Closing Between Christmas and New Year

Deciding is the easy part

Most businesses settle their closure dates in November and then write them in a single place, usually a line on the contact page.

The customer who turns up, telephones, or writes over that week did not read the contact page.

They looked at the listing, or they sent a message and waited, or they simply drove over.

So the useful work is not deciding the dates; it is publishing them in the places people actually check.

The six places

• The site, visibly on the home page.
• The listing's special hours.
• The automatic email reply.
• The voicemail message.
• Your social profiles.
• The order confirmation.

The second matters most and is used least. A local listing has a dedicated field for holiday hours, and setting it means the closure appears directly in search results and on the map, where more people look than visit your website.

Use special hours, not regular hours

Which is the specific mechanism worth knowing.

Editing your normal opening hours to show closed is the version people reach for and it is wrong.

The listing has a separate holiday hours setting that applies only on the dates you name, and reverts on its own afterwards.

That means there is nothing to remember to change back in January, which is where the other approach fails.

Set every affected date individually, including the days you are open with shorter hours.

Fifteen minutes now removes both the closure problem and the reopening one.

A worked example

A business closed from the twenty-third to the second and put it on the contact page.

Over that week they had four people turn up to a locked door, two of whom had checked the listing, which showed the normal hours.

One left a review mentioning it.

The following year they set the special hours on the listing, added a line to the home page, changed the automatic reply, and recorded a new voicemail.

Nobody turned up and the review from the previous year stopped being the most recent thing anybody read.

The whole difference was twenty minutes in late November.

Say when you reopen, not just that you are closed

Which is the part that keeps the enquiry.

Closed until further notice, or closed for the holidays, tells somebody nothing about what to do.

Closed from the twenty-third, reopening on the second, gives them a decision: wait, or go elsewhere.

A good share will wait if they know how long, and almost nobody waits for an unknown period.

Put the reopening date in every one of the six places, since it is the more useful half of the message.

For anything urgent, say who to contact instead, or say plainly that nothing can be done until you return.

The automatic reply is doing real work

Which most businesses set carelessly.

Somebody writing on the twenty-seventh will get that message and nothing else for a week.

Say the dates, say when you will reply, and say what to do if it cannot wait.

Avoid the version that only apologises, since a message saying sorry for any inconvenience without a date is the one that generates a second message.

Set it to switch on the evening before you close rather than the morning after, which is a common off-by-one that leaves the first day silent.

And set the end date, so it does not still be running in mid-January.

Trades and services need the same thing

Which gets overlooked because there is no door to lock.

A customer with a problem over that week needs to know whether you attend emergencies, at what rate, and on which days.

Say that plainly rather than leaving it to a voicemail nobody checks.

Where you genuinely do not attend, saying so lets somebody find who does, and they will still call you in March.

Where you do, say the number and what counts as an emergency, since otherwise you will field calls about things that could have waited.

Put a reminder in for the reopening

Which is the step that closes the loop.

The first working day back, remove the banner, switch off the automatic reply, and change the voicemail.

A site still announcing a Christmas closure in the second week of January is a specific and common signal that nobody is looking after the business.

Set that reminder now, while you are setting everything else, since January is exactly when nobody remembers.

The listing's special hours are the only one that handles itself.

Check what your suppliers are doing

Which affects the dates you can honestly publish.

Your own reopening date is worth very little if the wholesaler you depend on is shut until the eighth, or the courier is not collecting until the fourth.

Ask now, in the same week you set your own dates, so that the reopening you announce is one where you can actually do something.

A business open on the second with nothing arriving until the ninth is better off saying so than taking orders it cannot move.

That is one email to each supplier and it decides whether your first week back is productive or spent apologising.

The counter-case

Some businesses do not close.

A shop, a restaurant, or anything serving people who are themselves off work may find that week among the busiest of the year.

Announcing a closure too prominently in November can also read as a business winding down, particularly for a service that people are deciding about now.

And for a business whose customers are all regulars on account, a single email covers the whole thing entirely.

Set the listing's special hours, put the dates and the reopening on the home page, rewrite the automatic reply, and diary the removal.

What to do

1. Set special hours on the listing.
2. Every affected date, individually.
3. A line on the home page.
4. Rewrite the automatic reply.
5. Change the voicemail.
6. Say the reopening date.
7. Diary the removal.

Step one reaches the most people for the least effort, since a closure set in the listing appears in search results and on the map, which is where somebody checks before driving over.

The enquiry side is covered in closing over the holidays without losing enquiries.

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.