic since Chris Drew (MGC Websites Ltd) took them over in 2018.
During 2021, the sites received almost 400k visits – an increase of 266% compared to 2018.
In the early stages of the pandemic the sites lost a lot of sponsors with business owners deciding it was a good time to retire or that they didn’t want to pay for advertising whilst unable to trade. In 2021 however, enough new supporters came on board to effectively replace those that left. So, whilst 2 years of growth have been lost, and much time and effort has been invested to effectively stand still, the sites have survived the pandemic relatively unscathed.
Under an agreement reached in 2013, The Mablethorpe Area Partnership (MAP) receives some of the income generated by mablethorpe.info and has benefitted by £317 in the current tax year with a further £296 collected by MGC Websites Ltd and ready to be transferred.
Having been relaunched over 3 years ago, the sites would now benefit from a redesign and this will hopefully be completed during 2022 subject to other commitments.