| Web Site Management Unveils New Programs for 2001 RV America -- Not Your
Since RV America On Line® (rvamerica.com) went on line in February 1996, the web site has grown steadily, not by emulating other sites but by leading the way through innovation and commitment to its clients. Today, RV America is the premier RV web site and offers visitors a wide range of resources from company directories to bulletin boards to free classified ads to chat rooms to current news and information from the on line version of RV News magazine. RV America and the RV America Network is a service of Web Site Management, Inc. The original idea behind RV America, according to Dan Holt, CEO, Web Site Management, Inc., was to bring a lot of resources together in one place so those interested in RV information could go to one web site and get most of their questions answered and find the information they are looking for. From the RVers point of view, the site has become a favorite for many and thousands drop by daily to visit the chat room, bulletin boards or find an RV dealer. Messages on the RV America Guest Book reinforce the confidence Holt and his team have about meeting the RVing public's need. For example, Jack Bayless, Spring, TX, wrote recently, "Thank you for such a good informative site. We hope to buy a 5th wheel trailer in 2001 and do full time RVing for a while. Your site looks like a good place to shop. Thanks." However, the main purpose of this network is to drive business to the more than 200 RV web sites that are hosted by Web Site Management. Holt said, "Taking care of the consumer and taking care of our clients goes hand- in-hand. By giving the RV consumer what they are looking for we get a lot of return visits. Another benefit is these satisfied customers will tell their friends about the site. So the more people who come into the site, the more likely they will visit our clients' sites too. That's real important to us." Holt believes that hosting web sites is more than just giving a company a place to park their web site. "If that were the case," he said, "then it wouldn't make any difference which company hosted the site. But we recognized from the beginning that if we were going to provide the type of service we wanted to offer, we had to take a proactive role in making things happening. Advertising and Promotion "And by that I mean, such things as spending money for advertising and promotion. There are a lot of things that set RV America apart from hosting services both inside as well as outside the RV industry, and one of those things is advertising. We do a variety of programs, but one of our major programs is our advertising on yahoo.com. Yahoo! remains the top search engine and we are starting our fourth consecutive year as an advertiser. This year we will spend between $35,000 and $50,000 with Yahoo alone." A new program for Web Site Management this coming year is banner advertising on the classified ad web sites of more than 1,400 newspaper sites across the country. According to Holt, if a consumer visits any one of these sites and does a search for any type of RV, the RV America banner ad comes up with a link to the site. If any consumer requests information about RVs at any one of these sites, they will get an e-mail directing them to RV America. "We're pretty excited about this program," Holt said. "We feel it will really help bring people into the site so they can visit our clients' web sites. "Another new program for us this year will be a full-page, color ad in the national Wheelers Campground Guide. In addition we are always looking for new opportunities. For example, this year we will be running a full-page ad in the Quartzite show program. "So this area alone remains a major part of our commitment to helping our clients. These ads are targeted toward an audience interested in RVing. We believe that any RV company with a web site needs to ask their host, 'What is your commitment to advertising to 'my' potential customer.' You may be disappointed with their response." But Holt said taking care of the client means a lot more than just working to get people to the hosted site. "Traffic may be the bottom line," Holt added, "but our job is to make sure that the client's web site is ready to do business once the potential customer enters. "Technology surrounding the Internet is changing fast and we not only need to stay abreast of these changes, but we also believe we need to have programs in place that will help our clients take advantage of these technologies. "Let's take an RV dealer's web site for example. A typical dealer site might list the brands they carry and possibly a list of their pre-owned inventory where the consumer can contact them for more information. And also the chances are pretty good that there's a link from the dealer site to the manufacturers' web site of the brands he carries. "That might have worked just fine four years ago, but today's competitive marketplace demands more, if that dealer hopes to make a sale. RV Manufacturers Module
