Road Construction Outside the Shop

Fences on the sidewalk

The crew arrives on a Monday. By Wednesday there are orange fences along the curb, the parking lane has gone, and a detour sign at the corner sends traffic down a side street.

From across the road, the shop looks closed. The front door is behind a fence, the sign is half hidden, and nobody can stop outside.

Regulars assume the business is shut for the duration, or that getting there is not worth the trouble. Newcomers never consider it.

Road work on a commercial street often runs for months. The shop is open the whole time, and very few people know.

What people check before they go

• The website, for anything about access, parking or changed hours.
• The Facebook page, for a recent post that says you are open.
• The Google listing, for hours and a photo of the entrance.
• Street View, which shows the street as it looked before.
• Reviews, where somebody may already have complained about parking.

The fourth is the one that misleads. Street View images are often years old, so a customer who checks the entrance there sees a street with parking out front and arrives to find fences.

Say you are open, first

The first words of any notice should be that you are open, with your usual hours or the changed ones. Everything else is detail.

Put it first on the home page, in a band of colour that stands out from the design. A notice buried on a news page is not a notice.

Keep it short enough to read on a phone in a few seconds: Open as usual during the road work. Entrance and parking details here.

The way in

Say which entrance is in use, and how to reach it from the corners people will arrive at. If the front door is behind a fence, say where the gap is.

Add a photograph taken from where customers will stand, showing the path through the fencing and the door. A picture answers the question faster than a paragraph.

Mention whether the route works with a wheelchair, a walker or a stroller, and if it does not, what you can do instead, such as meeting people at a side door.

Where to park

Name the nearest places to park: a lot behind the building, a side street, a pay lot down the block, with time limits if there are any.

For takeout, pickup and drop-off businesses, offer to bring orders out to a spot customers can stop at, and say how to let you know they have arrived.

If loading or deliveries are affected, say so on the page too, so suppliers, and customers waiting on a delivery, know what to plan for.

A worked example

A quick oil change shop with two drive-through bays sits on a busy road, and most customers pull in without an appointment on their way to or from work.

The road outside is being widened, with work expected to run into the summer.

Fences closed the main driveway, and the only way in is now from the lane behind, off a side street. From the road the bays look shut, and nothing tells a passing driver otherwise.

Regulars phoned to ask whether the shop was still open. Drivers who did not know the shop simply went elsewhere.

The owner added a single line across the head of the home page, Open during the road work, linking to a short page about getting there.

It has a photo of the lane entrance taken from the side street, a simple map of the route in, and a note that the bays and the waiting room are open at the usual hours.

The same notice went on the Facebook page as a pinned post, and the phone greeting mentions it. Every Monday the page says what the crew is doing that week and which way in is open.

Updates until the work ends

Road work moves. The fence that blocked the front door this week blocks the side street the next, and a notice that was right in April is wrong in May.

Pick a day each week to check the street and update the page, the Facebook post and the listing photo if the entrance has changed. Put the date of the update on the notice, so people know it is current.

The municipality or the contractor usually publishes a schedule. Link to it, or summarise it, so customers can plan around the noisy weeks.

When the fences come down, change the notice to say the street is open again, leave it up for a week or two, then take it off.

The listing and the phone

For many customers the Google listing comes before the website. Make sure its hours are right, and add a current photograph of the entrance in use.

On a search for your kind of business, the map results show up to seven places, and yours sits beside competitors on streets with no fences. Accurate hours and a recent photo are what reassure people there.

Record the same message on the voicemail and the phone greeting: open as usual, entrance from the side street, parking behind. Callers who ring to ask get their answer even when nobody can pick up.

The counter-case

Work that lasts a day or two needs no more than a Facebook post and a sign in the window. The full treatment is for work measured in weeks or months.

A business with its own lot, unaffected by the fences, has less to explain, though a line saying so still helps people who see the detour signs and assume the worst.

For anyone whose front door is behind a fence, the advice holds: say you are open, show the way in and where to park, and keep it current until the work ends.

While the fences are up

1. Post an open notice across the home page.
2. Photograph the way in from the corner.
3. Name the nearest parking and any time limits.
4. Pin the same notice on the Facebook page.
5. Update the listing photo and check its hours.
6. Change the phone greeting to match.
7. Date each weekly update until the fences go.

Step seven is the one that keeps the rest working. A notice that was right a month ago sends people to a door that is now blocked, which is worse than no notice at all.

Telling customers about something they cannot see from the street is also the point of the patio nobody knows you have.

Frequently asked questions

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