Fishing and hunting guides
Booked months ahead by people who have never met you. Your site is doing the work a referral would normally do, and it needs your species, your seasons, your boat and your rates on it.
Seasonal businesses
Your year is five months long. Your website has to work for twelve.
Guides, marinas, outfitters, shops, cafes, anybody whose money arrives between May and September. The searching that decides your season happens in the months you are not open.
The maths nobody does
Your quietest month is your most important one.
Take a fishing guide. The bookings that fill June get made in February and March, by somebody sitting at a kitchen table in Edina comparing four guides on a phone. That person will never call you. They will pick whichever of the four looked like a real, currently operating business, and the other three will never know they were in the running.
Now think about what your site looks like in February. If it still has last season's dates on it, or a banner about Labor Day weekend, or an hours block that says Closed, you were eliminated before anybody spoke to you. Not outcompeted. Eliminated, silently, by a page that was accurate in August.
That is the whole problem, and it costs more than any design decision on the site.
Who this is for
Different trades, same five month problem.
Marinas and rentals
What you rent, what it costs, whether it is available, and whether somebody needs a licence. Half the questions you answer on the phone in June could have been answered on a page in March.
Outfitters and tours
Trips, dates, what is included, what to bring, and how fit you need to be. People book these on the strength of the page, because there is nothing else to go on.
Shops and galleries
Your hours are the whole thing, and they change four times a year. A page that is wrong about whether you are open on a Tuesday in May does real damage.
Cafes and supper clubs
Menu, hours, and whether you take reservations. That is most of it. It has to be right, and it has to be readable on a phone in a car park.
Seasonal trades
Docks in, docks out, plowing, opening and closing cabins. Your customers all need you in the same fortnight, which makes being findable in the fortnight before that worth a lot.
When to build
October to February. Not May.
This is the one piece of advice on this page that will save you the most money, and it costs you nothing to take.
October to December
The season is over, you can actually answer questions, and I am not competing with your busiest week for your attention. This is when the good work gets done.
January to February
Still fine, and it lands right before the planning weeks. Any later and the site is going live at the same time your customers are already booking somebody else.
March to April
Doable, but you are now paying for something that arrives late. If this is where you are, I will tell you honestly what you are going to get out of it this year versus next.
May to September
Do not. You are working eighty hour weeks and you will not have time to look at proofs, which makes the job worse and slower. Write to me anyway and we will book it for October.
Questions
The three that come up every time.
When should a seasonal business build its website?
October to February, and it is not close. You have time to answer questions, the money is not moving anyway, and the finished site has months to get indexed before the planning weeks. Building in May means paying for something that lands after your customers have already decided where they are going.
Is a website worth it if I am only open five months?
It depends on whether people find you by searching or by driving past. If your customers are visitors who plan a trip, then yes, because the planning happens on a phone in another town in February. If you are a bait shop that everyone on the lake already knows, a Google Business Profile and good reviews may genuinely serve you better, and I will say so.
What do I do with the site in the off season?
Change four things and leave the rest: your dates for next season, your rates, whether you are taking bookings, and anything that says Closed. It should take a minute. The point is that a February visitor sees a business planning next summer, not one that shut down and never came back.
It is the off season. That is the point.
Tell me what you run and when your season is. You get a fixed price within 24 hours, and an honest answer about whether to build it now or wait.