A schedule that lives only on Facebook is hard to reach for people without accounts, interrupted by log-in prompts, unreadable to search engines, and gone whenever Facebook is. Put the timetable on the website, as text.

The site

A yoga studio on the second floor above a row of shops in a city neighbourhood, with two rooms, a dozen teachers and about forty classes a week.

The website is pleasant: calm photographs of the rooms, a page on each style of class, teacher biographies, and drop-in and class card prices.

The page called Schedule has one line on it: our schedule changes often, so please see our Facebook page for this week's classes.

The studio's Google listing links to the website, so somebody who searches for the studio by name to find a class time is sent to the site, then on to Facebook.

On Facebook, the timetable is a designed image pinned to the top of the page. Changes, such as a cancelled class or a substitute teacher, are posted as separate updates beneath it.

The inference a visitor makes

Somebody new to the studio has one question before any other: is there a class I can get to, at a time that works, at my level.

The website has answered every question except that one, then sent them somewhere else to find it.

Some visitors read that as relaxed and charming. Others read it as disorganised, and for a beginner deciding whether to walk into a room of strangers, the difference matters.

And some of them never reach the timetable at all.

Who hits the wall

The second is the group a studio rarely thinks about. Logged-out visitors can see a public page, but after some scrolling Facebook covers it with a log-in prompt, and plenty of people close the tab rather than sign in.

A timetable posted as a picture

The image looks good on a laptop. On a phone, forty classes across seven days shrink to text a few millimetres high, and reading Thursday evening means zooming and dragging.

Nothing in it can be tapped, copied or searched. A class name cannot link to its description, or a time to booking.

A screen reader announces it as an image, at best with an automatic description saying it may contain text. The forty classes inside it do not exist for that visitor.

Every change means redesigning and reposting it, which is why changes go up as separate posts and the image drifts out of date. By June it is the January timetable, with corrections scattered through the feed.

A feed buries the changes

A Facebook page is a feed, newest first. Whatever was posted on Monday sits beneath three other posts by Thursday.

A cancellation posted on Sunday night reaches the followers whose news feeds happen to show it. Somebody checking on Tuesday has to scroll past a workshop announcement and two quotations to find it, if they think to look.

Facebook has also been showing page posts to a shrinking share of followers, sharply so since its news feed change at the start of last year.

So the place the studio relies on for accuracy is where the current information is hardest to find.

Why it ended up there

Not out of carelessness. The schedule moved to Facebook because Facebook was easy and the website was not.

The site was built by a designer who has since moved on, and every change meant an email and a wait, or a login nobody could remember. Facebook was in everyone's pocket.

That is a fair reason, and it points at the real fix. A schedule page has to be as easy to update from a phone as a Facebook post, or it drifts back within a season.

A worked example

The studio already used booking software for class cards and registration. Every class, teacher and room was in it, kept current by the manager, because bookings depended on it.

The schedule page was rebuilt to show that timetable directly: each day as a list of classes with time, length, style, level, teacher and room, and a booking link beside each.

Beneath it sits the regular weekly timetable in plain text, so the page still reads properly to search engines, and to anyone on a slow connection while the booking system loads.

Changes now happen once, in the booking software, and appear on the site straight away. A Facebook post about a cancellation links to the schedule page rather than replacing it.

The pinned image came down. A pinned post linking to the website took its place.

The day Facebook went down

On March 13, Facebook and Instagram were broken or unreachable for most of a day, the longest outage in Facebook's history. The company blamed a server configuration change.

For a studio whose schedule existed only there, that meant no schedule. Anyone checking class times that evening found an error, and the website sent them straight to it.

Outages that long are rare. But a schedule on the website survives a bad day at Facebook, and the reverse is not true.

The counter-case within the site

Facebook still has a role. Followers who see a post about a workshop or a new teacher are reminded the studio exists, and events can spread through friends.

A studio with a timetable that changes twice a year needs less: a text timetable on the site, edited each season, with Facebook kept for news.

And a studio whose classes are full of regulars may feel the missing schedule less, for now.

Still, the timetable belongs on the website, as text, with Facebook pointing to it rather than the other way round.

What to change

  1. Move the timetable onto the site as text.
  2. Show each class with time, level, teacher and room.
  3. Connect it to your booking software if you have it.
  4. Make it editable from a phone by the manager.
  5. Put this week's changes at the top of the page.
  6. Link Facebook posts to the schedule page.
  7. Replace the pinned image with a link.

Step four is the one that keeps the schedule on the site. It moved to Facebook because the website was hard to change, and unless updating it is as easy as posting, it will drift back.

What a business loses when Facebook is its only storefront is covered in the day Facebook and Instagram went down.

Frequently asked questions

Why not keep the schedule on Facebook?

Because people without accounts, people who will not log in, screen reader users and search engines all struggle to reach it there, and it vanishes whenever Facebook has an outage.

What is wrong with a timetable image?

On a phone it is too small to read without zooming. It cannot be searched, tapped or read aloud, and every change means redesigning it, so it drifts out of date.

Why do changes get lost on Facebook?

A page is a feed, newest first, so a cancellation sinks beneath later posts within days. Many followers never see it in their news feed at all.

What should the schedule page show?

Each class with its day, time, length, style, level, teacher and room, a way to book, and this week's changes at the top of the page.

Why did the schedule move to Facebook?

Usually because Facebook was easy to update from a phone and the website was not. Unless the schedule page is just as easy, it drifts back.

Does Facebook still have a role?

Yes, for news, workshops and reminders that reach followers. Posts about changes should link to the schedule page on the website rather than replace it.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Class schedule only on Facebook?

We will put the timetable on your website, as text, and make it easy to update from a phone.

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