By Appointment Only and the Hours on the Map

Hours for a door that is usually locked

Some businesses see customers only by appointment: a design studio, a tailor, a financial planner, a workroom whose staff spend half the day out on jobs.

Their Google My Business listing still asks for opening hours. Leave the hours blank and the listing sits in search results beside competitors marked open now. Enter office hours and people drive over to a locked door.

Since early August, Google's local results have shown three businesses rather than seven. A listing that looks closed, or one that sends people to a locked door, is easy to pass over in a list that short.

The answer is to say the same true thing everywhere a customer decides whether to come.

What goes wrong either way

• No hours at all, so the listing looks uncertain beside ones marked open.
• Office hours, so walk-ins arrive while the only person is out on a job.
• Hours in the listing, with appointments mentioned only deep in the website.
• A door sign with no phone number or booking address.
• A booking form buried at the bottom of the contact page.

The third is the most common. The listing and the website each tell half the story, and many people read only the listing before getting in the car.

List the hours someone answers

For an appointment business, the useful hours are the ones when someone answers the phone and can book a visit.

Entered in the listing, those hours say truthfully when you can be reached, and the listing no longer looks abandoned beside its neighbours.

On their own they do not tell anyone the door is locked, which is why the next step matters as much as this one.

If calls go to voicemail at lunch or during site visits, say in the greeting and on the website how soon they are returned.

Say it where people decide to come

Write by appointment in the first line of the listing's introduction, which for now appears on the Google+ page connected to the listing.

Put the same words beside the address on every page of the website, not just the contact page, since many people copy the address from a footer.

Add it to the Facebook page's About section, the email signature and the business card. Keep the wording identical everywhere: visits by appointment, then how to book one.

Make booking the obvious next step

Someone who has just read by appointment needs to know straight away how to make one.

Put a book a visit link in the website's header on every page, next to the phone number, which should dial with a tap on phones.

The booking page should say what happens at a visit, how long it takes, what to bring and how soon you usually reply. A form asking for a few preferred times saves a round of emails.

Point the listing's website field at a page where booking comes first, so a searcher who taps through from the map lands on the next step.

A worked example

A drapery workroom in a light industrial unit makes custom curtains, drapes, valances and cushions for homeowners and interior designers. The front of the unit is a sample room lined with fabric books; the back is the workroom.

The owner and her installer spend most afternoons measuring windows and hanging finished drapes in clients' homes, so the sample room is often locked.

Her listing showed nine to five on weekdays, entered when she verified it. Every week or two someone arrived with a cushion or a photo of a window to find nobody there, and two said so in reviews.

For a while she removed the hours. The listing then showed none, beside competitors marked open, and one caller asked whether the workroom had closed.

What fixed it was one message, repeated: phone hours of nine to four in the listing, sample room by appointment at the start of the introduction, and the same line beside the address on every page.

A book a visit link now sits in the website's header, the door carries the phone number and the booking address, and the Facebook page and Bing listing show the same hours.

The door itself

Some people will still arrive without booking. The door should turn them into appointments rather than complaints.

A sign reading by appointment, with the phone number in large type and the web address for booking, lets someone standing there book on the spot.

If someone is often in the back, say so: call from the door and we will come out if we can. A locked door with a friendly line on it feels very different from a locked door with nothing.

Holiday weeks and days away

This week is a good test. Many appointment businesses close between Christmas and New Year, and the listing should say so.

Change the listing's hours for the days you are closed, give the reopening date on the website and in the phone greeting, and set a reminder to put the usual hours back.

The same goes for a week at a trade show or a summer holiday. A listing showing the usual hours while you are away sends people to the door you most want them to avoid.

Every listing saying the same

Each of the other listings has its own hours field: Bing Places, Apple Maps Connect, Facebook and your trade's directories.

Enter the same phone hours in each, with the same by appointment line wherever there is room. Listings that disagree leave customers unsure which one to believe.

The counter-case

A studio or workroom that welcomes walk-ins at set times, Saturday mornings perhaps, should list those as its hours and mention appointments for the rest of the week.

A business that never receives customers at its address can be listed as a service-area business with the address hidden, and the hours question mostly falls away.

For the rest, the advice stands: list the hours you answer, say by appointment wherever a customer decides to come, and make booking the next step.

This week

1. Decide the hours someone answers and books.
2. Enter those hours in the Google listing.
3. Start the introduction with by appointment.
4. Add it beside the address on every page.
5. Put a booking link in the website's header.
6. Put the phone number on the door.
7. Match Facebook, Bing and Apple Maps.

Step four prevents more wasted trips than any other. Many people copy the address from the website rather than the map, and a footer that says by appointment beside it reaches them before they set out.

Timing a listing for a business that has not opened its doors yet is covered in a listing for a shop that has not opened yet.

Frequently asked questions

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.