So many people obsess about the amount of traffic that their websites receive, putting far too much emphasis on the numbers of visitors rather than the behavior of those visitors. This would be somewhat similar to a suburban shopping mall acting like business was great because the mall is packed with teens on a Friday or Saturday night, out to enjoy a social experience but spending little if anything with any of the mall merchants. Anybody who has ever worked in sales quickly learns the difference between people who like to try on clothing versus people who actually buy the clothing if it fits, people who like to kick tires versus people who are actually out to buy a car, or people who like to attend open houses versus people who are prequalified to buy a new home.

With a website, the metrics that count are goals and conversions. Goals in the outdoor hospitality industry are generally going to be reservation-related calls to action, and conversions are when visitors respond to a website’s persuasive abilities. Until that happens, your website is simply spinning the wheels on one of those old-fashioned hit counters that were ever-present on websites in the early days of the Internet.

The conversion of traffic to buyers is a complex process that relies upon several factors. Discount incentives are always the most effective online selling tool, but those are not always practical for every type of business. More subtle but equally effective factors might include time-sensitivity (Enter “free firewood bundle” in the comments box when making your reservation before midnight tonight!), limited inventory (Only 3 campsites still available for Father’s Day Weekend!), or a connection with another event (Reserve your site for the weekend of July 25-26, camping only 4 miles from the Downtown Food Festival!) are all viable incentives.

Incentives should not be limited to a single call to action. Your website should offer far more than simply a means for making a reservation. The time of that reservation (or the reservation confirmation) is also the time to offer an incentive for an extended stay, offer upgrades, and offer add-on services.

Okay, you understand the concept of website conversions, but how do you convert your basic traffic into buyers? If you are running Google Analytics or another traffic analysis tool on your website, you are probably familiar with the concept of “bounce”. These are people who visit your site and leave almost as quickly as they arrived for any one of a variety of reasons. (Note that the vast majority of traffic that appears in bounce rates consists of robots. Our concern is with actual visitors who get frustrated and leave.) It is quite simple to deduce that the means to reduce your site’s bounce rate is to increase the time that visitors spend on your site. The bonus here is that there is a direct correlation between the amount of time that a visitor spends on your site and the likelihood of that visitor taking your prescribed course of action.

Quite simply, your challenge is to determine ways to get visitors to increase the amount of time they spend on your site. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket (otherwise known as your site’s Home page). Distribute useful content throughout the pages of your site, encouraging visitors to click through to learn more.
• Keep your site’s navigation highly intuitive. Make it crystal clear how a first-time visitor will find his or her way from point A to point B. Navigation should be consistent from page to page, located either across the top of the page or in a left side column, and it should be clearly labeled. Few people are going to click on a navigational link that presents a shortened equivalent of “Can You Guess What You Will Find If You Click Here?”
• Present a visual flow that encourages exploration. A wall of text will not work. Balance text and graphics with a liberal dose of “white space”, a visual relief from sensory overload.
• Keep the most essential content front and center, in newspaper parlance what is called “above the fold”. To sell newspapers, the lead stories are not buried at the bottom of the front page, initially invisible to a prospective buyer at a newsstand. With your website, try to present your case without requiring the user to scroll down the page (because that scrolling might never occur).
• Keep your content easy to read. Choose font sizes and colors wisely, ensuring that there is sufficient contrast with background colors. Use headlines, bullet points, sidebars, and graphics to encourage engagement but, above all else, keep things simple.
• Provide at least some content on your site that is not easily found elsewhere. Most people enter a site through its Home page (a website’s equivalent of your home’s front door); however, unique content that is of interest to your potential customers can present a side entrance with a very prominent welcome mat, particularly once that unique content gets indexed by search engines. This could be a blog, a consolidation of information compiled from other resources, or links to articles of interest to your visitors.

The common obsession with traffic, at the expense of conversions, misses the function and purpose of a commercial website. Focus on what is truly important, and you will be putting your website truly to work for your business.

Early in the summer of 2014, one of my campground clients e-mailed me to let me know that she had sold her campground. She provided me with the name and cell phone number of the buyer. The following day, I called the new owner to introduce myself, encountering a highly unprofessional outgoing voicemail message but leaving my own message that explained the purpose of my call and asking him to get back to me. There was no response. I tried again a few days later with the same outcome.

I realize that some people have an aversion to what they may perceive as sales calls; however, my call did not include the words “I need to speak with the person who orders your office copier supplies.” I was not trying to sell him anything, I mentioned the name of the seller, and suggested that he might like to discuss changes that should be made to the website that my company had built and was hosting. He might like something as simple as having us add a notice that said “Under New Ownership”. There was no response, and I moved on to other things … such as being of service to people who return my calls.

