A place is years of fees
A nursery place is a child attending for two or three years, invoiced monthly. A holiday club family comes back every half term until secondary school. A baby class parent books term after term and then brings the next baby. One new family from the website is worth a great deal over the time they stay. The website question is how many new families it produces per month against what it costs, and whether the template version can produce them at all. Here is how to tell.
The template
A nursery theme or a builder layout with your logo, a few photos, a contact form and the phone number.
Cost: hundreds to low thousands.
Good at: existing; looking friendly; being found for your business name.
Weak at: showing the rooms (a template has a hero image and a gallery, not a page per room with the age range and ratio); fees and funding (usually "contact us for fees", because a template has nowhere to explain funded hours); viewings (a contact form, which is a voicemail with extra steps); the waitlist (an email nobody reconciles with the register); proof (the inspection rating as a badge with no link, staff as first names); speed on a phone; and ownership, if it sits on the vendor's hosting.
The custom build
Built around how a parent chooses. A page per room with real photographs, age range, ratio and key person approach. A day-in-the-life page. Inspection rating linked to the report; staff qualifications and vetting stated; safeguarding policy. One plain fees and funding page you can edit. Viewing slots booked online through Bookeo, Acuity or your nursery software. A waitlist form landing in Famly or Blossom. Enrolment through the software. Fast on a phone, structured data for a local childcare provider, tracking of viewings and waitlist joins, everything in your name.
Cost: mid four figures, fixed.
Good at: ranking for "nursery [town]" and "holiday club [town]", answering the fees question before the phone rings, and converting a 10pm visit into a viewing booked for Tuesday.
Weak at: the invoice, and two to three weeks of build.
Where the extra families come from
The rooms. A parent is choosing where their baby will spend forty hours a week. A page per room, photographed as it is, with who works there and what a morning looks like, is the most persuasive content a setting can publish. A template's gallery of eight thumbnails does not do it.
Fees and funding. "How much is it, and can I use my funded hours" is the question every parent has. A site that answers it in plain language converts the parent who would otherwise phone three nurseries and book a viewing with the first to pick up. A template's "contact us" sends them to the phone.
Viewings online. A parent researching at night wants to book Tuesday at ten, not leave a message. Live viewing slots book the visit while the intent is there.
Pages that rank. "Nursery [town]", "holiday club [town]", "baby sensory classes [town]", "babysitter [town]" are separate searches. A page for each, or a site per type of setting, ranks; a template's single Services page does not.
Speed. Parents research on a phone, often one-handed.
The arithmetic, illustrated
Suppose a nursery with a template site gets 300 visits a month and one in fifty ends in a viewing request: six viewings, perhaps three places.
Suppose a custom site ranking for the town, with room pages, fees stated and viewings bookable, gets 500 visits and one in twenty books a viewing: twenty-five viewings, perhaps twelve places. Those are made-up figures to show the shape, not a promise, but even at a third of the difference, the additional places in the first term exceed the price gap between the builds, and each place is years of monthly fees.
When the template is right
- A setting that is full with a waitlist longer than a year and no plan to expand.
- A childminder or single-venue class provider in the first year, using the software's page.
- A business about to be sold.
When the template is a leak
- Parents phone to ask fees and whether funding applies.
- Viewing requests arrive as voicemails and are returned the next day.
- The site has one exterior photo and a stock image of a child painting.
- The site takes over three seconds on a phone.
- You have spare places in a room and no way for a parent to find that room online.
- The waitlist is an inbox rather than a list in Famly or Blossom.
Deciding
Three numbers: monthly visits, monthly viewings or waitlist joins from the site, and what a place is worth over the time a family stays. If viewings are under one in twenty-five visits, or the page takes over three seconds, or fees are not on the site, a custom build pays back inside a term. If the site is fast, fees are stated and viewings book online, keep it and add room pages.
A nursery or holiday club nearly always needs the custom build because the page count and the flows demand it. A baby class or babysitting service can start smaller. Our childcare websites are custom builds at a fixed price, with room pages, the fees and funding page, viewing booking and the waitlist included, because that is the version that fills places. The template costs less to buy and more in the families who booked a viewing somewhere that let them.