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!