Business hours on a website

Text, never an image

Hours set inside a graphic look neat and are invisible to everything that matters. A screen reader cannot read them, an answer engine cannot repeat them, and a visitor on a phone cannot select and copy them.

It is also the single commonest way hours go stale. Changing a line of text takes seconds; changing a designed image means finding the original file, which means it does not happen and the old hours stay up for another season.

Put them in the markup, in a list or a simple table, in the place a visitor expects. Our page on alt text covers the general principle, and hours are the clearest case of information that must never live only in a picture.

The profile matters more than the page

Most people never reach your website to check. They see a search result showing open or closed, and that status comes from your business profile rather than from anything you wrote on the site.

So the profile is the first thing to update and the site is the second. A page saying closed for the holidays alongside a profile saying open is the version that produces an annoyed customer standing outside.

Our page on consistent business details covers the wider set. Hours are where a disagreement costs you most immediately, because the customer finds out by being wrong-footed.

Say the awkward parts

Which days you are closed, not only which days you are open. A list showing Monday to Friday leaves a reader guessing whether Saturday is closed or simply omitted, and people guess generously then arrive.

Say what happens at the edges too. Whether the last appointment is an hour before closing, whether the phone is answered outside opening hours, and whether somebody is there during lunch.

Those details are what stop the calls that waste both sides' time, and they cost three lines. Most sites publish a grid of times and answer none of them.

What a reader actually needs

The list below is what somebody checks before setting out or picking up the phone. Publishing the grid alone answers the first item and leaves the rest to chance.

• The days you are open, and the days you are closed
• Whether the last appointment is before closing time
• Whether the phone is answered outside those hours
• Any regular closure, such as a lunch break
• Holiday and seasonal changes, with dates
• What to do when you are closed
• When the hours were last checked

Holiday and seasonal changes

Set them in advance. Most business profiles allow special hours to be entered ahead of time with the normal hours returning automatically, and using that feature removes the whole problem for a year at a time.

Write the dates explicitly rather than relatively. Closed from the twenty-fourth to the second is unambiguous; closed over the holidays is not, and different readers will guess different things from it.

Our page on seasonal hours covers the full routine, including the step people forget, which is putting the normal hours back afterward.

Keeping every copy in step

Your hours exist on the site, in the business profile, in directory listings, on the door, on the voicemail and in any automatic reply. That is six places and most businesses update two of them.

Keep a short list of everywhere they appear. It takes ten minutes to write once and turns the next change from a hunt into a checklist.

Then review the list when anything changes, and at least once a year regardless. Our page on keeping content current covers the habit that makes this stick.

What to say when you are closed

Whether messages are monitored, when somebody will reply, and what to do if it cannot wait. A closed business that answers those three loses far fewer customers than one that simply goes quiet.

An automatic reply is fine provided it says something real. A holding message with no date is close to no reply at all, and people move on to whoever answers.

If you have an emergency route, make it obvious. Our page on emergency pages covers what that page needs, and closed periods are when it is read most.