Campground Reviews Gets a Spiffy New Look!

As I indicated in my first post concerning these changes to the site, I have numerous problems with the new set up. Neither of my first 2 issues have been resolved in any way. My next complaint is that the first page of the site used to show a list of dozens (I'm guessing 25-35) of the most recent review that could be scanned in just seconds for parks of interest. The opening page now has ONLY 5 reviews and I have to press "Show More" 5-7 times to see the same number of reviews. Why are you making is harder and more time consuming to look at recent reviews?

 

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Good question Jerry S, I was going to ask that one myself as it doesn't make sense to me either. However in that you beat me to it I'm just going to sit back and see what answer you get....

Regards, BankShot............(aka Terry)

 

We are working to restore the proper helpfull counts. Please be patient. Regarding the new interface to see recent reviews. Thanks for the comments - under advisement. The underlying reason of this change was that in the past we had two separate sites/views... one for desktop viewers and one for mobile. Each time a change was made, both versions had to be updated and we were developing inconstancies with updates. The desktop view now is scalable now for mobile allowing us to maintain and update one view rather than two but this means that some aspects of the design need to change to work on a small screen.

 

Darrell - the site should work without "share my location". If it were enabled we would display content that is more relevant to your location (parks and reviews near you) but it's not required that you do this. Regarding the login issues... I suspect that this may be related to how your system is set up to handle cookies. We use them to keep you logged in at page changes and if your security settings are very high, they may be being purged at page changes. You can go into your settings and specifically allow cookie exchange with this site.

As an experiment you might try logging in with a private browsing tab and see what sort of experience you have.

 

Hate change but the world changes. I did just a little look. For example I looked at Camp Verde Az. Under the old form the Camp Verde campgrounds showed first and then you could look for campgrounds nearby. I also liked how you could look at campgrounds listed by top rated, and other ways. Keep working and listen to your users.

 

Agreed, the recent reviews on the main page should be as long as before.

Also, the "recent questions" on the main page is pretty useless. Why would we ever need to see this information when we first come to the site.

Also, what happened to the list of reviews we already posted, and the map of sites we have visited? It may be somewhere, but I can't find it.

Thanks,
Chris g.

 

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

This is an oversight. We spent very little time on the user profiles. We will get a map with your reviews pinned on it here in January.

In the long run our intent is to improve the profiles to include more bio info, photos of your rig, and ways to visualize the data you contribute in a nicer format. The profile you see now is basically a place for us to start.

Sorry that this change took place right in the middle of your planning. We did push it out knowing we had some rough edges to polish because over the holidays is our absolute least busiest time of year. We felt it was important to get it out and start working on our punch list. Kind of like a soft opening in the off season knowing that we can make a LOT on improvements before the peak season ramps up here in 2020.

Of course, the above doesn't do anything to help you right now, for that I'm sorry. I hope you will take 15-20 minutes to familiarize yourself with the new system. The pages all pretty much work the same with the same flow through the site.

You can still navigate from the home page >> state >> city >> campground. Alternatively, search has become an increasingly popular way to find what you are looking for. Just search the name of the city, state or campground.

I understand that you want to see reviews at once. We will look into solutions.

We show the recent questions on the pages because we want to surface that feature. It's pretty neat and we want people to be aware of it. So that's why we were showing it on more pages outside of the campground's page. On the home page our hope is to find Q&A with plenty of quality responses to showcase them.

The above is interesting because it reflects two different perspectives. How we want to surface quality information for our passers by but our users (especially our power users) desire other information on the home page (like number of reviews). We need to think about how we can best serve these two needs. We'll talk about this at our team meetings after the holidays.

 

Andy, thank you for the reply to my concerns. With your reply, I can see that the main page is a way to display most of the features of the site to new visitors. Don't worry about the # of recent reviews showing, not a big deal.

