As a small business, you depend on the steady stream of holiday shoppers that come through your doors, not just to fill their bags with holiday gifts but to fill the cash register and boost your profits for the entire year.
With the holidays comes a bit of chaos in people’s everyday lives. People are very busy during the holidays with the usual schedule of kids, school, work, etc., and the added holiday parties, events, food prep, and of course, holiday shopping make your time a precious commodity.
Many people methodically plan their holiday shopping trips to maximize their time, bustling from one store to the next in one or two frenzied days until shopping victory has been declared.
Ok, So Why Update Your Hours?
Holiday shoppers don’t want the stress of not knowing if and when a shop is open or closed, and they certainly don’t want to drive across town to find out you are not open. If that happens, chances are your customer won’t be returning this season, and you risk a negative review or losing a customer For-eh-VER (in my best Squints voice).
Updating your holiday hours lets your customers know when you are open. This removes the uncertainty if you are open and have special holiday hours on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
Additionally, if you are open for Midnight Madness on Thanksgiving, etc., you can use your hours as a powerful marketing tool.
It’s easy, so why not do it?
Special holiday hours for your business can be updated on essential sources like Google Business Profile, Yelp, Bing, Facebook, and your website in less than an hour. If you don’t have those sources claimed, it will take a bit longer, but well worth the effort.
To help you out, we’ve put together a worksheet to organize your holiday hours to make updating your hours easier and simple instructions so you can do it yourself.
November Holiday Hours
- Veterans’ Day – November 10th
- Thanksgiving – November 23rd
- Black Friday – November 24th
- Cyber Monday – November 27th
December and January Holiday Hours
- December 24th – Christmas Eve
- December 25th – Christmas Day
- December 31st – New Year’s Eve
- January 1st, 2023 – New Year’s Day
How to Update Your Holiday Hours
Below are the top sources for hours for businesses. If you are a restaurant or specialty store, you may have additional sources like Zomato or Tripadvisor that may have options for special hours or just to update your regular hours during a holiday week.
Instructions for Google Business Profile:
Google’s Business Profile (GBP), is your top priority, as the internet’s majority search engine and source for local business information, you don’t want to ignore its value to your business.
View Google’s instructions for Google Business Profile here.
Instructions for Yelp:
- Log in – Yelp for Business Owners
- Go to Business Information
- Scroll Down to “Special Hours”
Instructions for Facebook: (you can only edit your existing hours)
- Login to Facebook
- Navigate to your business page
- Click on “About” on the left side of the page
- Edit Hours
Instructions for Bing: (you can now sync your GBP with Bing. do this to make your life easier.).
- Login to your Bing Places Account
- Choose your business listing
- Under Special Hours, Click “Edit Special Hours”
- Add Special Hours. Click “Add another” to add more.
- Submit, done.
Updating Your Website: Editing hours on your website could be a little trickier, depending on your abilities and how your site is set up.
You should have your hours marked up in schema so that Search Engines can understand and display the data when searched. (see example below)
We hope our worksheet and this information have helped you out this holiday. If you’re looking for more holiday resources, check out our post on the top holiday shopping dates. If this guide helped, let us know in the comments below, or give us a shout-out on social media.
Happy Holidays!
