If you are a solopreneur, there is more to taking a vacation (holiday as we call it in the UK) than just switching on your out of office message, in this post I’ll show you how to prepare your website for your vacation.
As a solopreneur, everything is on your shoulders, all email responses and communication come from you. Slow or no replies can come across as unprofessional so in this post I’ll take you through a couple of pointers to ensure you alert people you are not available.
Contact Forms
Where you have contact forms on your site drop in a bold highlighted section saying you are away and will get back to them when you get back before they submit their request, check out my work with me page as an example.
Switch Off Your Ads
OMG a few years back I was running paid ads and left them running when I was in Italy, there’s a couple of hundred quid down the toilet,
If you need to respond to contact from your ads then switch off the ads while you are away. People coming to you from paid ads are cold traffic and expect a certain level of service which will look poor if you leave them on hold for a week or more.
Disable Email Autoresponder
If you are running an autoresponder to sell your thing consider switching that off if you need to be around to fulfil the sale. I’m thinking service delivery of if you need to prepare a quote.
If you are selling stuff that doesn’t need you around have at it and leave your ads running and experience that earn while you are on the beach feeling.
Don’t forget to start your Out Of Office Message
I know I said it’s more than just an OOO message, but don’t forget to active it, I use Gmail and they have a great tool under stetting to reply to all emails with a set message.
Lock Your Site Like Your Would Your House
If you use the iTheme security plugin, there is a great feature called away mode. This stops any logins to your site until a specific time, set this to be your return date and no-one can login to your site until you get back.
Dude I’m in holiday mode, check out this post to learn how to activate away mode, I can’t be bothered to write more 🙂
https://ithemes.com/tutorials/getting-started-ithemes-security-part-4-away-mode/
Let People Know
A client of mine has a great technique, he switches on his out of office message two weeks early with a warning that he is out of the office in a couple of weeks then swaps the message to his true out of office while he’s away.
Me, I’m writing a blog post and I’ve personally emailed the people who have projects with me plus doing everything.
Let Your Team Know
If you have a team then let them know and expect them to pick up the slack. Have an expectation that you will not be contacted by your team, why else would you have a team if you are still micro managing their every move while on vacation.
Defend Your Boundaries
One last thing defend the boundaries you have set when you are on vacation and don’t reply to message that look like this.
I know you are on vacation but can you [insert client request]
You need rest and cannot hustle 24/7 so switch off and enjoy your time away.
Wrap Up – Prepare Your Website For Your Vacation
I’m on holiday next week, back in the office on the 2nd August as you can probably guess.
If you are a maintenance client I’ve got you covered send a message to [email protected] and my VA will look after you.
I’m looking forward to putting out the fires in my inbox when I get home 🙂
Photo by The Travel Nook on Unsplash
I’m having a staycation in the Lake district in the UK it wont look like that photo that’s for sure.
