Web design for a St Kilda cafe, day spa or studio has to work in two very different months. In January the site is under load, and most of it is read by a first-time visitor. In June the same pages are read by a local checking whether you are open on a Tuesday. Both want an answer in seconds.
A seasonal business has no average month, so its website has two jobs at two times of year. Many small business websites are built for one anyway. The site ends up right for the busy season and a little wrong for the rest of the year.
You might run a cafe, a bar or a restaurant near the foreshore. You might run a small hotel or a short-stay apartment. You might run a day spa, a beauty room, a yoga or pilates studio, or an allied health clinic a few streets back. The trade moves the same way for all of you. Summer brings visitors, and a free music festival on the foreshore in February. Winter brings locals and a lot of quiet Tuesdays.
A seasonal trade is one where demand rises and falls with the calendar instead of staying level all year.
Three things go wrong on a seasonal website, and none of them is dramatic. The first is copy that was true in one season and wrong in the other. A page written in summer still talks about long days, walk-ins and a timetable that stopped in March.
The second fault is opening hours nobody changed when the season turned. Hours live in three places at once. One is the website. One is your Google Business Profile, the free listing that carries your hours, photos and reviews in search results. One is the booking platform that takes tables or appointments online. A change made in one place is not a change. How that listing gets ranked is a separate subject, covered in how Melbourne service businesses show up in Google’s map pack.
The third fault is a booking path sized for the quiet month. Two taps and a form is fine when a handful of people a day use it. It holds up less well on the first hot Saturday. By then the person filling it in is standing on a footpath with one hand full.
None of the three faults looks like a problem in June. The site loads, the phone rings, the week fills. The cost lands in January, when the page is being read by people who will not wait.
Peak season is the stretch where demand runs ahead of what you can serve. It changes four things about the site.
Peak season changes how many people open the page at once, so anything slow gets slower at the worst moment. It changes where the decision happens, because at seven on a Friday nobody inside can reach the phone. It changes how fast the hours have to be right. A public holiday or a late opening is checked by people who are already out.
The fourth change is what the page says when there is nothing left. A venue with no table at eight is not out of options. It can offer a waitlist, an earlier sitting, a quieter night or a seat at the bar. A site that fails at the booking step sends that customer to the next place along the street.
The two main streets ask for different things. Acland Street is a street people walk down while they eat, so the site gets opened while someone is standing outside. Fitzroy Street is a street people arrive at, often having decided in the car. The first needs the quick answers at the top. The second needs a reason to have chosen you before the drive.
The rest of the operational detail is covered in why a restaurant website has to work during service. That piece takes the menu, the hours, the booking path and the phone during a shift. Read it before you brief anyone.
Wellness and allied health cover day spas, beauty and massage rooms, yoga and pilates studios, and clinics such as physiotherapy.
This customer is making a longer decision than a diner. They are choosing a person, not a room. They are often booking a course of appointments rather than one hour. So the site has a job before the booking. It has to help someone work out whether this is the right place for them.
Helping someone choose means saying who does the work, what they treat most, and what a first visit involves. A list of service names answers none of it. Someone who has to ring to find out what happens in a first appointment often does not ring.
The winter job is different again. When the summer visitors go, the business runs on locals. The site then has to speak to a returning client as well as a new one. What has changed, what is on this season’s timetable, and what a regular can book without asking.
One line matters more than the rest here. A wellness business and a registered health practice are not the same thing in what they can publish. The second is held to a higher standard. The reasons are set out in why health, money and legal websites are held to a higher standard. Read that first if you write your own treatment copy.
If several practitioners work under one roof, that brings its own questions. There is a piece on what a multi-practitioner clinic website needs that a sole practitioner site doesn’t.
A visitor is here once, or for a weekend. A local could come back fifty times. One site has to satisfy both.
The visitor is choosing between you and the next place along the street, with no history to go on. They want the quick answers. Are you open, what does it cost, can I get in today, is there room for a pram. They will not scroll for any of it.
The local is deciding whether you are worth a habit. They already know the quick answers. What they want is what changes. This season’s timetable, the new menu, the membership, the ten-visit pass, the night that is never busy.
One site serves both by stacking them. Quick answers where a thumb lands first. Reasons to come back underneath, for the person still reading.
A business near the bay sits close to several other suburbs, so one question comes up every time. Does each of them need its own page? The answer is in why the suburb next door decides how easily customers find you.
The work that makes January easier is done in June. Not because winter is spare time, but because it is the only stretch where you can look at the site properly.
Four things are worth the hours. Check that every page says what the business does now, in the words you would use today. Check the hours everywhere they appear and make them agree. Open the booking path on a phone, on mobile data, and go through it as a customer would. Then check that you can change any of it yourself, on the day.
Whether you can make changes yourself decides how well the site survives a season. A site built on WordPress, which is a system you log into and edit yourself, keeps the small changes in your hands. Ask for a training session when the site is handed over. Hours, prices and a timetable need changing on a Tuesday afternoon, not next week.
Settle the ownership question in writing too. CJ Digital’s web design page says the site is yours, with no lock-in contract. It also says you are free to host it or move it wherever you choose. Ask for the same from whoever builds yours.
If the list includes new pages for the season ahead, give them a run-up. Pages take time to be found. The rhythm of writing them early is set out in how to fill a workshop in quiet months.
Here is the check worth running today. Look at what your website says about your opening hours. Then look at what your Google Business Profile says. Then look at what your booking system says. Where the three disagree, the one the customer believes is the one they found first.
Not all of it. Change the parts that date: the hours, what is available now, and anything naming a season or a timetable. The rest of the page should read the same in both months.
Start in the quiet stretch before the season, rather than the week bookings begin. Anything new needs time before it earns a place in search results. The busiest fortnight of the year is a poor time to find a fault.
Say that it is full, then say what to do instead. Somewhere to join a queue, a time that is open, or a night with room all keep the customer with you. A dead end sends them back to search.
Usually the same website, with the parts that date kept current. The question worth asking is not whether the site is old. It is whether you can change those parts yourself on the day.
