Site Closed for Maintenance - any SERP ranking effect if used for lengthy periods?

[shags38]

I need to have my sites offline for a period of about 2 weeks so I can go on a well earned holiday (I am a one man operation and I cannot ship items remotely ) - I know I will lose sales but I cannot see that this is avoidable. My main concern is not losing SERP rankings by taking the site off line.

1. is using the 'site is down for maintenance' tool in admin the best way to handle this? and 2. what is the message it sends to robots via robots.txt and what effect does it have on crawl rates by robots, hence potential SERP decline?

cheers, Mike

[Ajeh]

You might try changing your Ship status in the Configuration ... My Store ...

Store Status
What is your Store Status
0= Normal Store
1= Showcase no prices
2= Showcase with prices

and perhaps add a banner in the header to say that your shop is down for 2 weeks ...

[rbarbour]

You might try changing your Ship status in the Configuration ... My Store ...


and perhaps add a banner in the header to say that your shop is down for 2 weeks ...

Quicker than I am :-)

[Ajeh]

even so ... great minds think alike ...

[shags38]

You might try changing your Ship status in the Configuration ... My Store ...


and perhaps add a banner in the header to say that your shop is down for 2 weeks ...

Thanks for such a quick response (and to rbarbour also - quick and the dead eh? ).

I will likely do that however just wondering ... I generally ship same or next day whilst some competitors will quote 2-3 weeks and they are still getting business. So rather than miss out on sales could I put a notation in the checkout that states that shipment may be up to 2 weeks (with then a proceed or cancel button maybe)? ... that way if the customer is happy to wait I retain the order. Even without a 'proceed' button would still be OK. Remotely when halfway through the holiday I can change it from 2 weeks to 1 week.

Can this be done?

cheers, Mike

[gjh42]

Instead of a "x weeks" delay message, you could just say that you are away (choose the kind/level of detail you want) until x/x/2014, and will ship ordered items within a few days of then... maybe also that you will ship in order of purchase date.

[gjh42]

(Maybe you want to say "closed" rather than "away" depending on your store location, so as not to alert the world that there is nobody home for an extended period.)

[shags38]

Instead of a "x weeks" delay message, you could just say that you are away (choose the kind/level of detail you want) until x/x/2014, and will ship ordered items within a few days of then... maybe also that you will ship in order of purchase date.

Thanks for the response Glenn - good idea. Now HOW do I put such a message in the checkout so it is read before customer confirms purchase?

cheers,
Mike

[mc12345678]

Thanks for the response Glenn - good idea. Now HOW do I put such a message in the checkout so it is read before customer confirms purchase?

cheers,
Mike

I would say that you would want to either put the message in a header like message or thhe header message and just before confirming the order. This way the customer can choose to continue navigating for the products and not have the aggrivation at the end of finding out it will be a "long" time for shipping. Also may want to update your shipping policy(ies) if you have any. Regarding how/where to update, assuming you won't have a computer with you, may want to place the message(s) in say a define page that you can get to through the admin panel. Otherwise search for text that is shown on the page(s) where it will be added using the developers tool kit in the tools section of the admin panel and edit that file with your favorite text editor.

[rbarbour]

I need to have my sites offline for a period of about 2 weeks so I can go on a well earned holiday (I am a one man operation and I cannot ship items remotely ) - I know I will lose sales but I cannot see that this is avoidable. My main concern is not losing SERP rankings by taking the site off line.

1. is using the 'site is down for maintenance' tool in admin the best way to handle this? and 2. what is the message it sends to robots via robots.txt and what effect does it have on crawl rates by robots, hence potential SERP decline?

cheers, Mike

MO, Inform customers via header banner and change store status to showcase.