If you could see a ranked list of what visitors to your website actually consume, opening hours would sit near the top, usually above services, always above the about page. It is the question that brings people back repeatedly, and it is the question that determines whether someone sets out to see you today.

It is also, on a large share of Nigerian healthcare websites, wrong.

Why it goes wrong

Hours get typed into the footer when the site is built and never revisited. Then the practice starts opening on Saturday mornings, or stops. A public holiday closes the clinic and nobody says so. A branch changes its evening schedule. The website carries on stating what was true in the year it was built.

The cost is invisible because the patient who arrives at a closed clinic, or who does not set out because they think you are closed, rarely tells you.

Say more than the times

Bare times leave real questions unanswered. Useful hours information covers:

  • Which days, including whether Saturday differs from weekdays and whether you open on Sunday at all.
  • Whether the times shown are when doors open or when consultations start.
  • The last time a patient can arrive and still be seen, which is usually earlier than closing and almost never published.
  • Whether particular services run on particular days. A lab that only runs certain tests on certain days should say so here, not only on the test page.
  • Which clinicians are in on which days, if patients book by name.
  • What happens outside hours, and where to go in an emergency.

Public holidays

Nigeria has a substantial number of public holidays, several of which move each year with the Islamic calendar and are sometimes confirmed at short notice. A practice that posts its holiday arrangements a few days ahead, on the website and the Google listing, saves a great many wasted journeys.

Google Business Profile supports special hours for specific dates. Almost nobody uses this feature, and it is precisely the one that prevents a patient being told you are open when you are not.

Put it where it is read

The footer is fine as a permanent home, but the highest-value place is your Google Business Profile, because that is where most people check without ever loading your site. Keep the two in agreement. When they disagree, patients believe Google.

Make it somebody's job

The reason this drifts is that it belongs to nobody. Attach it to something that already happens: whoever prepares the monthly rota also checks the published hours. It takes two minutes and prevents the most common avoidable frustration a patient can have with a practice.