One caller did not choose today. Another is years overdue.
One is frightened and needs to be told calmly what happens next. The other has simply forgotten and will keep forgetting until somebody asks. Those are two different websites, and a practice usually builds one of them. We build both, and the system that remembers the second one for you.
Small animal, equine, farm, and optical practices and dispensing. Suffolk and north Essex.
Why does one website have to speak in two completely different ways?
Because your two busiest callers are in opposite states, and a page pitched between them reaches neither.
- The one whose dog has been hit by a car needs six words a line, the number, and to be told calmly that you can see them. Brisk efficiency reads as not understanding the problem.
- The one whose test is due needs a form, a choice of times and no conversation at all. Warmth is in the way.
So the site is built as two front doors. The urgent route is short and sells nothing, and the routine route is where the pictures, the prices and the booking live.
Who is ringing you, and what state are they in?
Not four stages of one journey. Four separate people, and the mistake is writing for the calm one and leaving the frightened one to find the number.
Something has just happened
They are in the car or standing in a kitchen. Can you see us, now, and where do we come. Nothing else on your website matters to this person right now.
Worried, but it can wait until Tuesday
A limp, a lump, a change in vision. They want to know whether it is worth a visit and roughly what the first one costs, and they will read a page that answers that honestly.
Due, and has forgotten
A booster, a test, a check that was two years ago. Nothing is wrong and nothing is urgent, and they will do it the day somebody makes it easy and not before.
New to the area, choosing
Registering, or moving a record from somewhere else. They want to know how that works, whether it costs anything and how long it takes, and it is worth putting in writing.
What does the emergency route on the page have to do?
Answer three things above everything else, and sell nothing at all. They go at the very top, in this order, in large plain text, with the number tappable beside them.
- Are you open now?
- What do we do if you are not?
- Where exactly do we drive to?
Then say what happens when they arrive. Somebody in a car park has one more question they have not thought to ask yet, and answering it before they ask is the whole job of a page like this.
Nothing about your values, no photographs of happy animals, no offer, no newsletter. It is the one route where an advert is unforgivable, and the one they remember afterwards.
Who answers when the phone rings and you are mid-consultation →
Should the page say anything about the end of a pet's life?
Yes, and it may be the most valuable page you could put up. People search for this at two in the morning, on their own, before they can bring themselves to ring anybody.
What they need is plain:
- What happens, and how long it takes.
- Whether they can stay, and whether it can be done at home.
- What happens afterwards, and what the choices are.
- What it costs, so nobody has to ask about money on the day.
Written calmly, with nothing sold anywhere near it. It is a hard page to write and it is a kindness, and the people who read it remember which practice was the one that told them.
How do we publish prices when half the work cannot be priced?
Publish the half that can, and for the rest say what changes the number rather than saying nothing. "It depends" is the true answer to a great many questions in your trade, and the mistake is letting that turn into a page with no figures on it at all.
- The fixed half goes up as text. A consultation has a price. A test has a price. Registering has a price or it is free. Anybody can read those without ringing.
- The variable half names what moves it, says nothing happens without an estimate first, and says who authorises going past it.
Money is a common complaint in your trade, and it is usually the surprise rather than the amount.
What does a practice website cost?
Ours are on the home page and they do not change depending on who is asking. Three of the five agencies measured make you request a quote first.
One payment to build it, then a monthly to run it
The build is the site, the words, the two routes set up properly, your Google listing done and the whole thing live on your own name. The monthly is hosting, changes and keeping it working.
Booking and reminders are the step up
Every plan starts with a site that explains the practice and takes an enquiry. Above it is where registration, appointments and the dates that come round again all live.
Records are treated as records
What the site collects, where it goes, who can see it and how long it is kept are written down before anything is built, and your own adviser sees it. That is the job, not an extra.
Yours to keep
The site is yours, in your name, and so is everything in it. One month's notice, and that month is when we hand it all over.
Every price we charge is on one page, with exactly what each tier covers.
How do we get the overdue half back through the door?
By holding the date and asking, rather than by advertising at everybody. Every routine thing you do is a date somebody has forgotten: a booster, a check, a test, a repeat of something dispensed two years ago.
- The system holds when each one is next due and produces the list.
- A member of staff sends it from your name. Not automatically and not in bulk while nobody is watching. Somebody sees the list and decides.
The gain is that nobody has to remember, and a practice where nobody has to remember stops losing people quietly over years. A website cannot do any of it, which is why a web designer never mentions it.
What happens between the appointment and the next one?
