Count back from your busy season. A project started in September usually runs into the holidays, so use July and August for the brief, quotes, content and photographs, and let the build run in the autumn.

Started in September, live in January

Every autumn, a familiar plan takes shape: once things settle down after the summer, the business will finally sort out the website.

September is spent asking for quotes. October goes on choosing a company and agreeing a design. By November, the content is due just as the busiest weeks of the year begin.

December stops everything. People are away, the business is flat out, and nobody wants a new site going live in the middle of it.

The new site launches in January or February, after the season it was meant for. The same plan, started in July, ends very differently.

How an autumn project slides

The third does the most damage. Writing about the business takes quiet hours, and a project timed this way asks for them in exactly the weeks when there are none.

Count back from the busy season

Start with the date your busy season begins, not the date you would like to start the project.

Go back a few weeks from there for settling in: fixing what real customers find, letting search engines pick up the new pages, and giving staff time to learn the site.

Go back again for the design and the build, which take several weeks each for most small business sites, with your reviews in between.

What is left is the time for planning: the brief, the quotes, the content and the photographs. For a site needed by October, that time is now.

Different businesses, different seasons

Busy seasons vary. A gift shop is busiest in December, a heating company in the first cold weeks, a gym in January, a tax preparer in the spring.

The arithmetic is the same for all of them. Plan in the quiet months, build in the months before the rush, and launch with a margin before it starts.

For many businesses the summer is the quieter stretch, which is why it suits planning. If yours is busiest in summer, the same logic points to planning in the winter instead.

What summer is good for

Most of the work that holds a project up needs the business, not the developer, and a quieter month is the time to do it.

Write the brief, so that quotes can be compared. Gather the logins for the domain, hosting and email, which always take longer to find than expected.

Look at the current site's figures: which pages people visit, which they land on from search, which forms produce enquiries. Those pages and their addresses need care in a rebuild.

And note the questions customers ask over the summer. They are the raw material for the new pages, collected while there is time to listen.

Photographs while the light is good

Summer is the easiest time to photograph almost anything: long days, dry weather, finished outdoor work and staff who are not run off their feet.

Premises look better in July than in a November drizzle, and a photographer can be booked for a morning without competing with the holiday rush.

Work done in the busy season can be photographed then and added to the site later. The images the design depends on should exist before the design starts.

A worked example

A fireplace and wood stove showroom in an Okanagan town does much of its business between September and December, when people want heat installed before winter.

Last year the owner decided in September to replace the site. Quotes took most of the month, the design was approved in late October, and the content waited behind the installation season.

The new site went live in late January, after the months it was meant to help with.

This year the brief was written in June and quotes compared in early July. The owner is writing the product pages now, and the showroom and several summer installations have been photographed.

The build is booked for August and September, with launch set for the last week of September, ahead of the first cold weather.

Holidays on both sides

Summer planning has one trap of its own: the people who decide are often away in August.

Agree the decisions that need the owner or the partners before they leave, and name who can approve things in their absence.

Ask the company you choose about its own holidays too. A studio closed for two weeks in August is fine, provided both calendars were checked in July.

Leave room before the rush

Launching the week the busy season starts leaves no room for anything to go wrong, and something always needs adjusting in the first weeks of a new site.

Forms need testing with real enquiries, redirects from old addresses need checking, and search engines take time to settle on the new pages.

A margin of a few weeks turns those into small jobs done calmly, rather than urgent ones squeezed in between customers.

The counter-case

Not every website job needs a season of planning.

A few page updates, new photographs or a corrected price list can happen whenever there is an afternoon free.

A site that is broken, hacked or marked Not secure in Chrome should not wait for a planning cycle. Fix that part now and plan the rest.

And a business whose busy season has already begun may do better to plan this autumn for a January build.

For a full rebuild, though, the planning belongs in the quiet months, and for many businesses those months are now.

Before the end of August

  1. Write down when your busy season starts.
  2. Count back to a launch date.
  3. Write the brief and ask for quotes.
  4. Agree decisions before anyone goes on holiday.
  5. Gather every login the site depends on.
  6. Book the photographs while the light lasts.
  7. Start the content before the build begins.

Step two is what makes the rest happen. A launch date counted back from the season turns a vague autumn plan into a list of jobs with dates on them.

Keeping the content on schedule once the project starts is covered in the website waiting on your content.

Frequently asked questions

Why do autumn website projects run late?

Quotes take weeks, the first meeting waits for holidays to end, content is written in the busiest months, and December stops everything. A September start often launches in January.

How do I work out when to start?

Take the date your busy season begins, go back a few weeks for settling in, then back again for design and build. What remains is your planning time.

What can be done in the summer?

Writing the brief, comparing quotes, gathering logins, reviewing which pages work, noting customers' questions, drafting content and booking photographs. Most of it needs the business, not the developer.

Why photograph in the summer?

Long days, dry weather and finished outdoor work make it the easiest time, and photographers are easier to book than in the holiday rush. The design needs those images first.

How close to the busy season should we launch?

A few weeks before it, at least. The first weeks of a new site always need adjustments, from form testing to redirects, and they are easier done before the rush.

What if our busy season is the summer?

The same arithmetic applies. Plan in your quiet months, build in the months before the rush, and launch with a margin, which for a summer business means planning in winter.

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.

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