"We recognized three years ago that linking into the manufacturer's web site was not in the best interest of the dealer. First of all, it takes the potential buyer out of the dealer's site and he may or may not ever come back. But even if he does, while he's on the manufacturer's site, he's going to be able to find more dealers that carry that brand and may opt to go to another site rather than the site where he started. Not only that, while on the manufacturer's site, chances are that he is going to be able to look at products you may not even carry. If one of those products appeals to him, he's gone - as far as you are concerned - because he's now looking for a dealer that carries that product. "So we tell our clients that it doesn't make sense to link out of the site. We feel that we have spent a lot of money and the dealer is spending a lot of money to get people to the site so why would they want to send them somewhere else as soon as they arrive? "That's why we developed what we call our 'manufacturers modules.' This module is designed so that it is 'dealer friendly.' In other words, the module will only include product information about the product that dealer sells, there is no way for the visitor to find another dealer while in the module, and finally, the consumer never leaves the dealer's web site. "Our design team spends a lot of time putting these manufacturer sites together, so there is a small charge for the use of the modules, but all in all it's relatively inexpensive. "Manufacturer modules range from $150 to $250 a year each depending on the number of brands carried by the dealer." Inventory Management Module Another important program developed for dealers is the "inventory module." The inventory module allows the dealer to manage his complete inventory on line through a web browser. The dealer can put as many units into the program as they wish, say as much about each unit as they think necessary and add up to three photos or graphics per unit. Holt said, "The inventory is only available to dealers on our Emerald program, a program we designed specifically for RV dealers. And it doesn't cost the dealer anything extra it comes free with the program. And since it is a live database, the instant a dealer updates the information, it's live on his site immediately. "Another unique feature of the inventory module is that dealers can list their new inventory as well as pre-owned inventory again free. They can even run Internet specials on certain units and these specials come up separately on their web sites. "The inventory module does a variety of things for the dealer all of them good. First, if they keep their inventory list updated, it gives consumers a good reason to return to the site often to see any changes. Another thing it does is gives us more opportunity to drive consumers to the site. We have a variety of places throughout the RV America site where consumers can search for RVs. The search goes through the entire database of every dealer's inventory and brings that information back to the consumer. For example, if the consumer is looking for a 1995 Bounder motorhome, all the 1995 Bounder motorhomes in the database is returned with links. When the consumer clicks for more information, it not only returns all the details on the unit, but also takes him directly to the dealer's web sites. "We are always looking for new ways to help get people to our clients' sites." The RV America Network
When Holt talks about the RV America Network what he means is that RV America is actually a group of web sites all tied together through RV America. So rather than having everything on the central site, RV America actually links out to other sites in the network. "We did this for many reasons," Holt said. "The major reason was that we can get more placements in the search engines by having multiple sites. Besides more opportunities on search engines, we saw that we could give people more ways to find our clients sites by having these other sites. For example, one of the sites in the network is rv-dealers.com. When a consumer goes to RV-Dealers, what they see is a web site with a completely different look and feel than the RV America site. And what they find is the ability to search a national database of pre-owned RVs. Guess where that takes them you're right, into the central RV America inventory database. And if the consumer clicks for more information, they're into the dealer's site. And if they try to locate a dealer, guess which dealers come up you're right. Dealers that are hosted by RV America. "So what we have done by breaking out into multiple sites is created a synergy where our clients directly benefit and that's the main part of our job." In addition to rvamerica.com and rv-dealers.com, the RV America Network also includes rv-rentals.net for rental dealers; firstrv.com for people looking to buy their first RV; rv-classifiedads.com, a free classified ad program for consumers that also lets consumers search the dealer's inventory database as well; rvdestinations.com, a web site for camping information; and a variety of other sites such as rvreviews.com, rvforums.com, fulltimerving.com and womensrvforum.com. "I agree -- RV America is a lot different than other hosting services," Holt said. "I think we are different because we have been part of the RV industry for over 25 years as publishers of RV News magazine. That gives us an insight into how the industry works that other companies may not have and then we use that knowledge to serve our clients. We are also totally focused on the RV industry. We are different also because we are not selling products and services to visitors to RV America, and our hosting business is not just a sideline, but the focal point of the business. "And when we focus on and listen to our clients and try to see what we can do to make their web presence more effective, we are never short of ideas. "You will see what I mean when you look at the new programs we have developed for our clients for the upcoming year. We have had our programming team at work for the past six months developing new programs to help our clients keep up with the ever-changing Internet. RV Builder Module
