Boat Tours in Ibiza – Lady Virginia

A seasonal business has a website with two completely different jobs, and treating it as one is what makes it expensive. In summer it takes bookings. In winter it earns them.

The bookings for a five-month season are largely decided between February and May, while the boat is out of the water and nobody is thinking about the website. That is when the pages are read, compared and shared — and it is also, in practice, when the site is at its most neglected, because the season that just ended took all the attention.

Which suggests a calendar rather than a to-do list:

• October to December. The maintenance window. Updates, backups, anything that needs the site briefly broken. Doing this in July is asking for the outage to land on the busiest afternoon of the year.
• January to March. Prices, availability, photographs from the season just finished, and the pages people compare — what is included, capacity, what happens if the weather turns.
• Season. Change as little as possible. Watch the enquiry form and the phone number, which are the two things that break silently and cost the most.

One thing worth checking every autumn regardless: what expires. Domain, certificate, licences. A renewal falling due in February, unnoticed because nobody is looking, takes the site down at precisely the moment the year's bookings are being made.

Related: web design in Ibiza and get in touch.