A web designer builds you a page. This is the half that decides whether the front desk spends its day on the telephone, and five agency sites were measured on 11 August 2026 with not one of them selling any of it.
Registration happens before they arrive
Details filled in at home, on a phone, in their own time, arriving attached to the appointment rather than on a clipboard in a waiting room with a frightened animal on a lead.
The reminder goes without anybody sending it
A message a few days before, from your name, with the time and where to park. The one thing on this page that empties fewest slots.
What was said is on one record
What was booked, what was estimated, what they were worried about, what was agreed. Nobody asks the same question twice and anybody covering the desk can pick it up.
The next date is set before it is forgotten
The system knows who is due and when, and puts the list in front of a person. That is the difference between a practice that holds its customers and one that leaks them.
The team sees the day on their own screens
Who is in, at what time, for what, and what is outstanding. The same information at the desk and in the consulting room, so nobody is shouting down a corridor.
The review is asked for once, by a person
Afterwards, in your words, with a link, and never after the appointments where asking would be grotesque. Somebody presses send and reads it first.
What catches practices out when they change website?
Four things, and the first one is the one nobody thinks about until a client rings from a car park at half past eight in the evening.
The out-of-hours page disappears
It is usually an old page nobody has looked at for years, and it is the one somebody needs at the worst possible moment. It gets written down and rebuilt first, before anything else moves.
A form keeps working and posts nowhere
Old forms carry health and contact details. One that still submits to somewhere nobody owns is a serious problem rather than a broken link, so every form is traced before the switch.
The email goes down with the website
The settings that point a site at where it lives sit beside the ones that point the mail at the mailbox. Moving the first has taken the second down more than once. We move one and not the other.
The reviews were on the old page
If real reviews are only on the old site they are gone the day it does. They belong on your Google listing, which nobody can switch off, and the site shows them from there.
What practices ask us
Straight answers about the two front doors, the out-of-hours line and the people who are overdue.
What actually gets us found for “vets near me”?
The map results, which for a practice with a door on a street matter far more than the ordinary blue links. So that is where the work goes.
- Your Google and Bing listings set up properly, with your hours and your out-of-hours arrangement on them as text rather than in a picture, because a picture cannot be read by anything.
- The out-of-hours line matters more here than in any trade we build for. It is what somebody is searching for at eleven at night, and it is the one thing that is almost always missing.
- Reviews, asked for at the end of the visit rather than when somebody remembers, and pages that genuinely answer what somebody typed.
Do the AI answers know the practice is here?
Worried owners describe a symptom to an assistant before they ring anybody. They ask whether it is urgent, and the reply often names somewhere to go. Google writes the same sort of answer above the blue links on an ordinary search.
- Assistants match stated facts. Whether you take emergencies, whether you are open at the weekend and what a consultation costs all have to be on the page as text.
- The work is the same work. Google's own guide says the best practices for search still apply, because its AI answers are built on its ordinary ranking systems. So nothing is bought twice.
- One setting in Search Console can shut a site out of Google's AI answers with no other symptom at all. We look for it on yours, and where it is there we make sure you are in.
What does the money go on?
The pages and the listings that bring a registration through the door. Both doors, the urgent one and the routine one.
- A page for every town the practice really takes patients from. Google filters out the ones aimed at towns nobody serves, so those win you nothing.
- Listings in the places an owner would actually look, rather than bought links.
- A page written when there is something real to say. Google’s own guidance calls a weekly post of seasonal advice commodity content.
How many of your clients are overdue and have not been asked?
Where your registrations come from now, what happens to a call that comes in while the desk is busy, and how you know who is due. Nothing to pay for the conversation.
Nothing to pay, and nothing to sign. We come out to twenty towns across Suffolk and north Essex, and the home page has the prices and what is in each tier.
What else is worth reading?
Every page here answers one question properly rather than skimming five. These are the others, and each one says what it is before you click it.
Websites for garages and MOT centres
The MOT falls on the same day every year and whoever asks first gets it booked. A site that takes it and a system that watches the dates.
Websites for physios and driving instructors
You are not selling one appointment, you are selling a block that has to be finished. A site that fills the first one and keeps the rest booked.
Foothold AI: websites and AI for local service businesses
A website that gets found, a back office that runs the day, and an app for your team. From £295 to set up and £99 a month. Suffolk based, UK wide.
Where we work: Suffolk and north Essex
Twenty towns across Suffolk and north Essex, from Sudbury. Most are twenty or thirty minutes away, and the person who builds your site comes out.