A customer drives twenty minutes to your shop because your website says you're open until six. It's 4:30. The door is locked and there's a handwritten note about a dentist appointment.
That customer doesn't blame the dentist. They blame you, and they probably don't come back.
Hours are one of the most boring things on a small business website. They're also one of the things people check most. Someone searching on their phone usually wants to know two things: where are you, and are you open right now. If your site makes them hunt, or gives them the wrong answer, you've lost them.
Put hours where people already look
Three places, and I'd do all of them:
- The footer. It shows up on every page, so nobody has to find a special page to get the answer.
- The contact page. This is where people go when they're about to call or visit.
- The homepage, if you're a place people walk into. Salons, restaurants, shops, anywhere with a door. If you only work by appointment, a short line like "By appointment, Tuesday to Saturday" does the job.
Write them as plain text. Not as an image of a pretty chalkboard. Search engines and screen readers can't read a picture, and you can't edit it from your phone when something changes.
The real problem is staleness
Most people get hours right on launch day and never touch them again. Then summer hours start. Then a holiday. Then you drop Mondays because nobody ever came in on Mondays.
Wrong hours are worse than no hours. No hours makes someone call. Wrong hours sends them to a locked door.
Two habits fix most of it:
- Keep hours in one place if you can. If the footer and the contact page are separate text, you'll update one and forget the other. Pick one source and make the rest match, or at least put a reminder on your calendar to check every spot at once.
- Handle holidays before they arrive. A week ahead, add a short line near the top of the homepage: "Closed Thursday and Friday for the holiday. Back Monday at 9." Take it down after. It takes two minutes and saves you a handful of annoyed calls.
Your website and your Google listing have to agree
Here's the part people miss. When someone searches your business name, the hours that show up often come from your Google Business Profile, not your website. If the two disagree, a visitor sees one answer on Google and a different one on your site, and has no idea which to trust.
So when your hours change, change them in both places the same day. It's a free listing and the edit takes a minute. I wrote about why that profile matters so much for local search in an earlier post, if you haven't set yours up yet.
A few smaller things
- Say the time zone if you serve people in more than one.
- If you close for lunch, write it down. "9 to 5" and "9 to 12, 1 to 5" are different businesses.
- If you're appointment-only or reply to messages instead of picking up the phone, say that plainly. Nobody minds. They mind finding out the hard way.
- Put your phone number right next to the hours. If the hours say you're open, the next thing they want is to call.
It isn't glamorous. Nobody ever said "I loved their site because the hours were correct." But they'll absolutely remember when they weren't.
Go look at your hours right now. On your site, then on Google. If they don't match what's true today, fix them before you close this tab.