Questions That Only Come Up Once a Year

The same fortnight every year

Every business has questions that arrive in a rush and then vanish for eleven months. When to book a furnace service. Which receipts the accountant needs. What to bring to the first class.

For a few weeks the phone and the inbox fill with the same handful of questions, answered one at a time, from memory, by whoever is free.

Then the season passes, and nobody thinks about them again until the next rush.

The website, meanwhile, says nothing about any of them.

Why they never get written

When the questions arrive, nobody has time to write. When there is time, nobody remembers the questions.

That is the whole mechanism, and it repeats every year. To the people answering them, the questions soon feel too obvious to write down.

Writing the answers is not the hard part. Catching the questions while they are fresh, and finding an hour before the next season, is what needs a habit.

Seasons that bring their own questions

• The first frost, for gardens, irrigation, furnaces and pipes.
• Tax time, for receipts, statements and year-end paperwork.
• The start of school, for courses, lessons, tutoring and daycare.
• The first hot week, for air conditioning, pools and patios.
• The holidays, for orders, gift cards, closures and delivery dates.
• Your own busy season, whatever and whenever it is.

The last is the one to start with. Every trade has one, and its questions are the ones your staff could recite in their sleep.

Catch the questions as they arrive

During the next rush, keep a sheet by the phone and a note on the shared computer. Every time a question repeats, add a tally mark.

Include everyone who handles the phone and the inbox, not just the owner. They hear questions the owner never does.

By the end of the season you have a list ranked by how often each question came up. That list is the brief for the page.

Write before the season

The best time to write the answers is a month or two before the questions start, when things are quiet and the details are still remembered.

Write each one as the question in the customer's words, followed by a short, direct answer. Put this year's dates in one clearly marked place, so they are easy to change next year.

Where the answer depends on circumstances, say what it depends on rather than avoiding the question.

What a good seasonal answer includes

The question exactly as customers ask it, since that is also how they search for it.

A direct answer in the first sentence, then the detail: dates, what to bring, what it costs, what happens if plans change.

A way to ask a follow-up, and a note of when the page was last checked, so readers know the dates are this year's.

A worked example

An adult education centre runs evening courses and daytime upgrading classes, with a fall term starting the week after Labour Day.

Every year, in the last two weeks of August, the front desk takes the same questions.

Where to park. Whether the textbook is needed for the first class. What happens if a course is cancelled, and how late someone can still enrol.

The answers existed, scattered across a printed handbook, the registration terms and the memories of two long-serving staff.

Last year the staff kept a tally of repeated questions during the August rush and again in January.

This July, one person wrote a page about starting a course in the fall, with each question answered in two or three sentences.

Since mid-August, the home page has carried a link to it just under the menu, and so has every registration confirmation.

After the second week of classes it moves back to the student information section, at the same address.

Staff answering the phone can now point to the page instead of reciting the answers.

Bring it forward at the right time

A seasonal answer buried in a general help page is nearly as invisible as no answer at all.

A few weeks before the season, link it from the top of the home page, from the related service pages and from any confirmation emails sent at that time of year.

When the season is over, take the home page link down, but leave the page itself where it is.

Use the answers more than once

The same answers make a newsletter that almost writes itself a fortnight before the season.

They also make good Facebook posts at the right moment, and a short script for whoever covers the phone.

New staff benefit too, learning the season's answers from the page rather than from whoever is least busy.

Written once, a good answer keeps working all season.

Why being early pays

People search these questions at the moment they arise, which is the same moment for everyone.

A page published months earlier has had time to be found and indexed by then. A page written during the rush arrives after it.

The same holds for anyone who might link to you, such as a school list or a neighbourhood group. They can only share what already exists.

Being early costs nothing. Being late means waiting a year for the next chance.

The counter-case

Not every question deserves a page. One asked twice a year is better answered on the phone, and a page for it only adds clutter.

Some answers change too much from year to year to publish early, such as prices set at the last minute. Publish what is stable and add the rest when it is decided.

And a business with one dominant season may do better with a single page than several small ones.

For the questions that arrive in a rush every year, though, write the answers before the rush.

Before the next season

1. Name your busiest weeks of the year.
2. Keep a tally of repeated questions this season.
3. Rank them by how often they came up.
4. Write the answers a month before the next rush.
5. Mark this year's dates in one place.
6. Link the page from the home page in season.
7. Move the link back when the season ends.

Step two cannot wait for a quieter month, because the questions are only easy to remember while people are asking them.

Keeping each seasonal page at one address from year to year is covered in seasonal pages reused every year.

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.