The Fish Farmer project team consisted of two Wyvex staff members who had played a central role in the West Coast Today rollout — Wyvex IT Manager Stephen Day and Financial Director George Graham. They worked side-by-side with the core Fish Farmer team of Editor Robert Outram and Commercial Manager Janice Johnston.

The experience of the West Coast Today rollout was a great catalyst in the development of the new Fish Farmer site. Decision-making was significantly simpler and faster thanks to the insights gained during Wyvex's initial Affino rollout. Our own Head of Projects, Susan Kerrigan, coordinated the Affino resources — including the Design and Build team of Mark Foster and Luis Montiel.

There were some key decisions to be made, for instance how the Business Directories were to be maintained. While they could have been made entirely self-service for supplier clients, for the sake of consistent quality control and a faster rollout, the Wyvex team decided it was better to manage and maintain that side of the platform themselves — to keep the quality of content and detail as high as possible.

Fish Farmer had the added dimension of launching the first AI-powered Aquaculture News and Business Directory in the UK. This introduced a new layer of complexity for both the Fish Farmer and wider Wyvex teams to navigate.

Significant emphasis was placed on site member and industry personnel registration and subscriptions, with advanced messaging and targeted ad campaigns.

There was also a strong focus on modernising and fully digitising the business for maximum sector impact, and the resulting site is a testament to the team’s vision and technical expertise.

The site's progress was incredibly rapid, as Stephen and George had gained substantial experience and strategic insight from the West Coast Today rollout. The Wyvex team truly seized the opportunity for a high-speed implementation, incorporating smart details across a wide range of sub-categories and industry sectors.

This is very much the bible for this industry, particularly for the North Atlantic.

It was one of the fastest and most efficient rollouts to date!

One of the main issues with the former somewhat fragmented enterprise stack was its lack of centralised analytics and dependable business intelligence. This meant that for the previous website, Fish Farmer was essentially operating without visibility.

There were lots of different systems and databases involved, with no unified or comprehensive view, and a heavy reliance on third-party cookies, which have become increasingly unreliable as most browsers and platforms now block them by default.

A key advantage of Affino is that it natively records all on-site activity into a single centralised database and Audience CRM, which provides live insights into current behavioural patterns. It also differentiates between genuine users and bot traffic.

That tracking is handled entirely within the platform, meaning it is not affected by cookie blockers or browser security features. In addition, Affino has a constantly updated security database, which identifies and blocks bots at the source, removing their activity from your analytics.

One of the main reasons Fish Farmer chose Affino was the ability to finally access real-time, centralised insights and genuine business intelligence. The other commercial features: membership subscriptions, advertising, messaging services, and the Supplier Directory were valuable additions.

Much of this success was built on the work done during the initial Wyvex rollout, the West Coast Today local news hub. The Fish Farmer team were able to learn from that experience, and their own implementation surpassed the original version.

Crucial to Fish Farmer’s future revenue is the new Fish Farmer AI, launched just days ahead of a key competitor. Wyvex was able to deploy the early version of the AI in minutes, and over the following week, the Wyvex and Affino teams worked together to fine-tune the service for strong performance.

Affino's ability to train multiple AIs directly from the site’s content means there’s no extra day-to-day workload for the Fish Farmer team. One of the more powerful features is the integration of Fish Farmer's service and supplier directories alongside the news within the AI.

To reduce manual work, Affino automatically removes outdated directory listings from the AI, keeping results fresh and prioritising newer content to support commercial goals.

Affino offers capabilities and revenue opportunities well beyond typical SaaS platforms, and far superior to the previous setup. It combines genuine ease of use and productivity with power, giving site owners a real advantage - they can achieve more, faster, with a smaller team. A fantastic mix of technology, empowerment, and productivity.

The relative success of Fish Farmer is difficult to gauge at this stage, largely because no reliable statistics or benchmarks were in place prior to the Affino implementation. It is, however, an entirely new experience – one that enables aquaculture specialists to engage more deeply with their industry.

There was no online registration on the previous website, meaning there was zero audience insight or segmentation.That alone marks a 100% improvement, even though before-and-after comparisons aren’t statistically possible. It remains early days, and the transition from a fully free-to-access news service to one requiring user registration naturally comes with some growing pains.

Promising early indicators include a consistently expanding audience database, an average of over twelve page views per session – well above the industry norm – and steadily increasing session duration. These metrics clearly suggest that the service is delivering valuable insights to the aquaculture community.

The real success of the Affino rollout lies in the new access to full-spectrum, real-time native analytics – supporting robust business intelligence and operational insight. Affino includes a wide range of smart solutions that deliver highly accurate statistics, and provide tools to analyse them in meaningful ways – including the Client Campaign Dashboard and the Analysis Dashboard, both enhanced with AI-assisted processes.

The Fish Farmer website has been comprehensively modernised and significantly expanded, offering far more business and revenue opportunities than ever before.

The launch of Fish Farmer AI, along with the rapid adoption of Affino’s AI services, has been transformational in how the audience accesses and engages with in-depth news and insights across the aquaculture sector.

This transformation positions the brand for long-term sustainability – and hopefully, another 40 successful years.

See below quotes from Janice and Steevie,

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