You’re a small business owner, but you’re probably also a parent, a spouse and a sibling. That means that the holidays can be a tricky balance between maintaining your business and spending time with your family. So it makes sense that you’re probably going to need to update your business hours some during the holiday season.
Customers are definitely going to expect some varying hours during this time of year, but that doesn’t mean you should leave them wondering. A recent survey showed that 44% of respondents have visited closed locations as a result of inaccurate business hours within the past year.
So how can you remain trustworthy to your customers and potential customers during the holiday season? It’s as simple as learning how to change your business hours on your Google Business Profile. This ensures that customers know exactly what to expect when they do a quick search on your business.
We’ll show you how to go about updating your GPB in this post.
So, you might be thinking, “Well, I have a social media account. I’ll just update my hours there.” Or “I’ll just email my customers about my new hours, that should be good enough.” And those are definitely very viable options for informing a good chunk of your customer base and you should absolutely take those routes if you have the capacity, but you should still update your GBP as well.
First and foremost, during the holidays you’ll see an uptick in new customers who are seeking out unique items. Most of those people don’t follow you on social media or are a part of your email marketing lists. They’re making Google searches like “boutiques near me” or “holiday shopping” where your map location and Google Business Profile are going to pop up, and studies show that GBP listings with accurate and complete information receive 7x more clicks than those without.
Second, making updates and staying current with your Business Profile helps you build trust with Google. The search engine will recognize any changes as new data points to help them verify you’re an active business. This helps you show up higher on the search engine results page when people make searches related to your business or product offers.
So, it’s really a win-win for you to make sure your GBP is always updated. Not only does it make your business look more trustworthy to customers, but it also helps you appear more trustworthy to Google.
Now that we’ve convinced you how important updating your hours is, let’s get into how you can update them! We’ve put together this step-by-step guide to help out:
Step 1: Go to your Business Profile by signing into the Google Account associated with it.
Step 2: To edit your hours:
Step 3: Near the top, click the “Hours” tab.
Step 4: Next to “Special Hours,” click “Edit” or the pencil icon.
Step 5: Select the date you’d like to update your hours.
Step 6: Edit your hours.
-If your business is closed, next to the date click on “Delete” or the trash icon.
-If your business is open, next to the hours click “More” or the three dots icon then “Remove Day” or the trash icon.
Step 7: Click “Save.”
And that’s it! You’ve successfully updated your business hours on Google.
Since the holidays can be a busy time and something like updating your hours on Google might slip under your radar, we recommend figuring out your new hours in advance and entering them in before things get too crazy.
To help with your planning, we’ve put together this list of upcoming holiday dates to keep in mind!
When Google makes updating your business hours this easy, you really have no reason not to go ahead and do it. Not only will your customers thank you, but you’ll earn serious brownie points with Google too. All you have to do is check out the list of dates we provided, plan your holiday business hours and then follow the step-by-step instructions laid out in this post. Easy as the holiday pie we’re sure will be on your plate in a couple of weeks!
If you’re looking for even more ways that we can help support your business during the holidays and beyond, fill out the form or give us a call today for a free, no-obligation consultation.
Mideya Kinney, Junior Content Writer
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