An expired promotion tells visitors nobody is watching the site, so they doubt the prices, hours and delivery promises too. Give every seasonal banner an end date and a plain default to fall back on.

The site

A neighbourhood florist with a corner shop and same-day delivery across part of the city. The website takes orders: arrangements sorted by occasion, a map of the delivery area, and a form for weddings and events.

The home page opens on a full-width photograph of red roses in a heart-shaped box. Across it, in large type: Valentine's Day, order by February 12 for guaranteed delivery. The button below says shop Valentine's.

It is the end of October. Under the banner, a section headed This season shows tulips and daffodils. A pop-up offers ten dollars off Mother's Day orders.

In the shop window, meanwhile, there are autumn arrangements in rust and gold, and small pumpkins for Halloween.

The inference a visitor makes

A visitor arriving this week, looking to send flowers for a birthday or a funeral, sees February first. The conclusion is quick and fair: nobody has looked at this site since winter.

The next thought costs the florist more. If the home page is eight months out of date, the prices, the delivery area and the same-day cut-off may be too.

Some visitors go further and wonder whether the shop is still open at all.

A florist sells a promise about a particular day. A site that is visibly wrong about the date makes that promise hard to believe, just as the visitor decides whether to trust it with a delivery that cannot be late.

Some visitors will phone to check. Others will return to the results page and try another florist, one whose site shows what it is selling this week.

Everything that is out of date

The third is the most damaging. A visitor who tries the discount and has it refused is no longer looking at stale content; they are looking at an offer the shop appears not to honour.

A banner with a date on it

The banner is the largest thing on the page and the first thing read, so visitors take it as the business's message today.

Putting a date in it makes the message perishable. Order by February 12 was useful for three weeks and has been wrong every day since.

An undated seasonal message, roses for someone special, ages more slowly. It still needs an end date, but it fails less loudly when it overstays.

The same goes for the photograph. A heart-shaped box of red roses dates the page as surely as the words across it.

Seasons crowding out the year

Outside the big dates, most of a florist's orders are for occasions that never go out of season: birthdays, anniversaries, sympathy, get well, thank you.

On this site those sit three clicks down, under a menu item called Occasions. The space at the top belongs to whichever holiday was last remembered.

A visitor looking for sympathy flowers has to scroll past hearts and tulips to find them, at a moment when the mismatch is uncomfortable as well as slow.

Nothing about today

What a visitor most wants to know is whether the shop can deliver today, to their address, and by what time they need to order.

The home page answers none of that. The same-day cut-off is buried in the delivery policy, and the area is a map on another page.

A single line near the top, such as same-day delivery when ordered by one o'clock, Monday to Saturday, never goes out of date and answers the question every visitor arrives with.

No end date in the tool

The Valentine's banner went up in late January, added in a hurry by whoever had a minute between orders.

The site's banner tool had a field for an end date. It was left blank, as it had been for every banner before, so this one had no reason ever to leave.

Florists are busiest in the days before each holiday and worn out after it, and the person who might have remembered was back at the workbench.

A reminder in someone's calendar would have helped. An end date in the tool itself would have done the job with nobody involved.

A worked example

The owner started by listing the dates the shop actually sells for: Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, graduation season, Thanksgiving and Christmas, with weddings running from spring to early autumn.

Each seasonal banner is now built ahead, with its start and end set in the banner tool itself. It appears about three weeks before the date and disappears the morning after, without anyone touching it.

When no banner is scheduled, the home page shows its default: a photograph of the shop's own work, the same-day cut-off and delivery area, and links to birthdays, sympathy and anniversaries.

Year-round occasions moved out of the Occasions menu and into the main navigation, where a visitor looking for sympathy flowers finds them first.

The pop-up went. The wedding post on the blog stayed, with its date shown, because the advice is still sound.

Finished banners are saved for next year, so the next Valentine's Day starts from a design that already exists, with only its dates to change.

The counter-case within the site

Some seasonal content should outlive its date. A gallery of last Valentine's work, or a post on choosing Mother's Day flowers, will be useful again next year. Those belong in an archive, with dates shown, not on the home page.

And in the weeks before a big date, a seasonal banner should dominate the page. That is when it earns its place.

The fix is not fewer promotions. It is an end date on every one, and a home page that stands on its own when none is running.

What to change

  1. Remove the Valentine's banner and expired pop-up today.
  2. List the shop's occasions with their dates.
  3. Build a default home page that never expires.
  4. Set an end date in the banner tool every time.
  5. Put the same-day cut-off near the top.
  6. Move year-round occasions into the main menu.
  7. Save each finished banner for next year.

Step four is what keeps this from recurring. A banner that removes itself on schedule does not depend on anyone remembering it during a florist's busiest weeks.

What visitors infer from pictures of houses not yet built is the subject of another teardown, a home builder site with renderings instead of finished homes.

Frequently asked questions

What does an expired promotion tell visitors?

That nobody has looked at the site recently, which makes them doubt the prices, hours and delivery promises on every other page, just as they decide whether to order.

Why do seasonal banners get left up?

They go up in a rush before a holiday with the end date left blank, and the busy weeks around each date leave nobody time to remember them.

What should the home page show between seasons?

A default that never expires: photographs of the shop's own work, the same-day cut-off, the delivery area and links to year-round occasions such as birthdays and sympathy.

Should old seasonal pages be deleted?

Not always. A dated gallery or a still-useful article can stay as an archive. What has to go is the promotion on the home page and any expired offer.

How do I make banners expire on time?

Set an end date in the banner tool before each banner goes live, so it disappears on its own, with a default home page underneath for when nothing is scheduled.

Is a stale banner worse than none?

Yes. A plain home page says nothing about the date; an expired one says the site is neglected, and visitors extend that judgement to the business behind it.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Home page still showing a past holiday?

Send us the address. We will set banners to expire on their own and build a default page that never goes stale.

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