The off-season: getting a caravan or motorhome website ready for spring

When the touring season ends, the forecourt goes quiet. Buyers have not gone away, though. Many spend the winter evenings reading, comparing and making a shortlist. The work you put into your website now is what they find when they start looking in earnest in the new year.

Refresh your photos and videos

A caravan or motorhome is bought on its interior. Buyers want to see the washroom, the beds made up, the kitchen, the lockers and the condition of the upholstery. Go through your stock and reshoot anything taken in a hurry, in poor light or with the blinds half down.

• Shoot each vehicle in the same order, so buyers learn where to look.
• Show the beds made up as well as in day mode.
• Take close-ups of the things buyers ask about: the habitation door, the floor, the awning rail, the gas locker.
• Film a short walkthrough on your phone and put it on YouTube. Steady and well lit matters more than polished.

Our guide to video walkarounds is written for bikes, but the same habits work for leisure vehicles.

Fill in every layout, berth and spec detail

Leisure buyers shop by layout and berths first. A fixed-bed caravan that is not marked as fixed bed will not appear when a buyer filters for one. Use the quiet weeks to check every listing:

• Layout and berths, filled in on every vehicle.
• For motorhomes, belted seats and the base vehicle.
• For caravans, the weights a buyer needs to work out whether their car can tow it.
• The equipment that sells it: motor mover, solar panel, awning, bike rack.
• A description that reads as if someone has stood inside it.

Write the guides buyers are searching for

Winter is when people research. Answer the questions you are asked on the forecourt every summer, and you will be the dealer they found the answer from. Good places to start:

• Buying your first caravan: what to look for and what to ask.
• Towing basics: weights, licences and matching a car to a caravan, written carefully and checked against official guidance.
• Choosing a layout: fixed bed, island bed, end washroom or twin singles.
• Motorhome or caravan: which suits the way you travel.
• What to check on a used motorhome’s habitation side as well as its base vehicle.

Write one guide properly rather than five in a rush. Our list of blog ideas for dealers has more.

Build pages for the searches buyers make

Buyers rarely search for “caravans for sale”. They search for what they want: fixed-bed caravans, four-berth motorhomes, end-washroom caravans near them. A page for each of those searches, showing the matching stock and a short paragraph about why that layout suits some buyers, gives search engines a page that answers the question. Our guide to landing pages for buyer searches explains how to choose them.

Build them now, while you have time, so they have settled in before buyers come back.

Ask this season’s customers for reviews

The people who bought from you this year have had a season of trips. That makes them the best people to ask. A short, friendly message asking how the first season went, with a link to leave a review, is often welcome. Reply to every review, good or bad, and show them on your website where buyers are deciding.

Plan for the show season

If you attend shows, decide now what a visitor should find when they look you up afterwards. Usually that is a page about the show, the models you are taking, and an easy way to ask a question or book a viewing. Give the page an end date in your diary so it comes down once the show is over. An out-of-date event page does more harm than none.

Tidy the pages around your stock

Check your opening hours, especially if they change in winter. Check that your about page and team are current, that any offer has an end date, and that the contact form reaches the right person. Read the site on your phone, as a buyer would.

How MotoVend handles it

MotoVend has stock forms built for caravans and motorhomes, with layout and berth details buyers can filter by. You can add unlimited photos to each vehicle and embed a YouTube walkthrough on the listing. You can build your own landing pages for searches such as fixed-bed caravans, and write guides in the built-in blog. It is one plan, priced by the vehicles you have on sale, so through a quieter winter you pay for what you stock. See MotoVend for caravan dealers or for motorhome dealers.