Dear RV company websites, You need to do better

I was recently deeply honored when a friend within the RV industry reached out and asked if I would review the company’s revised website. This surprised me because I thought that the company already had one of the best RV industry websites in the business, so the fact that they were redoing the whole thing was significant. 

As someone who does a lot of RV reviews, I spend a lot of time looking at RV company websites. Often, it’s just to see if I can find a specification, but I’m also curious what standard features are included on RVs and other details. 

If you don’t know, I used to do this same type of work in the automobile industry. I wrote car reviews for newspapers and my own website. Car company websites, even 15 years ago, were solid representations of their brands’ products and provided a lot of detail. Of course, some were better than others, but even the worst ones were still good. 

Then again, car companies have a lot of money. But they also have limitless supplies of great photos for the media, plus b-roll if you’re doing video. The resources are seemingly endless. 

When you’re in charge of a business, one of the things you want to control is the messaging around that business. To me, it’s a basic tenet of running any business. 

I’m not sure what the heck is going on in Indiana, but almost every RV company’s website is terrible. And you could argue that part of the frustration that so many prospects and buyers have with the RV industry is just the misinformation that’s out there. So you’d think that RV companies would want to control the messaging. 

Well, actually, some do. But only a very few. 

What would a great RV company website look like?

Every RV company’s website lists its models and most of the specifications of those models. That’s sort of the ground floor, and it is information that is useful. 

Within the specifications are the dry weight and dimensions of their rigs, too. Again, helpful and arguably necessary information. 

But that’s also where things stop, and that’s unfortunate.

What’s going on? In thinking of Paul Harvey, where’s the rest of the story? 

Another thing I’ve noticed is that some websites do work relatively well only on specific computer platforms or browsers. For example, a website I was looking at for a review I am writing works really well on Google Chrome, but I found that out when a lot of the features of that site didn’t work at all on Apple’s Safari browser. Same computer. 

As someone who has created a bunch of websites for a bunch of small businesses, one of the basic things you do is get as many different platforms of computer, phone, tablet, and all of that as you possibly can and see if there’s something that doesn’t work somewhere. Or, if something looks bad on certain platforms. For example, a great website on a desktop computer may be almost unreadable on a smartphone. 

But, guess where a lot of people are looking at the internet? 

I have also heard from a few RV companies that they provide all the information I’m looking for in their print brochures, and that’s where they prioritize information distribution. I knew it was the ‘20s, but I didn’t think it was the 1920s. 

Even more opportunity

Some of the other questions I see people seeking answers for are about replacement parts and sealants. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see several people ask what the best type of sealant is for their RV’s roof or where to find a replacement part for something that simply wore out or broke. 

Literally every day, I see people asking what’s the best lubrication for their slide mechanism or how to treat their slide seals. 

I know the standard answer to this is “go to the selling dealership.” But a lot of those dealerships just don’t have a reference guide for selling parts for RVs that are even a few years old. I know when I was managing warranties and such, people would want to get a replacement bit, and there was frequently little that I could do to help them. 

So what would I put on the perfect RV website? 

I would start with extensive images and specific details about anything that might matter. 

For example, Brinkley RV makes a huge deal about the AlphaPly roofing system on their products, calling them near-maintenance-free. But I know of another brand of RV that uses the same roofing system and doesn’t say a word about it on their website. In fact, the way I found out about this was by talking up Brinkley’s roof among some friends, and one of those friends worked for the brand that also uses the AlphaPly system and pointed it out. 

And it’s a great roofing system! Sell to your advantages. And I bet the RV salespeople would use this to their advantage, too. 

I would also have a good number of photographs of each model in my catalog and, ideally, even a walk-through video with details and information. For example, take a look at Alliance RV’s website and notice that they have a video walk-through of almost all their products. 

As for maintenance of slide rooms, it would be easy enough to take Lippert’s informative videos and just put them in a blog post about maintaining the RV. Lippert does a good job with videos about their systems, but not many people seem to use them compared to how many people ask about maintaining these systems on the ol’ interwebs. 

Interstate commerce laws

Something I don’t know anything about, but that’s never stopped me from blathering on about it, is interstate commerce laws. But I wonder if there are any restrictions against an RV company selling replacement parts on its website? Or at least making a parts resource catalog available that their dealers could take advantage of when ordering replacement parts. 

When I was doing warranty work at a dealership a while back, one of the RV companies had a tool where you could click on a region of an RV and then drill down and find parts for that RV based on the serial number. This made ordering replacement parts ridiculously easy, and I wondered why this wasn’t available to owners. 

You don’t necessarily have to have prices—perhaps let someone find the parts they need and then work with a local dealership to order those parts. 

There is so much opportunity in providing real information to customers. That would create a strong relationship with those customers—at least in my opinion. 

Yes, a very few companies actually do this, but I’ve found that the vast majority don’t. And with today’s technology and fewer committees, it would be pretty easy to create a resource that would make customers and prospects really appreciate your brand. 

At least, that’s how I see it. Er, um, that’s the rest of the story. 

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