Websites and systems, by industry
Have you done this for a business like mine?
Almost certainly, though probably not for the reason you’re asking. What makes a business hard to help isn’t its industry. It’s the shape of its day.
A restaurant and a plumber have nothing in common on paper, and much the same problem in practice: the hours when the phone rings are the hours nobody can pick it up. A solicitor and an estate agent both live or die on how fast they reply to something. Once you know the shape, the trade is detail.
Below are the shapes, written out properly. If yours isn’t one of them, that isn’t a problem — it just means yours hasn’t been written up yet.
Examples, not a menu
Find the one whose day looks like yours.
Food and drink
Bookings, orders and menus for places that serve food and drink.
Restaurants and food service
The phone rings hardest during service, and a table nobody booked at eight can't be sold at eleven.
Cafés and coffee shops
Most of the day's trade arrives before nine in one queue, and the regulars who keep you open are known by face and written down nowhere.
Takeaways and delivery kitchens
Two or three nights carry the week, and the customer who orders every Friday belongs to whichever app they ordered through.
Pubs and bars
Most of the reasons to come in have a date on them, and the people who would come have no way of knowing unless they're already at the bar.
Bakeries and cake makers
The bread is baked before anyone knows who's buying it, and the cake orders arrive as a photo and a date with half the details missing.
Caterers and event catering
Every job is quoted before it's won, and nobody can write the quote until they know how many, when, where and what nobody can eat.
Hospitality and events
Rooms, stays and events that are booked ahead of the date.
Hotels and hospitality
The second stay is the one worth owning, and the desk is staffed -- which is exactly why nobody notices the enquiries going unanswered.
B&Bs and guest houses
You cook the breakfasts, turn the rooms and answer the door, and the booking enquiry arrives in the middle of all three.
Holiday lets and short stays
Nobody is there when the guest arrives, so every question the house can't answer lands on your phone, usually on changeover day.
Holiday parks and campsites
Every pitch is a different product — a tent, a tourer, a lodge — and next summer's bookings are decided on dark evenings after Christmas.
Wedding and event venues
You sell one date at a time, often more than a year ahead, and the couple who asked on Sunday night is touring two other venues by Saturday.
Event planners
Every event is a small project with a dozen suppliers, one date that can't move, and a client who wants to know where things stand.
Trades and home services
Call-outs, quotes and invoices for people working on site.
Trades and home services
You can't answer with both hands under a sink, and the quoting happens after the last job of the day.
Plumbers and heating engineers
The calls come in bursts when the weather turns, and the boiler you serviced last autumn is due again whether anyone remembers or not.
Electricians
Every job ends in paperwork — a test result, a certificate, a date it's due again — and the paperwork is where the next job comes from.
Roofers
Quiet for weeks, then one storm and forty people want a ladder up by the weekend.
Builders and renovation firms
One job runs for months with the customer living in the middle of it, and the next job is won by how this one felt.
Landscapers and gardeners
Spring fills the diary before the first job starts, and the winter is spent wishing the enquiries had come in November.
Cleaning companies
The work repeats every week, the staff change more often than the customers, and a missed clean is remembered longer than a good one.
Removal companies
Every job has a fixed date somebody else chose, and the quote is won or lost before you've seen the house.
Motor trade
Service bookings, repairs and vehicle sales.
Car garages and workshops
The ramps are booked ahead, the phone rings while you're underneath a car, and every customer's next service date is somewhere nobody looks.
Car dealers
Every car sells once, and an enquiry about it is worth nothing the day after somebody else drove it away.
Health and care
Appointments, recalls and enquiries for practices and care providers.
Healthcare practices and groups
An empty chair at three o'clock is gone for good, and the patients due back are the ones nobody has time to ring.
Dental practices
Check-ups keep the practice going, and the patients who are due one are the ones who have forgotten you exist.
Physiotherapy clinics
Recovery takes a course of sessions, and the patient who feels better after the third is the one who stops booking.
Veterinary practices
The worried owner and the routine booster ring the same number, and only one of them can wait.
Opticians
An eye test comes round every couple of years, and most people only remember it when their glasses stop working.
Aesthetics clinics
Every treatment starts with a consultation, and a consultation slot given to the wrong enquiry is an afternoon gone.
Therapists and counsellors
The first message can take somebody weeks of courage to send, and the reply decides whether they ever send another.
Care homes
The person choosing is rarely the person moving in, and they are often choosing in a hurry, straight after a hospital stay.
Beauty and fitness
Appointments, memberships and the visits that repeat.
