Years ago, as a business owner you were pretty much in control of how people perceived your business. You advertised to influence opinions, you went out of your way to please your customers, and you provided a quality product or service. Everybody was happy. In the rare instances where a customer was displeased, he told his friends and never returned. Things could have been worse.

Today, things are worse. Conventional advertising has lost much of its credibility and clout, and most people turn to their network of friends (including virtual friends online) for trusted opinions and recommendations. That dissatisfied customer from years past now has the means to amplify his displeasure before an audience of thousands. On the other hand, the same tools are available for your happiest of customers to share their experience and influence equally vast numbers of potential guests.

Most campground owners seem to fear review sites more than an attack of locusts. Those fears are unfounded. P.T. Barnum is often credited with coining the statement, “There is no such thing as bad publicity,” and that concept is truer today, in the age of the Internet, than ever before in history.

First of all, a successful campground will be operated in a customer-friendly manner, and reviews of that campground are likely to be overwhelmingly positive. My advice is to proactively promote those reviews and the sites that contain the reviews, rather than simply reacting in a state of panic when a negative review appears, typically written by someone with an axe to grind.

Rather than hiding from reviews, I encourage campground owners to provide links to the major review sites – and to individual reviews – on their own websites and within the social media. Quote great reviews on your Facebook page and in Tweets, and encourage your guests to post their own reviews, particularly if a review site has a less than stellar recent review of your park. Some review sites allow you to respond to reviews, while others do not. Either way, the most recent reviews and the most intelligently written reviews (and responses) carry the greatest credibility. Older reviews or those written by somebody who is obviously on a rant are generally dismissed by readers.

If you are going to encourage your happy campers to submit reviews, you need to know the review sites that count. You also need to know whenever a review of your park appears online. Use Google Alerts to stay on top of what is being posted about your business online. When guests are checking out, commenting how much they enjoyed their stays, ask them if they would like to submit a review that puts that satisfaction into words. If they agree, send them a follow-up e-mail with a direct link to the review page for your park on the review site of your choice. (Don’t ask them to submit a review on more than one site, since that would be a bit of an imposition.) The following is a list of some of the review sites that need to be on your radar.

RV Park Reviews – This site has been online since 2000 and includes nearly 200,000 reviews of every campground in North America, including yours. If you are not aware of this site and have not read its reviews of your park, you have only yourself to blame. Use this site to your advantage. If you have the highest rated park in your city or town (based upon the average of your 10 most recent reviews, rated on a 1-10 scale), promote that fact by providing a link to the reviews for your park and its competitors. Use transparency to your advantage!

Yelp – This site was started in 2004, gets over 100 million unique visitors per month, and hosts over 39 million reviews. Originally designed to rate local business service providers (like mechanics, electricians, and plumbers), it now includes reviews to lodging services, including campgrounds. As a business, you can setup a free business account that allows you to post photos and additional information that will enhance your listing on the site, as well as generating free widgets that you can use to promote your Yelp reviews on your website. Follow this link to get started: https://biz.yelp.com

TripAdvisor – This is the world’s largest travel-related website. It gets more than 200 million unique visitors per month and contains over 100 million trusted reviews covering more than 2.5 million businesses around the world. Although the site originally concentrated on hotels and similar lodging, it now includes campgrounds under the Specialty Lodging category. If your campground is not yet listed on TripAdvisor, you can submit a listing by following this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/GetListedNew

Because of the volume of traffic, reviews on TripAdvisor carry plenty of clout. As a business owner, you can (and should!) create a free business account, allowing you to update your business details, add photos, receive e-mail notifications of new reviews, and – most importantly – respond to reviews. You can also generate free widgets that can link your website to your reviews. Follow this link to get started: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Owners

GuestRated – Campground owners are probably also familiar with the GuestRated program that was founded by industry consultant Bob MacKinnon in 2008 as the first ongoing guest satisfaction rating program relating to the private campground industry in the United States. Run in conjunction with National ARVC, this online survey program provides very useful consumer information and statistical analytics to campground owners, as well as providing an opportunity to respond to guest reviews. There are also widgets that allow campgrounds to feature reviews and ratings on their websites and that encourage visitors to initiate their own review process. Learn more about the program at: http://www.guestreviews.com

This is far from a conclusive list of review sites. There are many other campground review sites that generate less traffic and less impact upon public opinion. I would recommend not fretting over any of the more obscure review sites, particularly if any investment of your time would come at the expense of the attention that you should be devoting to these review sites that count.

