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Selling seasonal landscaping work all year round

For your trade 6 min read

Your work has four seasons and your website has twelve months. Here is how to take a booking in the months you are not working and fill the next season early.

Somebody opens your website on a Sunday in January. They are not going to book anything today. They have decided that this is the year they sort the back garden out, and they are three or four months early, which is exactly when people make that decision.

Right now your site is written for the person calling in May with grass up to their knees. The January visitor reads it, cannot see anything they can do yet, and closes the tab. That is the whole problem, and it is a writing problem more than a design one.

The out-of-season visitor is planning, not buying

Treat that visit as the start of a booking rather than a wasted one. The person needs three things: confirmation that you do the kind of work they are imagining, some idea of what it involves, and a way to get on your list without committing to a date they have not thought about yet.

None of that requires them to be ready. It requires you to have written something for the version of them that is not ready, which almost no landscaping website has.

Open the list before the season, and say so

The strongest sentence you can put on the page in February is the one that names a month. Spring cleanups are booking for March. The list opens on the first, and it usually fills.

That works because it gives an early visitor something to do today, and because it is true. You do fill up. Saying so in advance turns your busiest season into something people plan around rather than something they call you in the middle of. When the list actually is full, say that too and give the next date, which is the same sentence with different words in it.

Give people a way to say "not yet"

Most inquiry forms only handle one kind of person: the one who wants you now. Add a field that asks when they want the work done, with the seasons written out, and a plain option that says they are not sure yet and would like a note nearer the time.

That single question changes what the form is for. It stops being a request for a visit tomorrow and becomes a list of people who have told you what they want and roughly when. In February that list is the most valuable thing on your website. Call them in the order they gave you and you have started the season with a schedule instead of a phone.

Price the season the way people buy it

Seasonal work is bought in three shapes and they are not interchangeable. There is the one-off job, done once and paid for once. There is the season, meaning every visit between two months. And there is the year, meaning a standing arrangement that covers the mowing and the cleanups and whatever the winter version is.

Put all three on the page with your own figures and let people see which one they want. Somebody who thinks they are buying a single tidy-up will often take the season once they can see it written down, and somebody who genuinely only wants one visit should be able to buy that without a conversation about a contract. The mechanics of turning a one-off into a standing arrangement are much the same in any trade that repeats.

Say what a deposit holds and what it does not

If you take money to hold a spring slot, write in plain words what it buys: a date, a place in the order, a price fixed for the season. Say what happens to it if they cancel in March, because that is the question stopping them and they will not ask it.

You do not need to be generous to be clear. A deposit with the terms next to it is easier to pay than a smaller one with nothing written down at all.

Say what weather does to a booked date

Every seasonal trade has the same conversation twenty times a year: the ground is frozen, or it has rained for six days, or the leaves have not finished falling. The customer thinks a date is a date. You know it is a date and a weather forecast.

Write the rule once: what conditions move a job, how you let them know, and how quickly you get back to it. This is the closest thing your trade has to a common complaint, and it stops being a complaint the moment somebody was told in advance.

Ask this year's customers for next year before the season ends

The cheapest work you will get next spring is from the people whose gardens you are already in this autumn. Make a page that says exactly what next year's arrangement is, what it costs, and what they need to do to keep their slot, and send it to them while you are still on their books.

It takes one page and a text message, not a mailing campaign. The reason to have it as a page rather than a paragraph in a message is that people forward it, and their neighbor reads it, and the neighbor has the same garden.

A short checklist

Questions people ask

Should I take my website down over winter

No. The winter visitor is next spring's customer, and a site that disappears for four months is one a search engine and a homeowner both have to rediscover. If you close for the season, say so on the page and keep your listed hours honest instead.

What do I put on the page in the months I am not working

The list for the next season, the work you do take in that month if any, and the honest sentence if the answer is none. Photographs are their own question and are worked through in the piece on showing landscaping work in every season.

Is a deposit worth the awkwardness

It mostly buys you a schedule you can trust, which in a seasonal trade is the thing that is always short. Whether it is worth it depends on how often you get canceled on, and you know that number better than anybody else does.

How early is too early to open the spring list

If people are inquiring, it is not too early. Most trades find the inquiries start earlier than the work does, and the list exists precisely to hold those people until the ground is ready.

Do I need a different page for each season

Usually not. One page that says clearly what you are booking now, changed four times a year, beats four pages of which three are always wrong.

Can I keep this current myself

Yes, if the site was built so that you can edit the line that changes. Ask for that before anything gets built. If you would rather it was somebody else's job, Website Care is $149 a month, and plenty of people are better off doing the two-minute edit themselves.

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