About a month after the park changed hands, I started getting error logs from people submitting reservation requests on the campground’s website. The request forms were set to be sent to the campground’s Comcast e-mail address, and the new owner had cancelled the previous owner’s contract with Comcast. After four reservation requests were rendered undeliverable over a weekend at the height of the summer camping season, I made another round of calls to the new owner’s cell phone. I listened to his same childish outgoing message, and told him specifically why I was calling, that he was losing business, and that he needed to provide me with a new e-mail address for the reservation request forms on his website. I also called the campground’s main phone number. Once again, no response.

As of this writing, there have been 82 people who have attempted to make reservations through the campground’s website, some of whom were inquiring about multiple sites or stays of one week or longer. Let’s presume that the average request was for a two-night stay at the campground’s $35.00 average nightly rate. That translates into $5,740.00 in lost business from the undelivered forms alone. Stated another way, this is $5,740.00 in lost business because my phone calls were not returned. Of course, I have no alternate e-mail address, allowing me to reach out in another manner. The campground’s website hosting service (prepaid by the former owner) expires in July. Will he call me when his website is disabled? Time will tell.

The point of all this is to stress the value of industry vendors. Yes, we sell products or services. However, selling is not a crime. In fact, it is the backbone of our economy. I have always had a policy of providing up to an hour of free consultation services to anybody who calls me and who would like to plug into my expertise. There are no sales attempts or strings attached, and my base of knowledge extends well beyond the services that my company provides. For example, at the recent Northeast Campground Association conference, I participated in the “Learn from the Experts” roundtable sessions, where my topic was online and office security standards.

If you have a question about payment processing, insurance, wi-fi installation, or which store merchandise will provide the greatest return on investment, ask an industry vendor. If you want to know the pros and cons between alternate lines of laundry equipment, golf carts, power pedestals, lawn mowers, or picnic tables, ask an industry vendor. With very few exceptions, the people who I know who are serving the family campground industry are truly committed to the industry and can be relied upon for honest and objective information. I believe that most put the interests of their customers and the overall industry ahead of their own interests. There is a tremendous resource at your disposal. Put it to good use. Those who fail to do so may suffer the consequences.

If you are a typical American, you probably started your day with a cup of coffee. According to the most recent National Coffee Drinking Trends (NCDT) report, published by the National Coffee Association, 54% of Americans over the age of 18 drink an average of 3.1 cups of coffee each day. More casual coffee consumption is practiced by 83% of the public. Of these coffee drinkers, 65% enjoy the beverage with breakfast. In total, consumers in the United States spend $40 billion on coffee each year. Impressive statistics, but what do they mean for you?

Just as there are all types of coffee products, there are all types of campgrounds. Trends change over time, and demands ebb and flow for various types of coffee and styles of camping. Remember the days of coffee percolators? They were an integral part of a long-running advertising campaign for Maxwell House. Today, half the population could probably not even identify a coffee percolator in a line-up of obsolete kitchen appliances.

Today, there is a market for high-end artisanal brews, as evidenced by the $950 million in annual sales at Starbucks; however, the vast majority of Americans do not have an appreciation for single-origin coffee brewed from freshly-ground beans. Those markets are limited, in a similar manner as the markets are limited for other high-end beverages such as loose teas, cask conditioned ales, single malt Scotch whiskies, or small batch bourbons.

According to the market research firm Euromonitor, only about 8% of the coffee purchased in America is whole bean coffee, meaning that sales of pre-ground coffee outpace whole bean coffees by 12.5 to 1. When it comes to coffee, it seems that most of us prefer convenience over quality. Driving that fact home is the astronomical growth in sales of K-Cups, the ubiquitous pre-portioned coffee pods. Years ago, the coffee kings in America were Folger’s (owned by consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble) and Maxwell House (owned by another giant, Kraft Foods). Today, K-Cups from Keurig Green Mountain account for 20% of the total coffee market, not only more than any other company but more than Folger’s and Maxwell House combined. Again according to Euromonitor, the sales of coffee pods have grown by 138,325% over the past 10 years!

Going back to the National Coffee Association’s NCDT, it is important to note that Hispanic Americans far outpace all other ethnic groups in the consumption of coffee, including gourmet coffees and espresso-based beverages. Also comprising the fastest growing ethnic group in the country, this is a very positive sign for the overall industry.