If you have been paying attention long enough, over the years you will have heard all kinds of Web design concepts touted as the newest answer to vanilla ice cream. One by one, they have either fallen by the wayside or are ready to follow the lemmings into that ditch. Progressive JPEG images, animated GIF images, and frames were early concepts that failed to stand the test of time. More recently, Flash animation was once considered the rage; however, as soon as support was dropped by Apple’s iOS (running iPhones and iPads), Flash became about as popular as a case of head lice.

Understandably, many people have grown a bit suspicious when they hear about anything that is marketed as the latest and greatest, so what is the story with responsive Web design? The best way to start answering that question is an explanation of what it is and how it works. Let me begin by saying that, in general, change is a good thing. As the Internet evolves, improvements tend to enhance and improve the user experience.

You may have seen the responsive Web design concept promoted by your local TV stations and similar businesses, usually along the lines of “One Address for Every Device”. Unlike a separate mobile website, responsive technology allows a single website to respond to each user device and display the site in the most appropriate form. Responsive sites are flexible and able to adjust, rearrange, and optimize content on a wide range of displays and input devices. The concept can be summarized in the word fluidity. Responsive sites are based upon the use of a fluid grid, fluid graphics and photos, fluid text, and a fluid background. The grid features a series of stops or fluid breakpoints, where the content switches from one representation to the next.

Unlike a mobile app, which needs to be downloaded and installed (and then may be rarely used), a responsive site is not limited to any one platform, avoiding duplication of expense for Android and Apple devices (with Blackberry, Windows Phone, Firefox OS, Kindle, Nook, and other upcoming mobile devices out of luck). Unlike a separate mobile-friendly website, which incurs a separate set of costs and often trims down the range of content that is presented to the users of mobile devices, a responsive website presents a consistent range of content that is optimized for every user’s device. This is a new way of building websites, and it is being quickly embraced both by top developers and savvy clients as a more future-proof, economical and elegant approach to delivering content across the expanding ocean of Web capable devices.

When visiting a responsive website using a desktop computer or laptop, you are presented with one version of the site. Using a tablet or smartphone, you are presented with alternate versions that are automatically optimized for the display size and touch-based input. When viewing a responsive website on a conventional desktop or laptop computer, you can actually resize your browsing window to see the content transform in real time as you reach the grid stops or breakpoints. Cool? Yes!

My own company’s first venture into responsive website design was the new website built for the Vermont Campground Association, the first responsive campground association website in the United States. The accompanying graphic shows the content as displayed on a variety of common devices.

Other than keeping up with technology and presenting your business in a savvy technological light, what are the other advantages of turning to responsive design for your next website? First of all, as I have already alluded, the total cost will probably be less than the cost of developing separate conventional and mobile sites. It is also no longer necessary to register a separate “mobile” domain name or even create a separate subdomain for your mobile content. In all likelihood, this will reduce your recurring hosting costs.

One big advantage presented by responsive technology is the consistency of branding that it allows. No longer do you have to wonder whether somebody is viewing your “full” website on a desktop computer or the abbreviated content on a mobile device. You also can eliminate those “Click here to view our mobile site” or “Click here to download our mobile app” links. A responsive site sends those links to the buggy whip museum!

Check the Google Analytics on your website. (If your website is not running Google Analytics, stop what you are doing, and get it installed!) I just checked the Google Analytics for one well-known campground website that we maintain, and the statistics are compelling. The site generates enough traffic for these statistics to be both meaningful and valid. Over the last 12 months, 28.1% of the visitors to their website were using a mobile device. Within the last month, that percentage shot up to 39.9%, and within the last week is up to 41.7%. Within the last 24 hours? It’s up to 42.3%. Do you see a trend?

Just as important, without either a responsive or a mobile website, visitors to this campground’s website who are using mobile devices are spending roughly two-thirds of the time that is spent by visitors using conventional computers, and the bounce rate is an astounding 85% higher. (The bounce rate represents visitors who reach a website and leave quickly.) Yes, people using mobile devices are prone to make quicker decisions, but these numbers simply represent lost traffic … and lost traffic means lost business.

Perhaps most importantly, responsive technology is good for your website’s SEO (search engine optimization). In fact, both Google and Bing have endorsed responsive Web design. Only one address needs to be indexed, and only one address needs to be checked when viewing your analytic reports. No longer will multiple versions of content be diluting the search engine ranking of your pages. Whatever form it takes, search engines have always hated (and penalized) duplicate content. It’s as simple as that!

Now that I have explained what it is, how it works, and its many advantages, are you ready to decide? Will your next website be built using yesterday’s technology or for tomorrow’s users?

Content for this article was also contributed by Joshua Pelland and Charles Davis, Pelland Advertising staff members.