In the very early days of the Internet, people would visit websites simply for the novelty of viewing their content. It didn’t take much to engage an audience for your product or service at a time when few of your competitors even had a presence online. You were there, and that was cool enough.

Today, with nearly 4 billion pages of content, your website is a very small fish in an enormous ocean that is filled with sea creatures of monstrous proportions. If and when visitors find you online, they want to find answers to their questions, presented in an organized manner that makes the information easy to find.

In the interest of streamlining the user experience, it may be time to reevaluate your site – adding, updating, and cross-referencing content as needed. As is often the case, a good place to start is a review of your statistics on Google Analytics. I would suggest taking a careful look at the new Behavior Flow data found under the Content reports.

Your website’s Behavior Flow report will graphically present the “flow” of visitor traffic from page to page within your site, allowing you to identify the content that keeps visitors engaged, as well as the content that seems to be showing your visitors the door. Are there popular paths of content, and do specific pages frequently lead visitors to another secondary page? How much time do visitors spend on specific pages, do they appear to be searching for content, and are they spending time viewing a photo gallery or embedded videos? These questions – and more – should all be answered. If there is measurably popular content on your website, provide more of the same by either adding to the page or adding one or more pages of related content.

Photo galleries and videos consistently prove to be popular content that engages visitors. Because each photo is said to convey a thousand words, people can often see the answers to their questions right there in your photos. (“Yes, I see a dog on a leash, so pets are allowed.”) Videos can be even better than photos because they allow you to tell your story. Just be sure that your story anticipates and answers questions, rather than creating a new set of questions that will remain to be answered. For example, a video may show a security gate, but does it leave people wondering about access cards? Or you may mention the tranquility of quiet nights, but does it say when your quiet hours begin and end? Think ahead, anticipate questions, and provide answers.

Make Your Phone Time Count

If you find that you or your staff are repeatedly answering the same phone questions, is it because the answers are either not available or too difficult to find on your website? If that is the case, you only have yourself to blame. Make your time answering the phone more productive, answering campsite-related questions that are prerequisite to finalizing a reservation. Each of the following questions should be answered on your website, in a logical location that is easy to find.

• Will I have wi-fi at my site?
• Are pets allowed in your cabin rentals?
• Will your swimming pool be open during our stay?
• Is there a fee to use your miniature golf course?
• Is there a charge to run the air conditioning unit in my RV?

It is essential that fee-related information, in particular, be referenced on your website. In some instances, the information should probably be provided in more locations than one. For example, your pet policy should probably appear in your rules, on your cabin rentals page, and directly on your reservation request form. The duplication of content is far preferable than dealing with a disgruntled guest who shows up at your registration desk without the rabies vaccination certificate that you require or with two Pit Bulls that you do not allow.

According to Emily Yellin, author of “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us,” the average customer service phone call handled by a small business like yours costs $7.50 to process. This takes into account compensation for the staff member who fields the call and any subsequent follow-up or fulfillment action that might be required. The smaller your business and the more limited your staff, the more likely it is that you will be the one taking the calls yourself. While you are providing those answers that should already appear on your website, you are taking the time that could be applied toward a more productive task. It could also come at the expense of a customer who is ready to make an immediate reservation decision who is instead met with a busy signal or a request to be put on hold.

As is usually the best practice, try to put yourself in the role of your potential customer. If necessary, ask a trusted third party for assistance in evaluating your site. Ensure that your website is a properly maintained component of a well-oiled machine that generates the new business that is the key to your overall business growth and survival.

Have you ever seen a website that was built under the “Kitchen Sink Theory” of website design? These were much more common in the early days of the World Wide Web, fifteen or twenty years ago, when common practices in design and layout were still evolving. Today, they are most often the result of do-it-yourself efforts, where a business owner mistakenly believes that he can build his own website, has the time to devote to the ongoing project, and doesn’t need to pay somebody to do what he can do himself. He is correct on at least one count, because it is true that anybody can build their own website.

