8 replies to this topic

[tam]

I don't have a specific question but I was just wondering if anyone else had a seasonal website? I run a pet boarding directory which is obviously most popular when everyone is planning summer holidays but this time of year is a little nerve racking as the traffic is in steady decline - half what it was 6 weeks ago!

I wondered if anyone wanted to share any ideas about what they did in the 'off season'? Do you ignore the natural increase/decrease of traffic or plug more/less when traffic decreases...

Tam

[EGOL]

I have a site that gets most of its sales in the summer and another site that gets a lot of sales in spring and fall.

For both of these sites I have lots of content that people will be interested in at any time of year.

Could you create information about pets that would be useful at any or at various times of year?

[jonbey]

Merry Christmas!

[tam]

Not the C-word! Funnily enough I don't get any rise pre-christmas holidays it's pretty level between now and March.

I'm thinking of adding more content - might take the quiet time to plan it, but I don't want to loose the focus too much with unrelated things.

[DonnaFontenot]

For many years, I had holiday sites (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentines, Easter, etc.). Each one only received traffic for a very short time, some for only a week or two. Generally, I learned that mucking with them all year was pointless. About two to three months before the "season" for any site, I'd start paying attention to it again. Adding content, changing design, getting links, whatever. Any more effort was almost always wasted. Declining rankings in the off season would only be something I'd bother with if it was an obvious penalty. If I needed to do massive work and needed plenty of time to deal with the problem, then I'd tackle it in the off season. But if it was just normal changes, I wouldn't bother until much closer to its season.

[iamlost]

As is often the case 'it depends' raises it's ugly head. Generally though there are two major routes:
* do some variation on Donna's business model: if a site is specific to a given date/holiday or seasonal then build out counter-seasonal or additional holiday type sites. The ideal being that as one site slows another begins to pick up.

* do some variation of EGOL's model: year round marketing to enhance brand and sales when 'prime time' arrives. This can be evergreen content that attracts a steady traffic dribble off season, working one or another social media platforms to keep conversation about you/site/service/product out front, etc.
Or some combination of both depending on niche, audience, interest, and resources.

While each industry has it's natural flows - it is likely that as your directory traffic ebbs and flows so do it's member' customers. It might be worth checking to see if any of them:
* offer deals in the off season that you could offer as discount or 'special pricing' coupons to site visitors.
* offer other services/products that can be better emphasised year round?
Perhaps promote non-summer holidays when boarding might also be useful, perhaps overnights and weekends as well as summer hols...
Perhaps suggest that pets need a regular spa retreat...

[fullscale4me]

I have two seasonal sites that share a common trait in that the consumer visits a particular local location to 'spend' their buy on only one or two days a year. The rest of the year (363 days) it's strictly crickets chirping. They get entertained by a number of perifieral characters as well as the main big guy in a red suit and in the spring the one with floppy ears. Both are fund raisers for a not for profit historic preservation group. Both sites are NOT monitised with any sort of ads, not even Amazon topic specific search list (suggested items to buy type). Almost 99% of the site visits are in the 60 days prior to the event.

One way I found works well in promoting both is to find focused and on topic, niche specific holiday activeties articles (ie not ehow.com or about.com stuff) where they have dated events listed. I give them a text rewrite updating a year's past to the current year. I visit all the linked sites, get the new dates for the current year and then add in my group's site amongst like listings. Very natural and well appreciated by the authors. The consumer do click too as they are looking for time occupying solutions. I do see a LOT more traffic from these than say facebook posts (they already found you) press releases or on site blog articles.

Another thing I do off season is hone them into being more mobile friendly using emulators and actual phones (ask friends to visit and screen cap). I've used more technical approaches to getting the 'buy' button right under their thumb when the site opens (without resizing) like dropping many graphics below a mid-range viewport width.

I've setup Google alerts on a few keyword combinations that sometimes yields a potential link exchange opportunity (I have serveral evergreen sites on many topics).

Edited by fullscale4me, 01 January 2013 - 07:23 PM.

[tam]

Thanks Mike, some good ideas. I really like the idea on tracking down articles written for the previous season (so you know the author has an interest) and then helping them update. I think I'll give it ago!

I've notice mobile usage creeping up, but it's not something I use myself so it's easy to forget about. I will stick it on my to do list though, it can't be the tricky to add a mobile version of my directory and perhaps that would be attractive to all the people now using mobiles instead of computers.

[tommr]

We often run specials for people who want to order in advance.
In our case we often have a back log of customers who have ordered samples for upcoming weddings.
We send out a letter through the post office offering a special such as free personalization or shipping and promote specials through magazine ads to keep the traffic up.
Granted this year is dismal and until the new site is finished we have suspended all activity in favor of finishing the site for a big push this spring.
When my gardening site was active I would continue to post to the blog as visitors are interested in gardening, especially in the off season when there is snow on the ground or 8 below zero like tonight. But the traffic would fall off for sure in the winter.
Since the wedding favors are popular in the spring summer and fall we try to put an extra emphases on selling bird feeders for the holidays as we get more lookers than buyers.
When we fell in the rankings about 4 years ago our business took a dive and we have yet to recover.