A Hurricane Season Website Checklist for Florida Service Businesses

Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. Every Florida business owner knows the routine for the shop: shutters, generators, backups. Fewer think about the website, even though it is where customers look first when a storm is coming and right after it passes.

Use this checklist in the spring, while things are calm.

Before the season starts

The worst time to learn your website login is gone is two days before landfall. Get these done early:

• Find your logins. Website editor, domain registrar, hosting, Google Business Profile and social accounts. Store them somewhere the owner and one trusted person can reach.
• Set up a storm banner. A thin bar across the top of every page that you can switch on with a short message: “Closed Thursday for Hurricane Milton. Emergency line open.” Test it now.
• Prepare an update page. A simple page with your storm hours, emergency contact details and what customers should expect. Keep it unpublished until you need it.
• Check your forms. Make sure form messages reach a phone, not just an office computer.
• Know your phone plan. If the office line goes down, can calls forward to a cell phone?

Make sure the site stays up

Plenty of small business websites run on cheap shared servers. When traffic spikes or a data center has trouble, they slow down or fall over.

A site built as static files and served from a content delivery network, a worldwide network of copies, keeps working even if your office has no power and your local internet is out. It also loads faster on congested cell networks after a storm, when every extra second counts. Our care and hosting service runs sites this way.

Pages that help during a storm

If your trade gets busy around storms, plan these pages now:

• Emergency service page. What you can do right after a storm, like tarping, water extraction, tree removal or generator repair, and how to reach you.
• Storm prep advice. Short, useful tips for customers, like how to shut off water or what to photograph for insurance. These pages get shared and searched every season.
• ”What happens next” page. How you will prioritize calls, how long waits might be, and how customers will hear from you.

Write them in plain words. People reading them are stressed.

Update Google before you update anything else

Customers often check your Google Business Profile before your website. When a storm is coming:

1. Set special hours or mark the business temporarily closed.
2. Post a short update with your plans and emergency contact.
3. Reopen the hours as soon as you are open again, so the profile doesn’t keep saying closed.

Then switch on the banner on your website with the same message, so both say the same thing.

After the storm: be clear and careful

The days after a hurricane bring a flood of searches, and also a flood of scams. Customers are wary of contractors who appear out of nowhere. Help them trust you:

• Show your license number and how long you have worked in the area.
• Be honest about wait times. “We’re booked about five days out for non-emergencies” beats a promise you can’t keep.
• Keep prices fair. Florida’s price gouging law applies during a declared state of emergency, and the Florida Attorney General enforces it.
• Be careful with insurance language. Florida law restricts what contractors can offer or say about insurance claims, such as waiving deductibles. Avoid promising to “handle your claim.”

Spanish and other languages

Storm information is safety information. If many of your customers speak Spanish, put your storm banner and update page in both languages. Our guide to Spanish pages for Tampa businesses explains how to do it well.

A storm-ready site is just a well-run site

Almost everything on this list helps all year. Fast, light pages, clear contact details and honest messages bring in calls in calm weather too. Do the work once in spring and you will be ready for every season after.