Six tests, ten minutes
A pet sitting website has six jobs. Each has a test you can run between visits, on your own phone, on mobile data, in a private window. The first two are the ones that decide whether a stranger with a holiday booked ever contacts you.
1. Prove you are safe in someone's home
Test: from the home page, find out whether you are insured, checked, first aid trained, and what happens to a client's key. Time yourself.
Pass: a trust page reachable from the header, stating insurance, vetting checks, pet first aid, references and key handling in plain sentences, plus a short proof line on the home page above the fold.
Fail: "fully insured" in a footer, or a long about page about loving animals with none of the facts in it.
Fix: write the page. Insurance, named and current. Whichever vetting check applies where you work. First aid training and when it was done. Whether references are available. Then the key paragraph: how keys are collected at the meet-and-greet, that they carry a code rather than an address, where they are kept, and how they are returned.
2. Price a fortnight without asking you
Test: work out what two visits a day for ten days would cost for one cat.
Pass: prices per visit type with durations, what is included, extra animal charges, and any holiday period difference, all editable by you.
Fail: "prices on request", one figure for every animal, or a list last updated two seasons ago.
Fix: a table by visit type: cat visit, dog visit, puppy visit, small animals, overnight, house sitting. Duration down one side, what is included in the cell, add-ons underneath, one honest line about what changes the price on the day.
3. Book a meet-and-greet in one tap
Test: without scrolling, tap the main button. Where does it go?
Pass: a meet-and-greet booking with real dates and times, plus a separate visible link for existing clients into your portal in Time To Pet, Pet Sitter Plus, Scout or Precise Petcare.
Fail: a contact form, a mailto link, or an instant booking flow that asks a stranger to commit to a fortnight before you have met the animal.
Fix: header button on every page, one tap, tested in the Instagram in-app browser as well as Safari. Keep a short enquiry form as a second option, but ask for animals, dates, postcode and visit type so your reply can carry a price.
4. Show what a visit actually is
Test: find out what happens in a thirty minute visit, and what the owner receives afterwards.
Pass: a page per visit type with the sequence of the visit, and a sample visit report showing the notes and photos that reach the owner's phone.
Fail: a bullet list saying "feeding, fresh water, playtime".
Fix: write the sequence, including the awkward parts: what you do if the cat is hiding, what happens if the animal seems unwell, who you ring, what you do about post and bins and plants. Then screenshot a real report card with the client's details removed and their permission asked.
5. Be findable where the client lives
Test: search your main service word plus a village you cover, in a private window. Are you there?
Pass: an area page for each town and village you genuinely serve, real content on each, a complete Google Business Profile with service areas set, and reviews arriving steadily.
Fail: one town in the footer, or ten near-identical pages with the name swapped.
Fix: build the area pages you can write honestly, one at a time. Ask every happy client for a Google review while the holiday glow lasts.
6. Separate overnights and house sitting, and know what works
Test: find the house sitting page. Then say which page produced your last five enquiries.
Pass: overnight and house sitting have their own pages with their own prices and arrangements, and enquiries, meet-and-greet bookings, portal clicks and call taps are recorded by page.
Fail: house sitting is a bullet, and nobody can say where the work came from.
Fix: two pages, written for two different worries. Then add tracking events for enquiries, bookings, portal clicks and call taps, and look at them for ten minutes once a month.
Scoring
Six out of six and the site is doing its job. Keep prices, areas and availability current.
Four or five: fix the failures individually, no rebuild needed.
Three or fewer, with test one or two among them: you are losing holiday bookings every month to sitters whose sites answer the insurance and price questions in writing, and holiday bookings are the highest value work you take.
Where this sits
This is the launch checklist for every pet sitting business website we build and the first ten minutes of a review on one you already have, and the same six jobs sit in different forms behind the wider pet business websites we make. What the packages cover is on pricing. For a sitter, test one is the one that changes the enquiries fastest.