Hair salons and barbers
Every chair is booked in short blocks, and one no-show on a Saturday is money that doesn't come back.
Beauty salons and spas
Treatments are booked by room and therapist, and the gift vouchers bought in December decide a good part of February.
Gyms and fitness studios
January fills the place, and the members who quietly stop coming in March never tell you they've gone.
Professional and financial services
Enquiries, onboarding and deadlines for advice-led firms.
Professional services
An enquiry worth thousands arrives while you're with a client, and it has about an hour before somebody else takes it.
Accountants and bookkeepers
The year has a handful of deadlines everyone knows about, and nearly every client leaves the paperwork until the week before.
Financial advisers
The work is relationships that last decades, and the first conversation depends on facts the enquirer has rarely written down.
Insurance brokers
Renewal dates come round every year whether you're ready or not, and a lapsed policy is a customer lost without a word.
Mortgage brokers
Every case is a chase for documents, and the buyer rings to ask where things are on the day you're waiting on a lender.
Recruitment agencies
You serve two customers at once — the business hiring and the person looking — and both expect to hear back first.
Property and building
Listings, projects and enquiries across property and design.
Property and lettings
A new listing brings every enquiry it will ever get in one afternoon, and lettings runs on dates that turn into fines.
Property developers
Interest peaks before there is anything to see, and the buyers who registered early are the ones nobody followed up.
Architects and interior designers
The work sells on pictures of finished projects, and the enquiries that arrive rarely say how big, where or for how much.
Shops and makers
Products, stock and orders for shops, makers and suppliers.
Shops and e-commerce
Most full baskets never become orders, and what sold over the counter this morning is often still for sale online.
Fashion boutiques
The stock changes every season and most pieces come in a few sizes, so what's on the rail today may be gone by the time its picture goes up.
Jewellers
A commission is a conversation that runs for weeks, and a repair is somebody's grandmother's ring sitting in your safe.
Florists
Nearly every order has a date and a message on it, and a few days a year carry the rest of the month.
Furniture and homeware stores
Big pieces are bought after a visit and a tape measure, and the sale isn't finished until something heavy is through a front door.
Manufacturers and wholesalers
Trade customers reorder the same things on a rhythm, and every new enquiry needs a quote nobody can write without a spec.
Education and childcare
Admissions, bookings and parents' questions.
Schools, colleges and training
Six weeks decide the year, every enquiry in them arrives while you're teaching, and two people are reading who want opposite things.
Nurseries and childcare
Parents start looking long before they need a place, and every enquiry arrives while the staff are with the children.
Tutors and tuition centres
The parent pays, the pupil attends, and both want to know whether it's working — usually just before an exam.
Driving schools and instructors
The diary is a week of hour-long slots in a car, and the pupil who cancels at breakfast leaves one you can't fill.
Software and technology
Product sites, launch pages and the tools behind them.
Software and technology
You could build all of it, which is the problem -- it gets done on a Sunday instead of the product getting shipped.
Startups
Everything needs doing before there is anyone to do it, and the first version of every system becomes the one you live with.
Mobile app businesses
Most people who install the app open it once, and the website is where the ones who never installed it decided not to.
Creative work
Portfolios, releases and bookings for creative people.
Musicians and bands
Your audience lives on platforms you don't own, and any of them can change the rules the week your record comes out.
Authors and small publishers
A book launches once, and the readers who loved it have nowhere to hear about the next one unless you kept their address.
Photographers
The work sells itself when people can see it quickly, and a date somebody asks about is gone the moment someone else books it.
Charities
Supporters, donations and volunteers.
Charities
A small team runs on goodwill, and the supporter who gave once last winter hasn't heard a word since.
Several sites, one owner
One business run across several locations.
Multi-site and franchise operators
Six copies of one business drift apart in eighteen months, and the location that has gone quiet is the one nothing will tell you about.
What if mine isn’t there?
Then you’re in the majority, and it changes nothing. I take on whatever a business needs building. These are what I’ve had time to write up, not the extent of what I work on.
The ones above exist because their days are so unlike each other. A restaurant’s problem is ninety minutes long. A solicitor’s lasts about an hour. A clinic’s happened eight months ago and nobody followed it up. Reading one that isn’t yours is still worth doing, because you’ll recognise the shape even when the trade is wrong.
And if none of them fit, tell me how your Tuesday actually goes. That’s the conversation either way.
Your trade doesn’t change what the audit tells you.
It reads your site, not your sector. Free, and whatever it finds is yours.
Would you rather describe your business to a person first? Message on WhatsApp, or send a message and it reaches the person who would do the work.