Whether it’s opening more, less or not at all these holidays – make sure you let visitors know!
Amidst the chaos of the festive season, updating your advertised operating hours can often fall off the to-do list. We’ve put together a handy checklist as a guide to help with your updates.
Here’s what you should be updating:
- Your website – Depending on your site’s capabilities, you may want to simply do a holiday opening times blog post or feature banner.
- Social media – This may be as a Story mention, post on the feed or temporary update to your bio. Your followers will consume content in different ways so it’s good to cover a few bases. If you’ll be offline, it may be worth setting up an autoreply in your messages to let anyone that messages you know you’re closed or operating at fewer hours.
- Google My Business profile – Luckily Google has a feature to add holiday opening times and it’s pretty easy to update. They may even prompt you to change it!
- ATDW listings – We often talk about the importance of ATDW listings, and it’s because this is how visitors find you on the Visit Geelong Bellarine, Visit Victoria and even the Tourism Australia websites. And these sites get a lot of eyes!
- Other listings – Much like ATDW, you may have your business listed on other external or third party websites to be updated.
- Delivery apps – An easy one to forget but frustrating for customers if it’s left up and running.
- Signage – Be sure to pop a sign on your front door to let customers know your updated operating hours or when you’ll reopen.
- Phone message – If you can, a quick message to let callers know your updated hours goes a long way.
- Collaborators – Are you working with any businesses on deals, or maybe you have an agreement to recommend each other? Be sure to let these businesses know you’re closed or changed hours if it will impact these arrangements.
Tip: It pays to list specific dates you’re closed and reopening (for instance, Wednesday 28 December rather than just Wednesday) to avoid any confusion and in case you forget to update it afterwards.
Staying open on Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day? Outside of your own channels there are many ways to let people know. Community Facebook groups are a great way to reach a large group of people (depending on the group posting rules), and publications like Forte Magazine often do listicles on where to grab a coffee or bite to eat on these days to let their readers know.
Does crossing things off on paper spark joy? We’ve got you. We’ve made a printable checklist you can download and print here.
Don’t forget to revisit this list when you’re back to usual operating hours to let customers know. It may even be worth setting yourself a calendar reminder.
