Map the months when customers research, buy and go quiet, then schedule site changes, photographs and ads so each is ready a month or two before demand arrives, not during it.

Work that lands at the wrong time

In a seasonal business, website work tends to happen whenever someone finds a spare afternoon. That afternoon rarely comes at the right time.

The redesign goes live in the busiest month, when the owner is on site from seven until dark and cannot answer the designer's questions.

The advertising starts after the phone is already ringing. The gallery still shows work from three summers ago, because the photographs that would replace it were never taken.

None of this is carelessness. It is what happens when the year has a plan for the work but none for the website.

The first week of January, with the calendar still mostly empty, is the cheapest moment to fix that.

The parts of a seasonal year

Most businesses with a busy season move through the same phases, even if the months differ.

The first is the one most plans miss. People look well before they pick up the phone, so a site that is being fixed while they look is being fixed too late.

Find your own months

Start with last year's invoices, bookings or job sheets, counted by month. A rough tally on one sheet of paper is enough.

Then open Analytics and look at visits to the site by month over the same period.

In most seasonal businesses the two curves do not line up. Visits climb weeks or months before the work does, because people research before they commit.

The gap between those curves is the number that matters. Everything the site needs has to be ready before visits start to rise, not before the work starts.

Big changes belong in the quiet months

A redesign, a new section or a move to a different platform needs the owner's attention: answers, photographs, approvals and a careful look before launch.

The quiet months are the only time most owners can give that attention. They are also the months when a problem after launch costs the least.

Count backwards from the research months. A site that goes live a month or two before visits start to climb has time to be checked, corrected and found by search engines before it matters.

Anything that cannot be finished by then is better held over to the next quiet period than launched in the middle of the rush.

A worked example

A deck builder with one crew of four works from April to October, building and replacing decks for homeowners in a suburb east of the city.

Two years ago he commissioned a new website in March. It went live at the end of May, when the crew was booked into August, after the designer's questions had sat unanswered for weeks.

That June, after one quiet week worried him, he switched on a search advertising campaign. It brought calls for work he could not start until the autumn, and most of those callers did not wait.

The mechanism was plain once he looked. His customers start thinking about decks when the snow melts and the boards look grey, and they ask for quotes in March and April.

Last year he planned around that. Photographs of each finished deck went into one folder through the summer, the site was updated in January, and the ads ran from late February until the schedule filled.

The site and the ads were much the same as before. Only the timing changed.

Photographs are a busy-season job

There is a catch in all this. The photographs a site needs can only be taken while the work is happening, which is exactly when nobody has time.

The answer is a habit rather than a project: one or two photographs of each finished job, taken on a phone before the crew packs up, saved to one shared folder.

By the quiet months there is a season's worth to choose from.

Ads go on before demand

Paid advertising follows the same calendar. A Google AdWords or Facebook campaign started as the research months begin catches people while they are still choosing.

The first weeks of any campaign go on adjustment: which searches bring useful clicks, which bring none, which wording works. Those weeks are better spent before the season than during it.

Clicks also tend to cost more in the busy months, because every competitor is bidding for the same searches at once.

When the schedule is full, turn the campaign down. Paying for calls you will have to refuse helps nobody.

Leave the busy season alone

Once the season starts, the site should change as little as possible.

No new themes, no experiments with plugins, no restructuring of pages. Security updates still go in, and so do corrections to hours, prices and availability.

A short line saying how far ahead you are booked is worth keeping current. It answers the question most callers are about to ask.

One page for the whole year

The plan does not need software. A single page with twelve lines, one per month, is enough.

Each line says what customers are doing that month, what the site needs to be ready for, what the advertising should be doing and who is responsible.

Give a copy to whoever maintains the site and runs the advertising, so their requests arrive in months when you can answer them.

The counter-case

Some businesses have no real season. A dental office or an emergency plumber sees steady demand, and the calendar matters less to them.

Even there, the year usually has quieter weeks, and big website changes are better scheduled into them than squeezed between appointments.

A new business without a year of records has less to go on, but the pattern of the trade is a reasonable start.

For everyone else the advice stands: map the year first, then put each piece of website work ahead of the demand it serves.

Where to start

  1. Count last year's jobs by month.
  2. Check site visits by month in Analytics.
  3. Mark the months when people start looking.
  4. Book big changes for the quiet months.
  5. Start a photograph folder for this season.
  6. Set start dates for this year's advertising.
  7. Share the plan with whoever maintains the site.

Step three is the one everything else depends on. Once you know when people start looking, the rest of the calendar arranges itself around that month.

A one-page plan started this week will be worth more in March than a better plan started in May.

Frequently asked questions

Why does website work land at the wrong time?

Because it happens whenever someone finds a spare afternoon. In a seasonal business that is often the busy season, when nobody can answer questions or check the result.

How do I find my own busy months?

Count last year's invoices or bookings by month, then compare visits to the site by month in Analytics. Visits usually rise weeks or months before the work does.

When should a redesign go live?

In the quiet months, a month or two before visits start to climb. That leaves time to check and correct it before customers arrive in numbers.

When should seasonal advertising start?

As the research months begin, while people are still choosing. The first weeks of any campaign go on adjustment, and those weeks are better spent before the season.

How do I get photographs taken in season?

Make it a habit: one or two phone photographs of each finished job, saved to one shared folder. By the quiet months there is a season to choose from.

What if my business has no season?

The calendar matters less, but most years still have quieter weeks. Schedule big website changes into those rather than squeezing them between appointments.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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