I wonder though how these trends compare to the dollars spent on advertising. I would guess that those that are on your list with fewest marketing dollars spent will be the better all around boats for your user demographic.
Either way, shop owners should be taking note of this.
polepole:
I tried to find correlation between our current advertisers and rankings to see if we somehow inadvertently skew these results. I don't see much. One of the reasons is that the ads don't point to our listings, instead they point to the manufacturers.
Regarding overall advertising budget ... well, nothing surprising with Jackson, Hobie, and Wildy on this list. The OT Predator is new and drew a lot of press. Malibu spent very little on advertising this year and the X-13 showed on the list. And Native has relatively little presence on the west coast.
There is some correlation between us covering new product intros and a spike in pageviews to those listings. Not surprising there.
It is interesting to note what sort of kayaks show up on this list. Nothing over 13'. And a lot of kayaks that you don't see too much on the west coast, at least not enough to justify the higher rankings. There is so much more variety of kayaks in other regions.
-Allen
[WR]:
I suspect part of the predominance of the 13 footers is versatility since you can use them on estuaries back waters lakes streams etc more easily than the longer boats.
Fungunnin:
A 13 foot boat is just plain easier to move store and deal with. I love my Addy but 16 feet is a PITA to deal with....