A veterinary website has one job: get a pet owner to call or book. Most of the owners who find an animal hospital online are on a phone, often worried, sometimes in a hurry. The site has to answer their first questions on a small screen in a few seconds. Here is what it needs, roughly in the order owners look for it.
Your phone number, one tap away
Put a tap-to-call button in the header of every page and keep it visible as people scroll. Plenty of owners would rather talk to someone than read. If they have to hunt for the number, some of them go back to Google and call the next hospital on the list.
Hours that are easy to find, and correct
Show today's hours near the top of the home page, with weekends and holidays spelled out. Say plainly whether you see emergencies. If you don't, tell people where to go after hours; they will remember that you helped.
Keep these hours identical to your Google Business Profile. When the two disagree, owners stop trusting both.
A way to book or request an appointment
An online booking or appointment-request form catches the people who won't call: the owner at work, the one reading at 11pm. Keep it short. Name, phone, the pet's name and species, and the reason for the visit is usually enough for your front desk to call back.
A page for each service you want to be found for
"Dog dental cleaning" and "cat vaccines" are different searches. A single services page with a bulleted list rarely ranks for either. Give your main services their own pages: what the visit involves, how to prepare, what happens after, and how to book. Wellness exams, dentistry, surgery, vaccines and urgent care make a common starting set.
New client information
New clients want to know what to bring and what to expect. Tell them: records from their last vet, any forms they can fill out before the visit, and how payment works. Put the forms online so nobody fills out a clipboard in the lobby with a nervous dog on a leash.
Who your veterinarians are
Owners choose a vet much the way they choose their own doctor. A team page with real photos, each veterinarian's background and interests, and any accreditation the hospital holds (AAHA, for example) gives them a reason to pick you over the hospital down the street.
Reviews
Link to your Google reviews, or show a few recent ones on the site with the reviewer's first name. Ask happy clients for reviews after a good visit. Never write them yourself.
Speed on a phone
A page that takes ten seconds to show anything on a phone loses people before they ever see your number. Compress photos, skip the autoplay video and the slider at the top, and test the site on an actual phone over cellular data, not on office Wi-Fi.
Accessibility
Use clear contrast, real text instead of text baked into images, labeled buttons, and forms that work with a screen reader. It helps older clients and anyone with a disability book a visit, and it makes the site easier for everyone else too.
The local search basics
Your hospital's name, address and phone number should match everywhere they appear: the site footer, your Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Yelp and any directories. On the site, add structured data (schema.org has a VeterinaryCare type) with your address, phone and hours so search engines read them correctly.
Tracking
Count calls from the website and form submissions separately from your other calls, so you know what the site and any ads are actually bringing in. Without that number, every marketing decision is a guess.
How does your site compare?
Open your site on your phone and go down this list. If you would like a second pair of eyes, book a free website audit and we will walk through it with you on a call. You can see the animal hospital sites we have built in Las Vegas and Henderson on our veterinary marketing page.