The most ambitious program is our 'RV Builder Module.' General Motors has one, Ford has one on its web site and now our dealer clients can have one on their web site too. It's the vehicle builder program customized for the dealer's web site and the RV brands they carry. "The RV Builder module allows the visitor to not only view all the available floor plans, specifications and other important information about the RV products the dealer carries, but then they can actually spec their own RV in detail and see the manufacturer's suggest retail price (MSRP) of the unit plus all options. Then when the visitor contacts the dealer for the "dealer's price," their order is stored in a database with a unique ID so when the dealer talks to the customer they will see exactly what the visitor chose in brand, model, floor plan, color and choice of woods, and specific details of all the extra cost options they want on their new RV. RV Parts and Accessories Package (e-commerce) "Another major project is our new RV parts and accessories e-commerce program. We designed this program from the ground up and it gives dealers or parts store managers a complete shopping cart package and the ability to completely manage their own parts and accessories stores on line. That way they set their own prices, decide the product mix and collect the money. We believe that eventually most businesses will want their own store rather than a store designed and controlled by a distributor. We have one customer that's using this program now and that business is selling a significant number of parts and accessories on line thousands of dollars more than those companies using the "off the shelf" catalog programs from distributors." Catalog Module According to Holt, the Catalog Module is similar to the e-commerce program and does everything the e-commerce program does except the ability to order on line. He said, "In some cases a business may have a large number of products, but they do not sell direct to the public so this program gives businesses the ability to attractively display all their products with pictures and descriptions, but without the ordering function. In addition to these three major programs, Web Site Management has also developed some smaller, but important packages to help companies increase sales and profits from their web sites. Holt said most of these programs were developed because a client asked for it, but we designed the program so it can be exported to other web sites. Specials Module Holt said, "The new "specials module" allows clients to offer a variety of specials for any department in their company -- and they completely manage the content and set prices. It's different than the e-commerce program in that it is designed to bring people into the store rather than selling products on line. The module allows clients to upload pictures or graphics to help promote the specials. The specials module is completely database driven and is live as soon as a product is entered, A neat feature is that the client schedules specials in the future and these specials will automatically appear on the web site in the month it is scheduled to start. "And then there's an enhanced version of the specials module that we call the "Specials-Plus Module." In addition to everything in the specials module, the specials-plus module allows the site owner to manage employee photos and comments about key personnel to help personalize their business to the Internet visitor. This enhanced version also includes the option to break out specials by department -- for example "service specials would appear on service pages as well as their overall specials page." Slide-Show Module Holt continued, "One of the more unique requests for product presentations came from a dealer that wanted to be able to spotlight a particular product or service and show the product via a slide show with accompanying text. So we developed a program that the client manages by uploading the photos for the slide show and then the text. The slide show takes up to ten pictures and can be changed whenever the client decides it should be updated. "The core of most of our new programs is to give the client the ability to completely manage information on their sites without having to learn a complicated programming language." Conclusion Web Site Management offers a lot of programs that may help its clients sell more product and services as a result of their web site on the RV America Network. And since many of the programs are modules, the client can pick and choose which programs they want to include on their site. "But it doesn't end there," Holt said. "Web Site Management's design and programming team can custom design and employ web content to meet almost any need a client has. For example, Wheelers Campground and Resorts Guides (www.wheelersguides.com) came to us and wanted us to put their entire directory on line as a resource for campers and with the ability to sell their directories on line through a secure server. We worked closely with Wheeler's management and developed and launched the directory with more than 14,000 listings in less than four months at a very competitive price. "The point is we are here to help our clients achieve whatever it is they dream as far as their web site is concerned. "And since we are RV industry people rather than strictly Internet people, we believe we can be more responsive to RV companies needs. We are totally focused on our primary mission and that's being a good partner to our customers and giving them the tools to use the Internet to enhance their businesses' bottom line. "While other Internet hosting companies are happy to provide RV companies with a place to park their web sites, I think the things that we do and the programs we develop prove that RV America is not a typical RV web site. Many of the programs we have implemented haven't even crossed the minds of most other companies that host RV web sites. "So, does that give RV America hosted companies an advantage we think it does." For information about RV America's web site hosting programs call Dan Holt at 480-784-4771. RVN
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