The question settings ask
"What should the site lead with?" The answer is the same for a nursery, a club and an agency: inspection rating and report, staff qualifications and vetting, ratios, and real photographs of the rooms and the outdoor space. Then fees and funding. Parents check the first set before anything else and state that they do so when asked. The site leads with the first set and states the second plainly. Here is what that looks like, in the order a parent reads.
First: is it safe
The parent is choosing who looks after their child. Before the design, the tone or the daily routine registers, they are scanning for the inspection rating, the date, and a link to the report. On a phone, that means the rating sits in the first screen or the second, with the report one tap away on the regulator's own site.
Right beside it, the vetting: what checks every adult has passed, named, not "fully vetted". And the ratios: how many children per adult in each room. A site that makes the parent phone for ratios has lost the parent who did not phone.
For a nanny agency, "is it safe" is the vetting process itself: checks, references, interviews, qualifications, step by step. For a babysitting service, it is the same list per sitter.
Second: can I picture it
Real photographs of every room and the garden. Not the entrance and the logo. The baby room with the cots, the toddler room with the mess, the pre-school room with the work on the walls, the outdoor space in the weather it actually gets. Parents cannot picture the setting from words, and a setting they cannot picture is one they do not visit.
An Our rooms page, one section per room, with the photos, the age range, the capacity, the ratio and the person who leads it. Then A day with us, the day-in-the-life page: arrival, breakfast, free play, outdoor time, lunch, sleep, tea, collection, with a photo at each stage. This is the page parents describe to each other.
Third: who are the people
Our team, with a photo, first name, role, room and qualifications for everyone. The parent is looking for the face that will greet their child at eight in the morning. A paragraph about a "dedicated, passionate team" does not have a face.
Fourth: what will it cost
Only now does the parent open Fees and funding, and they want a table: sessions by age group, what is included, which funding schemes you accept and how they apply to your sessions. A "contact us for fees" line at this point undoes the previous three screens.
Fifth: how do I take the next step
Book a viewing, as a calendar of real slots. Join the waitlist, as a form into your nursery software. Both linked from the header and from the foot of every page above. The parent who has read this far is ready.
What this means for the home page
The order above is the home page, top to bottom, on a phone:
- Name, what you are, where, ages, and two buttons: Book a viewing and Join the waitlist.
- Inspection rating with date and report link; vetting and ratios in a line each.
- Three or four room photographs linking to Our rooms.
- A row of staff faces linking to Our team.
- Sessions and fees in brief, linking to Fees and funding.
- A day with us, in brief.
- Reviews from parents, with space reserved so the layout does not jump.
- The two buttons again, and the Safeguarding link.
What parents do not look for first
The mission statement. The values. The founder's story. The award from 2019. The blog. These can live on About, and some parents read them, after everything above. Sites that lead with them are written for the owner rather than the parent.
Variations
For a holiday club, "can I picture it" becomes the programme by week and age group, with prices, and "next step" becomes booking the days. For a baby class business, it becomes the classes by age band with the focus explained, and a trial booked online. For a children's party venue, the order flips: packages and availability first, then the room photographs, then supervision and allergy answers. The parent choosing a party is not choosing who looks after their child every day.
Where this sits
Rating and vetting, then the rooms, then the people, then fees, then the two buttons: that is the order every childcare website we build follows, on the home page and in the menu. It is not our order. It is the order parents already read in, and the site's job is to stop making them hunt.