Lead Times on a Page That Goes Stale

The specific problem

Published lead times are accurate on the day they are written and gradually stop being.

Nothing marks the transition. The page looks identical whether it was updated last week or three years ago, and the customer has no way to judge which.

So they read it as current, because there is no reason not to, and act on a figure that stopped being true in February.

Three ways to handle it

Date it. "As of early April, we are quoting three to four weeks." The reader can then judge whether that is still likely to hold.

Phrase it so it does not expire. "Lead times vary; we confirm a date when we quote." Always true, less useful.

Attach updating it to a routine. Reviewed at the same time as something else that happens monthly.

The first is the most useful and the most honest. A dated figure that is six weeks old still tells the reader something; an undated one tells them nothing reliable.

A worked example

A joinery workshop whose site said four to six weeks, written when that was true.

Eighteen months later they were running at ten to twelve. Nobody had thought about the page, because nobody in the business ever read it.

Every enquiry began with a customer expecting six weeks and a conversation correcting them. Perhaps a third went elsewhere at that point, having felt misled.

The change was a single dated line: current lead time, updated on a stated date, with a note that it is reviewed monthly.

Enquiries dropped and conversion rose sharply, because the people phoning had already accepted the timescale.

The owner's comment was that they had been advertising a service they had stopped offering, without noticing.

Where it goes stale unnoticed

• The homepage, where a figure was added during a quiet period.
• Service pages, each with its own number nobody reconciles.
• The frequently asked questions, which nobody revisits.
• Quote templates, carrying a standard paragraph.
• Automated emails, which are the worst because they are invisible.
• The listing description.

The fifth deserves attention. A confirmation email stating a lead time is sent to every customer and read by all of them, and it is edited less often than anything else.

The counter-case

Where publishing a lead time at all is the wrong move.

When it genuinely varies by job to the point that any single figure misleads. A range so wide it covers everything is not information.

When you are deliberately not competing on speed, and publishing a slower figure than competitors invites comparison on a dimension you would rather avoid.

And where the number moves weekly, in which case a published figure is stale by definition and the honest version is a statement about how you handle it.

The alternative in all three: describe the process and when a date is confirmed, which is durable and does not require maintenance.

Making the update happen

The mechanism matters more than the intention.

A reminder on its own does not survive, for the same reason monthly form tests do not: nothing goes wrong when you skip it.

What works is attaching it to something with its own deadline. Invoicing, payroll, a monthly stock order, a standing meeting.

Two minutes at the start of a task that already happens is a habit. Two minutes as its own standalone task is simply a task that gets postponed indefinitely.

Who reads it before enquiring

Worth knowing, because it explains why the figure matters at all.

Somebody checking a lead time before contacting you is usually deciding whether to bother. A figure they can live with produces an enquiry; one they cannot produces nothing, silently.

Which means an out-of-date optimistic figure attracts people whose expectations you will disappoint, and an out-of-date pessimistic one turns away people you could have served.

Both are costs, and neither shows up anywhere you would notice. The only symptom is enquiries that feel mismatched to what you can offer.

How precise to be

Less precise is frequently better, and it is not evasion.

"Currently around three weeks" is more robust than "twenty-one days" and conveys the same thing. It also survives a slight drift without becoming untrue.

What matters is that the figure is honest at the upper end. A range of two to four weeks where most jobs take four is technically accurate and reads as a two-week promise.

Lead with the number you actually achieve most of the time rather than the best case, which is exactly the same discipline that governs delivery estimates and quotes.

Saying that it changes

A sentence that buys considerable latitude.

"Lead times move with demand and supply; the figure above was accurate on the date shown and we confirm a date with every quote."

That tells the reader the number is indicative rather than a commitment, without being evasive, and it means a drift between updates does not constitute a broken promise.

It also sets up the conversation you want to have, which is about their specific job rather than a general figure that may or may not apply to it.

Removing it entirely

A legitimate option that gets overlooked.

If the figure has been wrong for a year, the honest move may be deleting it rather than correcting it, and replacing it with a description of how you confirm dates.

That costs you the customers who wanted to know before enquiring, and it is better than misleading them.

The middle position: no headline figure, and a sentence saying that current lead times are given with every quote and that you will tell somebody within a day of asking.

That commits you to responsiveness rather than to a number, which is a promise you can keep regardless of what your suppliers happen to be doing that month.

The audit worth doing once

1. Search your own site for weeks, days and turnaround.
2. Check every result against what is currently true.
3. Check your automated emails and quote template.
4. Check your listing description.
5. Date the ones you keep and delete the ones you cannot maintain.

The fifth is the important judgement. A figure you will not update is worse than no figure, because it will eventually be wrong and nobody, including you, will know when it started being so.

How to handle the conversation when the published figure no longer holds is covered in telling a customer their order is delayed.

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.