The people who build their own websites are usually “Type A” personalities who find it difficult to delegate responsibility and who undervalue the labor of anybody other than themselves. In other instances, the creation of the website that can literally make or break a business is entrusted to Uncle Fred or Young Danny, the kid who lives up the street and who is “really good with computers”. Sometimes I wonder if these folks also provide their own medical and dental examinations and treatments!

Of course, there are companies out there that have encouraged this line of thinking by providing step-by-step do-it-yourself templates and inexpensive (or even free – with a few caveats) website hosting services. Those companies include Intuit, Homestead, Vistaprint, Wix, Tripod and many others. Choose a template, pick colors, upload photos, edit text, drag and drop, watch the money roll in, and become the next Internet millionaire. It’s as simple as that.

What the do-it-yourself website companies – as well as Uncle Fred and Young Danny – do not provide is marketing experience, an understanding of your particular business and industry, professional graphic design skills, proofreading and copy editing capabilities, and any interest in preventing your website from going down in flames. Yes, you can build yourself a website with every annoying bell and whistle imaginable. Yes, even bells and whistles themselves, if that’s what you want, including – you guessed it – the kitchen sink.

One of the most common do-it-yourself webmaster mistakes is to believe that lots of content will make a page more important in the eyes of the search engines. The more the merrier. Lots of text and lots of photos. Even better, lots of font variations, lots of colors, lots of animation, and lots of random clipart.

I recently came across exactly this type of website, built by the owner of one of the highest rated and most well-known campgrounds in the United States. The home page alone had 2,777 words of text, 30 photos, 3 large graphic files, and 9 pieces of clipart (4 of which were animated.) The page also included a hit counter, navigation way down near the bottom of the page, and 117 HTML warnings. The page clearly was not going to be a contender to win any awards for aesthetic design, but how did it fare with the search engines? Funny you should ask. When I did a search on Google for what I thought should be the single most intuitive search phrase for this park, it did not appear anywhere on the first 20 pages of search results! In addition, not that websites are intended to be printed, if somebody should try to print out a copy of just the Home page of the site, it would take 27 sheets of paper.

The only way that anybody is going to find this campground’s website is if they are already familiar with the campground, search for camping in the town where it is located, or click on a link from another website. If the owners are looking for new business, they better plan on word of mouth referrals.

If nothing else, the lesson to be learned here is that marketing sense and design skills are important elements in the construction of a successful website. Many people refer to the importance of content that appears “above the fold”, a reference to the location of the most important content – in terms of newsstand appeal – on the front page of a daily newspaper. Although some folks argue that it is the top 600 pixels of content, the “fold” is nearly impossible to define on a website, particularly with the explosive growth in the use of mobile devices, where users expect to scroll for content. The important consideration is not so much the location of the content as the design of the content. Without organization, a cluttered page on a website could easily become as impossible to navigate as War and Peace had Leo Tolstoy written his novel in a single rambling chapter.

Am I suggesting that your campground’s website must be built by a professional website design company? Absolutely! Lest anybody conclude that my intent is to promote my own company’s website development services, let me provide a list of some of our competitors within the campground industry. Those include AGS/Texas Advertising, Strait Web Solutions, Big Rig Media, and other more regional service providers. Many of these companies will have booth space at the fall campground association conferences, from National ARVC to the various state associations. My own company will also be found once again at the enormous IAAPA Attractions Expo, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

Whoever you turn to, your next website should embrace the latest technology and have a design that holds its own against the websites of major resorts, theme parks, and airlines – not simply your competitor down the road. Look for a responsive site that works as well on an iPhone, Android device or a Blackberry as it does on a desktop or laptop computer. Most importantly, trim the fat, and present users with a site with the kind of eye appeal and design flow that consistently leads them to your intended call to action. The right website is designed to generate reservations, not frustrations!

In a recent post, I pointed out that it was necessary to take a proactive stance with regard to your business’ ranking on various consumer review sites. If you are lacking reviews on any particular online resource – or, worse yet, you have one or more unfounded negative reviews that are skewing readers’ opinions – you should make an effort to encourage positive input. The question is how to handle this task both properly and effectively.