Henry Ford, in the days of skyrocketing sales of his Model T, commented that he could “sell to the masses and eat with the classes.” In other words, fortunes can be made by providing products or services that appeal to the broadest possible market. In today’s world, most businesses succeed by appealing to mass markets through low prices (the Wal-Mart and Amazon models,) although small businesses usually excel by catering to the niche and local markets that might not be profitable pursuits by mass marketers. Let’s translate this information into concepts that directly relate to your campground.

1. Keep in step with current trends. Coffee consumption has been on the increase in recent years, in large part thanks to the coffee pods that have made things quick and easy. Are cabins and other rentals the quick and easy way for new people to be introduced to camping? If so, are you making the process as simple as possible, or are you still requiring your guests to bring their own towels and linens?
2. If you think of your campground as a supermarket, are you still devoting all of your shelf space to Folger’s and Maxwell House? When the world is changing around you, you cannot succeed by becoming stagnant. If your guests want 50-amp electric, pull-thru sites and free wi-fi, it is time to meet their needs.
3. Starbucks has proven that people will not hesitate to pay the price for premium products and services. If you are running the Starbucks of campgrounds, you can probably raise your rates without fear of losing business.
4. The Hispanic-American market has outpaced every other ethnic group in the consumption of coffee. Are you surprised? What is your campground doing to reach out to this large and expanding market of consumers … or are you continuing to miss the boat?
5. Are you capitalizing upon the fact that 65% of coffee drinkers consume the beverage first thing in the morning? A selection of fresh-brewed coffees in your store can draw people in every morning, encouraging the sale of a long list of other merchandise that goes far beyond donuts and the morning newspaper.

In general, it pays to keep an eye on industry trends, only one of which centers around coffee consumption. Put the old percolator in the attic of your logic, and do your best to reach out to both existing and prospective guests in new and innovating ways.

Chicken Little was well-intentioned when he hysterically warned of impending disaster. The only problem was that his predictions were based upon conjecture rather than facts. Back at the turn of the millennium, modern-day Chicken Littles mongered fear over the impending “Y2K” disaster that, of course, never happened. More recently, there has been more than a bit of press about the implementation of the next round of Google search ranking algorithms that will only begin to be rolled out on April 21, 2015. Without doing any research of their own, many self-proclaimed “experts” are citing a Google blog post, a comment reportedly made by a Google employee, and a speculative article that recently appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine as the bases for their warnings of dire consequences for today’s typical website. Like grade school students spreading rumors in the schoolyard, it is time for some people to take a “time out”.

Like the news networks that love to exaggerate stories and develop sensationalist headlines like “Stormageddon” and “Blizzard of the Century” (and, of course, the aforementioned “Y2K”), the new buzz word amongst the uninformed is “Mobilegeddon”. People using this type of terminology remind me of those who blindly share urban legends on Facebook, without taking a moment to first check the facts. The stories may generate excitement, but they lack credibility.

The fact is that Google will be rolling out a new set of search algorithms starting on April 21st; however, this does NOT mean that a website that is not deemed mobile-friendly will suddenly drop from the results of Google searches made from mobile devices. That is an outright exaggeration. What the new algorithms mean is that sites that are mobile-friendly will have an edge over sites that are not mobile-friendly, being flagged as “mobile friendly” alongside those search results. This rise in the rankings of mobile-friendly sites will come at the expense of sites that are not deemed mobile-friendly, but it does not mean that those latter sites are suddenly going to be dropped from being indexed.

Chicken Littles have suggested that half of a site’s traffic is suddenly going to disappear effective April 21st, if the site is not mobile-friendly. This is patently untrue. Using historical Google Analytics data that I have drawn from actual campground websites, let’s presume that 35% of the traffic to a website comes from search engines, and that 50% of that traffic comes from Google, and that 50% of THAT traffic comes from users of mobile devices. Do the math. That would mean that, if a website was totally dropped from mobile search results on Google (which is NOT going to happen at this time), that site would lose approximately 9% of its traffic. That is the reality, rather than conjecture and misguided speculation.

There are plenty of valid reasons why every business should be moving to replace a conventional website with a new mobile-friendly site, and to do so sooner rather than later. However, the people who are suggesting panic are doing a tremendous disservice by encouraging the jerking of knees rather than the exercise of a careful plan for execution that includes properly methodical planning and budgeting for the long-term investment in mobile-friendly technology.

In years past, many businesses were advised to buy into expensive mobile apps or separate mobile websites, in an attempt to capture the market for users of mobile devices. In retrospect, those dollars were generally not well spent. Today, the dust has settled and responsive website technology has taken its place as the mobile-friendly solution that Google and the other search engines prefer, with one site presenting full content that is optimized for every device. If your site is not currently mobile-friendly, make plans for the transition – as I have said, sooner rather than later. In the meantime, don’t panic. The sky is not falling, and the world is not about to end on April 21st.

