Web design, hosting & care · Durban

OceanEye

Industry
Live surf cameras and weather
Based in
Durban, South Africa
Built on
WordPress, subscription platform
OceanEye

Surfers check the cameras before they pick up the car keys, and OceanEye's first website was letting the cameras down. We offered to rebuild it at a price that made it easy to say yes, built them a live weather widget, and have hosted and managed it ever since.

01 / 02

Website, hosting & care

Rebuilt, then looked after.

01

A live weather widget, built to order

We built a custom widget that puts live conditions beside each camera, modelled on the Magic Seaweed widget surfers already knew how to read.

OceanEye's Clifton 4th camera page on a laptop by a pool: the live cam, with the wind and swell beside it
oceaneye.co.za, a camera page
02

A subscription platform, kept current

Members pay for the cameras, so the site is on a care plan with us: WordPress, the theme and the plugins that run the memberships are kept up to date, and there are hours in the plan for whatever comes up.

03

Hosted on Kinsta

Hosting is on Kinsta, where we are an Agency Partner: Google Cloud servers, Cloudflare's network in front, and a backup taken every day.

Results
+24%revenue growth in the first year after the new site launched
50+camera spots on the network, watched by thousands of people a day
02 / 02

Web design

Surfers want to see the waves before they drive to them. We rebuilt the platform behind OceanEye's cameras as a subscription product, not a website with a camera on it.

01

Live, and worth paying for

A camera feed is the free part. What people subscribe for is being able to rewind it, read the forecast beside it and check a spot they are not standing on. The build treats those as the product and the live picture as the invitation.

OceanEye on a phone: Ocean Stories, with the map, spot search and favourites along the bottom
oceaneye.co.za
02

Subscriptions that run themselves

WooCommerce Subscriptions on Stripe, with the premium tier priced for a monthly habit rather than a one-off. Sign-up, renewal, failed cards and cancellation all handle themselves, which is what makes a small recurring price worth collecting.

03

Conditions from a real source

Swell, wind and tide come in per spot from a marine forecast API rather than being typed in by hand. The number on the page is the same number the models are producing, which is the only version anyone would trust.

04

Built to add coastline

Every spot is a record, not a page someone has to build. Adding one is an afternoon, so the network grows at the speed they can mount cameras; it now has more than fifty.

OceanEye's homepage on a laptop by a pool: the cameras, sorted by coast
oceaneye.co.za
Free 15-minute consult

If you’re in subscription media and need to take control of your website, let’s talk.

Get in touch with Sebenza Online today for a free 15-minute consult about Proactive WordPress Support, our highest level of care for a site that has to stay up.

Book a free 15-minute consult
Loading the calendar

Calendar not loading?

Next · Hosting and care Skydive DeLand Tandem skydiving and training
Skydive DeLand

Start a project

Ready to build something exceptional?

Sebenza Online, the gold standard in web design, hosting and maintenance.

A code tag, </>, in solid gold