A website for a seasonal business

Never take the site down

Search visibility is slow to build and fast to lose. A site that disappears for seven months has to be rediscovered, reindexed and retrusted every year, which is why seasonal businesses so often feel invisible at the start of a season.

It also loses the research traffic. People plan holidays, weddings, pools and heating months in advance, and the page they read in February is the one they call in May.

Leaving the site live costs almost nothing. Changing its message costs an hour. Those two facts together settle the question for essentially every seasonal business.

What the site should say out of season

Say plainly that you are out of season, when you start again, and when bookings open. Vagueness produces enquiries you cannot serve and visitors who assume you have closed permanently.

Then give the out-of-season visitor something to do. Join a list, register interest, book early, or read the guide that answers what they are researching right now.

And keep the educational pages fully live. They are the reason somebody arrives in the quiet months, and they work identically whether or not you are currently trading.

The pages that earn in the quiet months

Planning content, mostly. How far ahead to book, what to prepare, what the season typically costs, what goes wrong when people leave it late.

Those pages are read by people who are not ready to buy and will be. Capturing that attention early is worth more than a page that only speaks to somebody ready to book today.

Our page on search intent covers why research questions and booking questions need separate pages, which matters more for a seasonal business than most.

The seasonal routine

This is the cycle we would set up for any seasonal business. It takes about an hour at each of four points in the year, and it removes the annual scramble entirely.

• A single banner or line stating the current season status
• Booking dates published as soon as they are known
• Out-of-season enquiry route that somebody checks weekly
• Planning content live all year, untouched by the season
• Hours updated in the site and in every business profile
• A note of what to change at each season boundary
• Photographs added at the end of each season, not the start

Hours and profiles

Business profiles usually allow seasonal hours, and using that feature properly prevents the confident wrong answers an answer engine gives when a profile shows you open in January.

Update the site and the profiles together. Our page on consistent business details covers why a disagreement between them produces the worst outcome, which is somebody turning up.

Then check both again at the season boundary. This is the thing most often forgotten, and it is forgotten in the week you are busiest.

Taking enquiries you cannot serve yet

Answer them anyway, with a clear date. Somebody who hears back in February saying bookings open in April usually books in April, and somebody who hears nothing books elsewhere.

An automatic reply is acceptable provided it says something real. A holding message that gives no date is close to no reply at all.

And keep the list. A seasonal business with a list of people who asked early has the strongest start to a season available to it, and it costs nothing to maintain.

Using the quiet time

The off season is when the site can actually be improved. Photographs from the season just finished, the questions that came up, the pages that were never written because there was no time.

Do it immediately after the season rather than immediately before the next one. The material is fresh, the memory is accurate, and the work is not competing with customers.

Our page on keeping content current covers the routine, and a seasonal business has a natural calendar for it that most businesses lack.