In the middle of August nobody needs persuading that a website matters. The tables are full, the boats are out, the terrace is heaving. The argument for spending money on one is made in November, and if you only ever read marketing like this in July it is easy to conclude the whole subject is about surviving the summer. It is not.
The month you actually need it
October to February is when a business on this coast decides whether next year is better or worse. It is when the German family books the villa for the spring, when the boat owner arranges the survey, when somebody decides that whitening, or a ski week, or a boat that is going to be here all year is a good idea. None of those people are standing in your shop. They are reading, at midnight, in another country.
Your customers are not in Spain
A large share of the people who contact businesses between October and May are somewhere else — researching before they travel, comparing you against two other options, checking your reviews while they type. A percentage of the searches for anything local on this coast come from hotel networks, which is a strange thing to optimise for and a strong argument for having a site that answers questions properly rather than one that assumes the reader is round the corner.
The only part of the business that opens at midnight
A website does not get tired, does not need a break, does not have a bad afternoon, and answers the same question five hundred times without complaining. For a business with two people in it, that is not a minor convenience. It is the difference between a message that gets answered on Tuesday and a message that is never answered at all.
It filters as well as it sells
Putting your prices, your areas, your process and your lead times on a page does not lose you the enquiry you wanted. It loses the one where somebody drives across town, or across the province, to find out you do not do what they assumed. For property, clinics, marine work and trades, that filtering is worth as much as the selling.
It does not have to be expensive
A focused four or five page site with good photographs and honest prices runs from around €600 here, and an online shop from €1,500. That is the same order of cost as a good laptop and a lot more durable. The most common mistake is paying for forty pages and using five of them.
- Show what you charge, or at least where you start
- Answer the question you get asked forty times a week, in writing
- Make it obvious how to reach you — phone, WhatsApp, and a form for the formal enquiries
- Keep the hours and the photographs honest, especially out of season
- Build it in two languages, and a third if your customers need it
If you already have a site, start with a free audit and find out what is actually wrong with it. Sometimes the answer is very little, and occasionally the honest answer is that the site is fine and the problem is elsewhere.