Seasonal Website Updates: Tune-Ups and Furnace Checks

Your phone tells you what season it is before the weather does. The first warm week brings "AC not cooling" calls; the first cold snap brings "furnace won't light." By then it's too late to start promoting tune-ups. The schedule is already full of repairs.

A website that changes with the seasons catches people a few weeks earlier, when they're still thinking about maintenance instead of emergencies. Here is a simple calendar of what to change, when, and the official guidance you can point customers to.

The year at a glance

When	Main message	Update
Late winter	Book your AC tune-up	Home page banner, Google post, reminder email
Spring	Cooling season prep	AC maintenance page, filter reminders
Early summer	Emergency AC and response times	Hours, after-hours policy
Late summer	Book your furnace check	Home page banner, Google post, reminder email
Fall	Heating safety	Furnace page, CO safety note
Holidays	Who answers and when	Special hours everywhere

Adjust the timing for your climate. A shop in Arizona and a shop in Minnesota run very different calendars.

Late winter and spring: AC tune-ups

ENERGY STAR, the EPA's efficiency program, advises homeowners to "check the cooling system in the spring and the heating system in the fall" and lists what a contractor checkup should include, such as tightening electrical connections, lubricating moving parts, checking the condensate drain and checking the refrigerant level (ENERGY STAR).

That's useful for two reasons. It gives you a neutral, official reason for the timing, and it gives you a checklist you can compare with your own tune-up so customers know what they're paying for.

On your website:

1. Put a short banner on the home page: "Spring AC tune-ups are open. Book before the first heat wave." Link it to your maintenance page.
2. Update the maintenance page with what your tune-up includes, the price if you publish it, and how to book.
3. Add a homeowner tip section. For example, the Department of Energy's Energy Saver guide says routinely replacing or cleaning air filters "can lower your air conditioner's energy consumption by 5-15 percent" (U.S. Department of Energy). Credit the source when you use a number like that.

On Google: Business Profile posts come in three types: updates, offers and events. You can schedule them in advance, and posts older than six months are archived unless they have a date range (Google Business Profile Help). Schedule your spring post when you set up the banner.

Early summer: response times and after-hours

When the heat hits, homeowners care less about tune-ups and more about "can someone come today?"

• Update your home page banner to your current scheduling situation: same-day availability, emergency service, or a waitlist.
• Make sure your after-hours policy is clear: whether you take emergency calls, the hours, and whether after-hours rates apply.
• Check that the phone number at the top of your site taps to call on a phone.

If you change your hours for the season, Google's LocalBusiness structured data supports seasonal hours through validFrom and validThrough dates (Google Search Central). Most site builders handle hours for you; just make sure the site and your Google profile agree.

Late summer and fall: furnace checks

Flip everything to heating a few weeks before your first cold nights.

On your website:

1. Swap the banner: "Book your fall furnace check."
2. Update the heating maintenance page: what you inspect, how long it takes, price or how pricing works.
3. Add a safety note. The EPA advises having "a trained professional inspect, clean and tune-up central heating system (furnaces, flues and chimneys) annually" and repairing leaks promptly (EPA). The same EPA guidance is a good place to send customers who ask about carbon monoxide.

On Google: schedule a fall post the same day you change the banner.

By email: a short reminder to past customers. If it's promotional, CAN-SPAM rules apply: accurate subject line, your postal address and an easy opt-out (FTC). Our guide to professional email on your own domain covers the setup that keeps those reminders out of spam.

Holidays: hours in three places

Before each holiday, update the same hours in three places on the same day:

1. Google Business Profile special hours. Google lets you set special hours for holidays and events (Google Business Profile Help).
2. Your website, in the header banner or the contact page.
3. Your voicemail and text auto-reply.

The holiday hours message generator gives you matching wording for all three, with the dates for US holidays. For everyday hours, use the business hours message generator.

Claims to check before you publish

Seasonal promotions are where exaggeration creeps in. Before a banner goes live, read it as the FTC would. Its small business guidance says "advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive" and "the law requires that advertisers have proof before the ad runs" (FTC).

Watch for:

• Savings percentages you can't back up. Quote an official source with a link, or leave the number out.
• "Prevents breakdowns." Maintenance can catch problems early; it can't promise nothing will fail.
• Fake deadlines. "Only 3 slots left" when the schedule is open.
• Expired offers. Take down the spring discount banner when spring ends. An outdated offer is a bad look and can be misleading.

A 15-minute seasonal routine

Put these on your calendar four times a year:

1. Swap the home page banner and link.
2. Update the matching maintenance page.
3. Schedule a Google post with an end date.
4. Check hours on Google, the site and voicemail.
5. Remove last season's offer.
6. Add two or three recent job photos (see HVAC website photos).

If your current site makes a banner change a chore, that's a sign the site is working against you. For the full checklist of what belongs on the site, read what an HVAC website should include. Or see a free preview of a site built for your company by DIPAZE Websites, and decide from there.