Keeping a seasonal business visible in the quiet months

Plenty of trades live on a curve. Landscapers and roofers are flat out in summer, heating engineers in winter, caterers around holidays, driving instructors when the weather turns. The busy half pays for the year.

The mistake is treating the quiet half as time when the website does not matter. It is the half that decides how the next busy season starts.

Search does not wait for your season

People plan earlier than they hire. Someone thinking about a garden in March is reading in January. Someone replacing a boiler before winter is looking in August, when you have nothing on.

Search results also move slowly. A page published today can take weeks to be found and longer to settle. If you wait until the season starts to say anything, you are arriving after the decisions have been made.

The quiet months are when the work you do on the site actually has time to take effect. That is the whole argument.

Three things worth doing in the quiet half

Write the pages you never have time for. The service you keep meaning to explain properly. The questions you answer on every call. In August you have the time and nothing competing for it, and what to write on a service page is the shape to follow. Those pages will be ranking by the time you need them.

Deal with the photos. You just finished a season of your best work and it is sitting on your phone. Pick the good ones now, while you remember which job was which, and shoot the gaps on your phone before the weather turns. In four months you will not.

Ask for the reviews you did not ask for. Not ideal, since asking on the day works far better, but a quiet week is still better than never. Start with the jobs you remember going well.

Say what you do in the off months

Most seasonal businesses do something in the quiet half and never mention it. The landscaper who does fencing and clearance in winter. The heating engineer who services in summer, which is the sensible time to service. The caterer who does small private dinners between the wedding months.

If it is not on the site, nobody knows to ask. A page for the off-season work is often the cheapest new revenue available, because you already do it and you already have the capacity.

It also flattens the curve slightly, which matters more than the money. A business that earns something in every month is a calmer business to run.

Do not hide the seasonality

Some owners go quiet on the site out of embarrassment about being slow. This backfires.

Say plainly what you are doing now and what you are booking for. "We are booking spring work from February, and doing fencing and clearance through the winter." That reads as a working business with a plan, not one that has stopped.

It also lets people book early, which is the single best thing that can happen to a seasonal trade. Someone who books in January for April has committed, and your season starts with work already in the diary.

The one thing to keep accurate

Whatever else slips, keep your hours and availability true. A seasonal business with last season's hours reads as closed, and a reader who thinks you are closed does not call to check.

If you work reduced hours in the quiet months, say the reduced hours. Accurate and modest beats optimistic and wrong.

The way to think about it

The quiet season is not downtime for the website. It is the only time of year you can work on it properly, and everything you do in it lands exactly when the phones start again.

The Instinctor team