Holiday Booking Pages for a Service Business

December fills from the top

Salons, cleaners, photographers, caterers and anyone else with a holiday rush know the pattern. December Saturdays go first, then the evenings, then the week before Christmas.

By mid-November the business knows exactly what is left. Its website says nothing about it.

So every visitor has to ask. They send the form or leave a message, wait for an answer, and often put the same question to two other businesses while they wait.

Whoever replies first with a definite time usually gets the booking. A page that already says what is open has replied before anyone asked.

What a December visitor wants to know

• Whether anything is left before the holidays, in plain words.
• Which days and times are still open, week by week.
• The last day to book each kind of job.
• What can still be arranged once the popular dates have gone.
• How to book, and how quickly you confirm.
• When you close for the holidays, and when you reopen.

The fourth is the item December pages forget. A visitor told only that December is busy assumes it is full, when a weekday morning, a shorter service or an early January date was still available.

Why a silent page loses the booking

A December visitor is rarely browsing. They have a date in mind (an office party, a family photograph before relatives fly home, a clean house before guests arrive) and they want an answer today.

If your page cannot give one, they ask several businesses at once. The first reply with a real time in it tends to win, and the others spend their evening answering someone who has already booked.

The opposite mistake does damage too. A page that still invites people to book any time, in a month with no times left, collects requests that all end in no.

Availability in words, updated weekly

This does not need a live booking calendar. A short list, kept current, does most of the work.

List the weeks from now to the holidays and say what remains under each: Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, one Saturday afternoon, fully booked. Plain words read faster on a phone than a grid of coloured squares.

Update it on a fixed day, Monday morning for instance, and put the date of the update at the top. A dated list gets believed. An undated one gets a phone call to check.

Keep it honest in both directions. Do not call a week nearly full to hurry people along, and do not leave a full week looking open because nobody got round to the update.

On the form, offer the open weeks as choices rather than a blank date field, so nobody requests a Saturday that went in October.

Deadlines people can plan around

Most holiday work has a real cut-off, even if it only lives in the owner's head.

A caterer needs final numbers. A picture framer needs time to make each frame before it can be wrapped. A cleaning company sets its crews' schedules days in advance.

Write each cut-off as a date rather than a warning. Book by December 15 for a clean before Christmas is something a visitor can act on; book early is not. Where jobs need different notice, give each its own date.

What can still be arranged

Say what you can still offer: weekday mornings, a shorter version of the usual service, a smaller package, a gift certificate, or a date in the first week of January booked now.

Be specific: which mornings, how much shorter, what the smaller package leaves out.

Each one turns a no into something the visitor can say yes to, and a January date booked in November is work the business keeps.

A worked example

A portrait photographer with no staff, working in a small studio and in parks around the city, does a large share of the year's family sessions between late October and Christmas. Families want pictures for holiday cards and gifts.

His website had galleries, a page of session prices, a contact form and one line advising families to book early for the holidays.

Last year the evenings he kept for editing went on replying to messages. Most asked about the last two weekends before Christmas, full since October, and some families who wrote in December had booked elsewhere before his reply reached them.

The website could not answer the one question every family had, so each of them joined a queue behind his sessions and his editing.

This year there is a holiday page. It lists each weekend from now to Christmas with the times still free, updated every Monday, and gives the last session date for prints before Christmas.

Families who want printed cards have an earlier cut-off, since the printing comes after the editing. January is open now, and the form offers only the times on the list.

Linking the page where people look

A December page only works if visitors find it. Put a line at the top of the home page linking to it, saying when it was last updated.

Add it to the Google My Business listing as a post. Most posts expire after seven days, which suits a list that changes weekly: post the new version each time you update it.

Pin it to the top of the Facebook page, mention it in the voicemail greeting, and include the link in the automatic reply the contact form sends.

The counter-case

A business that already takes bookings online, with a calendar showing real availability, has most of this built in. It still needs its deadlines and alternatives written where visitors will see them.

A business whose December is quiet, or whose holiday work is booked months ahead by regular clients, has less to gain. One line on the home page may be enough.

For any business with a holiday rush, though, a page that says what is left, by when, and what else is possible answers the question every December visitor arrives with.

Before December fills

1. List December week by week with what remains.
2. Set a last booking date for each service.
3. Write down what you can still offer.
4. Date each update at the top of the page.
5. Link the page from the home page and listing.
6. Offer only open weeks on the form.
7. Update the list on the same day each week.

Step seven is what keeps the page worth reading. A list that was right a fortnight ago misleads people who plan around it, and they will not trust the next one.

Making sure the form itself does not promise a confirmed time is covered in appointment request forms that look like bookings.

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.