How to write your opening hours
Nobody wants the table. They want one word, and the table is what they read when the word is missing.
A real Clay site, built from a Google listing
Somebody checking your hours is standing up, holding a phone, deciding whether to put a coat on, and a grid of seven rows makes them do arithmetic to find out.
The answer to are you open is a sentence: open until five, or opens tomorrow at eight. The week belongs underneath it for the person planning Saturday, and the days you are shut have to be said out loud rather than left as a blank row.
Four things, in order
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1
Lead with today
Open until 17:00, or Closed, opens tomorrow at 08:00. One line, at the top, in words. That is the whole question ninety percent of visitors came with.
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2
Put the week under it
Seven rows for the person planning ahead, with today marked. It is reference material rather than the answer, and it belongs in that order.
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3
Say the closed days as words
Closed Mondays reads as a decision. An empty row next to Monday reads as a website nobody has updated, which is a different and worse impression.
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4
Write the exceptions down
The bank holiday, the two weeks in August, the Sunday you open for the market. These are the ones that produce an angry review from somebody who drove over.
Two different times, and people book on the wrong one
A restaurant open until eleven whose kitchen stops at nine thirty has two sets of hours, and somebody arriving at ten is angry at you rather than at the sign.
The same is true of a last appointment, a last wash and a last entry. If the useful time is earlier than the closing time, that is the one that belongs on the page.
One master, and one place to change it
Hours end up in four places: the listing, the site, the door and a social profile. All four drift, and the one people believe is whichever they found first.
Pick the listing as the master, because that is where most people look, and use a site that reads from it. On a Clay site the hours are the ones on your Google profile and the sentence is computed from them.
The lines worth having
What good hours prevent
The wasted journey
Somebody who drove over on a day you were shut writes about it, and the review outlives the closure by years.
The call you did not need
Are you open is the most common phone call a small business takes, and it is a question the page can answer instead.
The wrong answer on the listing
Google shows hours in the search result. If yours disagree with your site, one of them is teaching people the wrong thing.
What it looks like when it is live
Drawn rather than described, the page, the address, and what it can switch on.
Questions
Should the hours be a table or a sentence?
Both, in that order: the sentence answers today and the table answers Saturday. A table alone makes every visitor work it out for themselves.
What about seasonal hours?
Say the season plainly, with the dates. Summer hours from June is a promise somebody will check in May and be wrong about.
Do I have to list closed days?
You have to write them. A blank row is read as missing information rather than as closed, and the difference costs you the phone call.
What if the kitchen closes before the door?
Then say both. It is the single most common complaint in hospitality and it is answered by one extra line.
Where do people actually look?
The Google listing first, then the site. Keep them the same, which is easiest when one of them reads the other: opening hours on your website.
How do I handle a one-off closure?
Put it above the hours for the week before it, and take it down after. A closure discovered on arrival is the expensive kind.
Does this matter for search?
It matters for the person reading the result, which is the part you control: how to show up on Google Maps covers the rest.
Try it with your business
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