4 min read#opening-hours#local-business#consistency

Keeping Opening Hours Right Everywhere

Why your hours must match on your website, Google profile and social pages, plus a simple routine for holidays and who updates what.

Field note: few things annoy a customer more than driving to a closed door because a website said you were open. Opening hours are small facts that live in many places, and the trouble starts when one place is updated and the others are forgotten.

Where your hours live

Count the places. Your website. Your Google Business Profile. Your social media pages. A sign on the door. Maybe a delivery app, a directory or a booking page. Each one carries a copy of your hours, and each copy ages differently.

The first step is simply to list them, because you cannot keep in sync what you have not found.

Pick one source of truth

Decide where hours get decided: a note on your phone, a page in a notebook, a line in a shared document. Whenever the hours change, change that first, then update every other place from it. This stops the common mistake of editing the website and forgetting the profile, and then wondering which one customers are seeing.

Write the hours the same way everywhere. “Mon to Fri 9 to 5” in one place and “Weekdays nine till five” in another is not wrong, but identical wording makes mismatches easy to spot.

Plan holidays early

Holiday hours are where most mismatches happen. Settle them a couple of weeks ahead and update everything in one sitting. Google lets you set special hours for particular dates, and your website can carry a short, clear note near the top. Take the note down when the holiday has passed, or the next visitor will wonder whether it still applies.

Decide who is responsible

If several people could update the hours, make sure one person is named as the owner. Without that, everyone assumes someone else did it. A short line in your routine, such as “first of every month: check hours in all places”, keeps this from depending on memory.

Test like a customer

Once a month, look up your business the way a customer would. Search your name on your phone, read the hours the search shows, then open your website and compare. Ask a friend to check one of your social pages. It takes five minutes and catches the drift before a customer does.

An example

This is an invented before and after, shown only as wording. Example Cafe checks its hours.

Before: website says open until six, Google says five, the Facebook page lists last year’s weekend hours, and the door sign says five.

After: one note holds the hours. Website, Google profile and Facebook all read “Mon to Sat 7 to 5, closed Sunday”. Holiday hours are scheduled two weeks ahead.

What to do when plans change suddenly

Sometimes you close unexpectedly: illness, weather, a broken oven. Keep a fast route ready. Know how to post a short notice on your social pages and your Google profile within minutes, and have a banner line on your website that you can switch on. Customers are remarkably forgiving about a closure they were told about, and unforgiving about one they discovered at the door.

Common mistakes

  • Updating the website and nothing else.
  • Leaving holiday notices up long after the holiday.
  • Having no named owner for the task.
  • Writing hours differently in each place.
  • Never checking what customers actually see.

Try this today

  1. List every place your hours appear, including apps and directories.
  2. Write your correct hours once and copy them to each place word for word.
  3. Put a monthly reminder in your calendar to check them as a customer would.

Field notes

  • Hours live in many places, and each copy ages separately.
  • Keep one source of truth and update everything from it.
  • Plan holiday hours early and remove the notice afterwards.
  • Name one person responsible.
  • Check what customers see, not what you meant.

Would you rather not build all of this by hand? websiites.com creates a complete website from a paragraph about your business, and you can see the finished site before you pay anything. The how it works page walks through the steps.