Last week, on a quick trip to Nebraska, I rented a car at Eppley Airfield in Omaha. I had reserved the car rental online in advance. My basic rental fee with Thrifty Car Rental came to $155.72. Sort of like a base rate for a campsite … or is it?

Transparency in pricing is more important than ever these days. Consumers do not want to feel cheated or like they are being subjected to fraudulent pricing practices. When you dine at a restaurant, you are not charged extra for the use of a table, to have your meal served on plates, using the restrooms, or for the use of flatware and napkins. These are part of the overhead of being in the restaurant business. Yes, we all know that there are so-called “extras”, many of which apply to various types of recreational services. Unless there is special package pricing, if you schedule a round of golf, you expect to pay extra for a golf cart; if you go skiing, you expect to pay extra for ski rentals or lessons; and if you hit the bowling lanes, you will pay to rent bowling shoes if you need them.

Unfortunately, the rental car industry takes add-ons and hidden charges to a whole new level in the stratosphere. My $155.72 car rental came to $275.56 when I returned the vehicle. Mind you, this increase is despite the fact that I declined all of the added insurance (which is covered by my own auto insurance) and declined the added driver charge for my wife (a fee which is actually illegal in the State of California). The previously undisclosed, added fees included:

• An “RAF” fee of $4.99 per day (which presumably has something to do with renting a vehicle at an airport, even if you simply take a shuttle from the airport to a nearby rental location in some instances).
• An “Occupancy Tax” of $8.00 (which I presume is an added fee that helps to pay Thrifty’s rent).
• An “AP Rec Fee” of 12%. I have no idea what this is.
• An “SEC Fee” of 2%. I also have no idea what this is.
• A “Vehicle Tax” of 4.5%. This one is also difficult to explain.

Part of the problem with the rental car industry is the lack of competition. Most of us can rattle off a list of rental car companies; however, according to a report published in the IndependentTraveler.com, the fact is that 94% of the rental car industry in America is controlled by only three companies:

1. Hertz – which also owns Advantage, Dollar and Thrifty
2. Avis – which also owns Budget and Zipcar
3. Enterprise – which also owns Alamo and National

In fact, when we landed in Omaha and went to the car rental counters, the Thrifty Car Rental booth was unoccupied, with a sign directing customers to the adjacent Dollar Car Rental space. A near-monopoly is never in the interest of consumers. As a case in point, let me present one more tidbit from my car rental experience.

I generally use a bank debit card to pay for my travel expenses. When doing so, it is typical for a hold on funds to be applied, exceeding the anticipated cost of the service by $200.00 or $250.00. According the Thrifty, there would be an additional hold of $350.00 (a bit excessive). More outrageously, if you used a debit card, they would first run a credit check (which, in itself, is harmful to one’s credit score) AND charge you a $15.00 fee for the credit report! When I questioned this practice, the clerk pointed toward the other car rental counters and said that they had “all decided to introduce this policy” the previous week. I am not an attorney, but I believe that this is the textbook definition of the term “collusion”. I used a credit card as an alternate form of payment.

Needless to say, I am not happy with my most recent car rental experience, and I will never again rent a vehicle from Thrifty or Dollar. I will probably also file a complaint with either regulatory authorities or the Office of the Attorney General in the State of Nebraska (if not both). If this experience involved camping, I would not be the classic “Happy Camper”.

If you are wondering how this all might relate to camping, ask yourself if your rates are as transparent as possible. Every campground is going to require cancellation fees, guest fees, premium rates (and minimum stays) for holiday weekends, and premium charges for premium sites. The important part of the equation is for those fees to be fully disclosed at the time of reservation, leading to no surprises at the time of arrival or final check-out. If your state or county imposes a lodging tax on your cabin rentals, be sure that your campers are aware of that fee at the time of reservation.

There are other fees that you may want to reconsider because they are difficult for your customers to rationalize. These might include early check-in fees and wi-fi access charges. Then there are other fees that are certain to meet with customer disapproval. These include surcharges for the use of credit cards, along with transaction fees (often referred to as “convenience charges”) that accompany online reservations. These, like the “Occupancy Tax” and “Vehicle Tax” at the airport car rental counter, should be built into your basic pricing.

If you try to see your pricing structure from your customers’ perspective, you will avoid the type of dissatisfaction that will only hurt your business in the long run. In order for your customers to see things clearly requires transparency on your part. Ask yourself if it is time to take another look!