What we are building
One page, linked from the header on every page, whose only job is to make a stranger comfortable handing over a house key. Five sections, a short version of it on the home page, and a routine for keeping it true.
This is the highest value page on a sitting site and it takes an afternoon. Here is the build in order.
Step 1: insurance, stated properly
Open with cover, because it is the first thing an anxious reader looks for and the thing most sites treat as a footer word.
Write what you carry and what it is for, in the owner's language rather than the broker's. Public liability, care custody and control for the animals in your charge, key cover if your policy includes it, and cover for the specific services you actually sell, which for a sitter means visits, overnights and house sitting rather than only walking.
Say that it is current, and add the renewal month if you are happy to. Do not publish the policy number. If a client asks for the certificate, send it.
Step 2: vetting checks
State whichever check applies where you work, and when it was done. In the UK that is usually a DBS check, in Ireland Garda vetting, in the US and Canada a background check through whichever provider you used.
Two additional lines are worth adding. Whether every sitter on your team is checked, not just you, and whether you would show the certificate on request at the meet-and-greet. Both are small and both land.
Step 3: pet first aid and training
Name the course, name the provider if you are confident of the name, and give the month you last did it. Refreshed training reads far better than a qualification with no date on it, because owners assume undated things are old.
If you hold anything else relevant, list it plainly: canine or feline behaviour courses, medication administration training, trade body membership. Do not inflate. One accurate line beats three vague ones.
Step 4: references
Say whether references from current clients are available on request, and then be ready to provide them. Two or three owners who will take a phone call are worth having lined up.
This section also carries the Google reviews. Embed or link real reviews with names attached rather than reprinting grey unattributed quotes, and put a few near the buttons elsewhere on the site rather than leaving them all here.
Step 5: key handling, the part that does the work
Give this its own heading and its own space, because it is what the reader came for and almost nobody publishes it.
Cover, in short paragraphs:
- How you take the key, which for most sitters is in person at the meet-and-greet, in the client's home.
- That keys carry a code rather than a name or address, so a lost key identifies nothing.
- Where keys live between bookings and who else can reach them.
- Whether you support a lock box or smart lock instead, and how a code is handled and changed.
- Alarm codes, and that they are stored in your client software rather than written down.
- How and when keys are returned, and the option to hold one for the next booking.
- What happens if you are ill mid-booking, meaning who else gets access and how the client is told.
Six or seven plain paragraphs. No marketing tone at all. The plainness is the point.
Step 6: the short version on the home page
Take one line from each section and put them above the fold on the home page, with a link to the full page. Insured, checked, first aid trained, references available, keys handled properly.
The trust page converts the reader who is already worried. The home page line stops the reader who has not yet started reading from leaving.
A note on licensing
Sitters often ask whether they need a licence. Rules differ by country and by council, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you actually do. As orientation only, in England the licensing regime for animal activities generally bites when animals are boarded in your own home or premises rather than when you visit them in theirs, so a visiting sitter and a home boarder are frequently in different positions.
Check with your own local authority before you publish anything about it, and if you do hold a licence, put the number on this page, because it is strong proof.
Step 7: keep it true
Put a reminder in your calendar for the month your insurance renews and the month your first aid expires. An out of date claim on this page is worse than no page at all, because it is the one page a client might reasonably rely on.
Review it whenever you add a sitter, add a service, or change how keys are handled.
How to test it
Give the page to somebody who does not own a pet and ask them one question: would you give this person your key. If they hesitate, ask where they hesitated. That sentence is the one to rewrite.
Where this sits
The trust page is a standard part of every pet sitting business website we build, written with you rather than left as a blank template section, and the same proof-first approach runs through the wider pet business websites we make. What each package covers is on pricing. Nothing else on a sitting site earns its afternoon as quickly.