Six tests, ten minutes
A veterinary practice website has six jobs. Each has a test you can run on your own phone between consults. Do them on mobile data, in a private window, as a stranger would, because logged in on the practice wifi you are not seeing what an owner sees.
1. Register and book in one go
Test: pretend you have just moved into the area with a cat. Try to register and book a first consult without ringing anyone.
Pass: one flow that takes your details and the cat's, sets the appointment type, and confirms. The client and pet exist on the system before arrival.
Fail: a booking that captures a name and a time only, a downloadable registration PDF, or a contact form that somebody answers on Monday.
Fix: real-time booking embedded on the site, driven from Vetstoria, ezyVet, Provet Cloud or Covetrus, with registration questions inside the flow: owner details, species, breed, date of birth, previous practice for records transfer, and consent to the practice terms. Deep-link each service page to the right appointment type so the slot length matches the work.
2. Answer the fee question
Test: find the consultation fee. Then find what the mid tier of your health plan includes. Time both.
Pass: both in under thirty seconds, stated plainly, matching what the till actually charges.
Fail: "please contact us for pricing", a plan page that lists tier names and no contents, or figures that changed in April and not on the site.
Fix: state the consultation fee, and set out plan tiers with what each covers and how the payment works. Hold them as records you can edit yourself. Add a short honest line about what changes a bill on the day, so nothing at the desk is a surprise.
3. Be reachable in an emergency
Test: land on any page other than home. Can you call the practice in one tap? Can you tell whether you are open, and who covers when you are not?
Pass: tap-to-call in the header everywhere, hours visible, and one plain sentence about your out of hours arrangement.
Fail: a number in the footer only, hours on the contact page alone, or nothing at all about nights and weekends.
Fix: put the emergency route on every page. Keep owner guidance short, have your own vets write or approve it, and make every block end in call us now rather than in anything that reads as treatment for an animal nobody has examined.
4. Have a page for each thing you do
Test: search your own site for vaccinations, neutering, dental and surgery.
Pass: a page each, explaining what happens, what it costs or what determines the cost, what to expect on the day, and a button that books the right appointment type.
Fail: one services page with four paragraphs and a general contact button.
Fix: write the pages from what reception is asked most. Be careful with claims: veterinary advertising is regulated, so describe what you do rather than promising outcomes, and keep prescription medicines out of public advertising.
5. Show the people and the place
Test: count the photos on the site taken inside your building. Then check whether your vets and nurses are named with their professional registration shown.
Pass: real consult rooms, prep area, waiting room and team, with names, interests and registration details.
Fail: stock images of a golden retriever, a generic "Our Team" paragraph, or no registration anywhere.
Fix: half a day of photography with owner consent for any animal in shot, and a profile per clinician. Most regimes expect registration to be evident, and owners choose people rather than premises.
6. Load in under two seconds
Test: time the home page and one service page on mobile data.
Pass: under two seconds, Core Web Vitals Good on mobile.
Fail: a slider, an autoplaying video, a stack of tracking scripts and a four second wait.
Fix: compress and size images, drop the slider, lazy-load anything below the fold, trim the scripts, and re-test on a phone rather than a desktop.
Score it honestly
Six passes and your site is doing its job. Four or five and the gaps are usually fees and registration, which are the two that cost reception the most time. Three or fewer and the site is a brochure your practice is paying to host.
The most useful next step is not a redesign. It is to sit with whoever answers the phone for one hour, write down every question asked, and check how many of them the site answers in under thirty seconds.
A note on rules
Regimes differ by country. The RCVS Code of Professional Conduct in the UK, and state veterinary boards with AVMA guidance in the US, both bear on advertising, registration and client communication. Treat the notes above as orientation rather than legal advice, and have your own adviser confirm anything you are unsure of.
Where this sits
All six are built into a veterinary practice website as standard, and the same checklist logic runs through the other pet business websites we make. What the packages cover is on pricing. Run the six tests before you commission anything, because they tell you what to brief far better than any list of pages.