Vet website that answers the three phone calls

Almost every call is one of three calls

Sit behind a veterinary reception desk for a morning and the pattern is unmistakable. People are ringing to book an appointment, to order a repeat prescription, or to find out what to do because something has happened and it is half past nine at night.

None of those three needs a human. All three currently get one, because the alternative on most practice websites is a phone number and a contact form. So the receptionist spends the morning reading out available times and writing down the name of a flea treatment, while somebody with a genuinely poorly animal listens to hold music.

The out-of-hours one is the worst version, because it is the call where the website has failed most completely. The information exists. It is usually in a paragraph three clicks deep, written for a desktop screen, being read at two in the morning on a phone by somebody who is frightened.

What I built instead

One panel near the top of the page with three tabs, one for each call. Appointments shows fourteen days of actual slots. Repeat prescriptions is a short form that captures the owner, the animal and the medication. Out of hours is the number and the address, in plain type, first.

Everything else on the site sits below that panel, because everything else matters less.

The three tabs are the first thing, above the pretty photograph

The order of a page should match the order of the reasons people arrive on it. For a veterinary practice, admiring the premises is a distant fourth.

Fourteen days of slots, not a request form

Showing real availability means the visitor either books or learns immediately that they need to ring. Both are better than filling in a form and waiting to find out.

Repeat prescriptions capture the medication name as free text

A dropdown of every drug the practice stocks would be long, wrong within a month, and useless when the owner only remembers the colour of the box. Free text plus the animal's name is enough for a nurse to work from.

Out of hours is text at the top of its tab, not a paragraph

Whoever is reading this is not reading, they are scanning at speed in the dark. The number comes first and the explanation comes after it.

Prices published, which is unusual in this sector

Consultation and routine procedure costs are on the page. Veterinary pricing is one of the most complained about things in the trade, and being the practice that publishes is a genuine differentiator rather than a marketing line.

One practice, not a group, stated plainly

A large share of UK practices are now corporate owned, and independence is the thing a certain kind of owner is actively looking for. If it is true it is worth saying once, clearly.

The bit that decides whether this works

A booking panel that shows slots the practice management system does not really have is worse than no panel, because now you are cancelling on people. This only works if the availability is genuinely connected to the diary, and connecting it is the expensive part of a build like this rather than the page you are looking at. Ask any developer promising you online booking exactly what happens when two people take the same slot, and do not accept a vague answer.