Reader question: We added Saturday hours. How do we tell people?
A practice opened two Saturdays a month and the chairs are still half empty. Where to announce new hours so new and current patients actually find out and book.
A practice manager wrote in with a problem that sounds like a good one. Her office started seeing patients two Saturdays a month in September. The doctors agreed, the hygienists agreed, payroll is set. Six weeks later, Saturday chairs are still half empty. Her question: we added the hours, so why is nobody booking them?
The short answer is that nobody knows yet. Adding hours inside the practice and telling the outside world are two different jobs, and most offices only do the first one.
Saturday is rarer than you think
In our data, only 14.1% of the 86,875 dental listings show Saturday hours on Google, and 3.8% show Sunday. That makes Saturday a real edge. A working parent who cannot leave the office on a Tuesday is looking for exactly what you just added. They just cannot find it.
The full numbers are on the benchmarks page.
Step one: put the hours where Google reads them
This is the part most offices skip or get wrong.
Regular hours on your Google Business Profile. If you open every other Saturday, Google's regular hours cannot show that cleanly. You have two options. List Saturday in regular hours and mark the closed Saturdays as special hours, or leave Saturday out of regular hours and add each open Saturday as special hours. The first is usually better, because "open Saturday" shows up in search and on the map. Just keep the special hours current so nobody shows up to a locked door.
The appointment link. Make sure your online scheduler actually offers Saturday slots. It sounds obvious, but many offices add the hours to the calendar and forget the scheduler has its own settings.
A Google post. Post once to announce it: "Now seeing patients on select Saturdays. Book online or call." Add a photo of your front desk team. Posts do not last forever, so post again each month.
The Google profile guide covers where each of these settings lives.
Step two: tell the patients you already have
Your fastest Saturday bookings will come from current patients who keep putting off a visit because of work.
Send one text or email to your active patient list:
"Good news from [practice]. We now see patients on select Saturdays. If weekdays are hard, you can book a Saturday cleaning or exam here: [link]. Reply with any questions."
Then look at your list of patients who are overdue for hygiene. Many of them are overdue because weekdays are hard. Send them a separate note that names the problem: "We know it is tough to get away during the week. We now have Saturday appointments."
Have your front desk mention it on every recall call and at checkout for the next two months.
Step three: put it on your website
Add "Open select Saturdays" near the top of your homepage, next to your phone number and booking button. Put the specific dates on your contact or hours page. If you run ads, add a line to the ad text and a sitelink to the Saturday page.
This matters for AI tools too. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for a dentist open on Saturday near them, the answer comes from text on your site and your profile. A clear sentence helps you show up. The website essentials guide has more on what belongs above the fold.
Step four: answer the phone on Saturday
If someone calls on a Saturday you are open and gets a voicemail because the front desk is with a patient, you have spent all that effort for nothing. Make sure someone is on the phone, or that missed calls get a text back right away. The missed calls guide walks through that setup.
How long before it fills
Give it a full two months after you have done all four steps. New hours take time to show up in search, and patients book cleanings weeks ahead. Track Saturday bookings by source: new patients from Google, current patients from the text, recall patients from the front desk. That tells you which part is working.
My answer to the manager was that her Saturdays are not the problem. They are a good idea that has not been announced. Do the four steps, keep the hours steady for at least a quarter, and only then decide whether Saturday is worth keeping.
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Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, dental practices among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor