Why this is the change that matters most
A customer who drives to your door and finds it closed because the site said you were open does not blame the site. They blame you, and they may not come back. Wrong hours are one of the most common ways small businesses lose people by accident.
Menus are the same. A price on the site that does not match the price at the counter starts an awkward conversation.
Hours: keep every place matching
Your hours show up in more places than your site: your Google profile, your Instagram bio, a sign on the door, maybe a delivery app. When they change, change them everywhere on the same day. Google's own help says owners can edit regular hours and special holiday hours on their business profile, so use the special hours setting for one-off closings like holidays or a storm.
Your site should be one of the places you update first. We try to keep your hours in as few places on the site as possible, so one edit fixes them everywhere.
Menus: text on the page
A menu on the page as text is easy to update and easy to read on a phone. A PDF is neither. If your menu changes weekly, send us the new text each week, or change it yourself in the site's editor. For daily specials, a single short line works best, rather than rewriting the menu every day.
Seasonal menus can have their own page, so a summer menu can go up and come down without touching the regular one.
A simple routine
- On the first of each month, open your site on your phone and check hours, prices and links.
- When a holiday is coming, send the hours a week early.
- When the menu changes, send the new version the same day.
- If something is wrong, tell us. Fixes are part of the plan.
What not to do
Do not leave an old notice up after the date has passed, like a closing for last week. Do not put hours in a photo, because a picture of text cannot be read by a search engine or a screen reader. And do not assume a change is live until you have looked at it.
Examples by kind of business
A taqueria changes its Sunday hours for a long weekend and posts a new lunch special. A barbershop closes early for an event and adds a new chair renter to the team page. A cleaning company adds a service area. A boutique extends its hours for a holiday week. Each one is a short message to us or a few minutes in the editor, and each is the sort of change that matters more than a new logo ever will.