Once again, 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, campground owners should provide links to the major review sites – and to individual reviews – on their own websites and within the social media. Encourage your happy campers to post their own reviews, particularly if a review site has a less than stellar recent review of your park. 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.

What Is Different?

When taking this proactive stance at encouraging positive reviews, be careful not to cross any lines that might violate the policies of the review sites.

I recently made what I thought was a reasonable attempt at promoting one of our non-campground clients on Yelp. The client’s business was listed on Yelp, but had no reviews and, subsequently, no ranking. I added missing information to the client’s listing and uploaded photos. I then posted the following on their Facebook page:

“If you love our (products) and have visited our retail store, please take a moment to share your thoughts by writing a review on Yelp. It will only take a minute or two. When we have 5 reviews, we will choose one at random and that person will receive a $25.00 gift certificate. Thanks!” I then included a direct link to the listings page on Yelp.

One customer immediately posted a very flattering and positive review, with a 5-star rating. On the basis of this first review, our client then showed an overall 5-star rating … very briefly. Later that day, Yelp “filtered” the review, suggesting that it was of questionable origin. Apparently, our offer of the gift certificate – or possibly simply including a link to the listing page – crossed an imaginary line with Yelp, giving them the impression that we were bribing customers for their comments … which, of course, was far from the truth. A day or two later, the review was reinstated, with another review submitted soon afterward, and our client once again has a 5-star rating with two reviews, both highly positive.

To avoid this problem yourself, refer to Yelp’s review policy:

“The best word of mouth is organic and unsolicited. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, Yelp discourages business owners from asking people to write reviews about their businesses. It’s tough for an algorithm to tell the difference between a business owner aggressively putting a laptop in front of a client and saying, “Give me 5 stars!” and that same business owner flipping the laptop around and manufacturing a fake 5-star review about themselves.”

They continue, “As a general rule, Yelp has advised business owners not to offer incentives for reviews. It’s a slippery slope between the customer who is so delighted by her experience that she takes it upon herself to write a glowing review and the customer who is “encouraged” to write a favorable review in exchange for a special discount. In an effort to minimize spam and maximize trustworthiness of the site’s content, Yelp actively weeds out suspicious reviews through a combination of community self-policing and automated filtering; aggressively solicited reviews can ring hollow at times and end up flagged by users or the website for removal. The system is designed to ensure the reviews consumers rely on are as authentic and useful as possible.”

In other words, Yelp uses analytics to flag online review solicitations, and the worst case scenario could be the removal of your listing, not simply the filtering of the resulting review(s). Learn more about Yelp’s policy by following this link:
https://biz.yelp.com/support/common_questions.

How Do You Handle This?

Yelp encourages businesses to link to both their listing page and to individual reviews. When you have one or more positive reviews, provide links to them on your website and on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Let the power of subtle persuasion influence new reviewers. You may also hand out printed cards with the URL to guests as they check out and rave about their stay, but avoid directly asking for reviews in your online newsletter, on your website, or on your social media pages.

There is a similar policy in place at TripAdvisor, outlined in an extensive network of forum posts. One somewhat extreme example outlines a hotel in England that offered guests 10% discounts and free room upgrades in exchange for positive reviews on TripAdvisor, the Good Food Guide, or the Michelin Guide. Read more, following this link, shortened using Google URL Shortener:
http://goo.gl/cPmHxW

This scheme backfired and the property was red flagged, meaning that TripAdvisor posted that “individuals associated with this property may have interfered with traveler reviews” and showing users a record of the property’s alleged wrong-doing. How do you think that makes your listing look?

There are also companies that specialize in online reputation management, offering to repair damaged reputations for a fee, usually quite ineffectively. If you are considering a reputation management service, the damage has already been done, and you are no doubt at least indirectly responsible for the creation of that damage. There are even companies that will generate fake reviews for a fee, even though this practice is illegal in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, and Italy. Quite naturally, those so-called “services” should never be considered. The best way to get positive reviews is to provide exemplary service that, in and of itself, will encourage people to share their enthusiasm!