One thing that is becoming more and more of a pet peeves though: the amount of info we need to scroll through before we get to the actual reviews. We once we find a campground we want to research, we now need to scroll through all this info:

- Basic campground info
- Photos
- Maps and advertising
- features and amenities
- More park features and amenities that are fuzzed out with a button saying "log in to see all features" (even though I'm already logged in)
- Top tips
- Q& A on the park
- Ratings bars

And finally, the actual reviews.

Is there any way to move the actual reviews further up the page, or put more of this info under some tabs the the user could drill down on if interested?

Thanks for listening,
Chris g.

 

Doesn't seem to be working at all now.

 

My next issue with the new format is: On the first page of the reviews of a specific RV park there is a box just below the "Campground Details" section with this comment: "Details Matters. Designed by RVers for RVers. We have more data specifically relevant to RVing". What is the point/purpose of this comment? Also, if you are so much about and for "RVers" and "RVing", why did you recently change the name of the site to Campgound Reviews from RV Park Reviews.

 

The details matter blurb was added to highlight that our reviews tend to be more robust with specific data points collected pertinent to RVers vs generic review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google, Facebook, etc. We want to call out what makes our reviews better.

We changed the name to be more inclusive to other types of RV camping options. With time we would like to expand our database to include more dispersed/boondocking, overnight and even reviews of other things like rest stops. Having a boondocking location on a site called RVParkReviews.com doesn't make that much sense. Where having RV Parks inside a site called CampgroundReviews.com does make sense. We felt the word Campground is more inclusive of different types of RV camping options.

 

Sorry, I missed your response. I agree, there is lots of stuff on the page for each campground but there is a way to get you to what you want fast.



Then as you scroll down the page that "tab bar" sticks to the top so you can jump to any section at anytime.



Please test out the above and see if that helps you get to what you want to get to fast. Do you think we need to make that "tab bar" more prominent so people notice?

 

YES, please make the links larger, more obvious, possibly buttons that stand out. Scrolling to the actual reviews is very helpful.

Thanks,
Chris g.

 

I came to CGR because of an email that was sent detailing some information on "55+" campgrounds. Hmm .. Sounds like an interesting way to filter the list, so -- let me try to search on 55+ campgrounds.

Seems that I cannot search using that criteria. I can type in "55" into the search bar, and I see about 10-ish results, with the tease that there are more. I click on "Show me more" link at the bottom of the pop-down, and I go to a review for a campground in Mobile AL, which is not a 55+ site.

So -- 2 observations:
1) Please do include / improve on the ability to search for characteristics of a campground (pull throughs, 50A, 55+, etc) -- like a "enhanced search" page
2) if you do have a link that teases that there will be an additional list, please do show the list.

I completely understand that this is a work in progress. If you can put these on the feature backlog, that would be great. Thanks!

Mike

 

Thanks, GiantMike, for your suggestions, and I'm so glad you acknowledged that this is still a work in progress because our search and filtering functions need some work.

So let me first tell you that typing 55 into the search box is not the way to find 55+ parks. Currently this is what you need to do:

First, go to a state page.

In little, tiny letters just under the line that states the number of campgrounds, there will be the words
"Filter Results" followed by the categories of filters--Park Types, Park Features, etc.

Click on one of the filter category tabs, and a check list of items in that category will be displayed.

Click the check mark of items you would like for the park to be or to have. Notice that as you choose items, the count of parks changes because the system is eliminating or adding parks that to meet your chosen criteria.

It is my understanding that your filtering choices will not be changed or deleted until you manually do so. That means whatever criteria you set for one search will be carried over to all other searches until you change the criteria.

By the way 55+ is under the Park Features tab.

This is not yet work quite like we want it to, but this should get you started in locating the parks with the amenities you want.

Please let us know if we can assist you further, and thanks for your support.

 

I’m a long-time user and can’t believe what’s happened here. I’m not usually negative but, what a mess you’ve made of what used to be a great park review website. I just did a search for Ft. Bragg, Ca and no results came up. This site had always been my “go to” site while traveling to find parks to stay in and leave reviews. I’m very disappointed that you changed the way it worked. What happened to the saying, “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.” I guess I’ll be using the All Stays app going forward.