The honest version
Agency owners asking about a website are rarely worried about the website. They are worried about how many hours it will take out of a week already full of family calls, candidate interviews and a placement that just fell through on the Friday.
So here is the shape of a nanny agency build, stage by stage, with the parts that need you marked. Total time from you, spread over about six weeks: a first call, one session on vetting and fees, one photography morning, and two rounds of feedback. The rest happens without you.
Stage 1: the first conversation
Half an hour on a call. What we are establishing:
- Who you place: permanent nannies, temporary and emergency cover, nanny shares, maternity nurses, au pairs, housekeeper-nannies.
- Where you place, and whether you work internationally.
- How you charge: percentage of first-year gross, flat fee, registration plus placement, and how temps are charged.
- Your vetting process, in your own words, stage by stage.
- What runs your desk: a recruitment CRM, an applicant tracking system, a general CRM, or a spreadsheet and a shared inbox.
- Where enquiries come from now, and which ones you wish you got more of.
- Whether candidate supply or family demand is the bottleneck this year, because that decides which route gets the attention.
You get a written scope, a price and a date after that call. Our tiers are on the pricing page, and for a single-office agency the answer is usually the Essentials tier.
Stage 2: the vetting and fees session
An hour, and the only genuinely demanding part. We take your real process apart and write it up as ordered stages: identity and right to work, checks, references, qualifications and first aid, interview, renewal. Named accurately for the countries you place in, with who does what.
Then fees. Structure per service, what triggers the charge, gross or net basis, guarantee period, and what candidates pay, which is normally nothing.
Bring three recent candidate files and your terms of business. Most agencies discover during this session that the site, the terms and the invoice template have been saying three different things about the guarantee period.
Stage 3: structure and the two routes
We map the site while you get on with placements. Two routes from the first screen, families and candidates, with the vetting page, fees page, role types and team on one side, and roles, requirements and registration on the other. Shared pages for about, contact and privacy.
You see a page map, not a design. Ten minutes to review.
Stage 4: photography
A morning. Your team, your office, and honest working portraits rather than stock images of a smiling child on a swing.
The rule that matters here: no photographs of children you do not have written consent for, and none of candidates or placed families without permission. Agencies that get this wrong usually got it wrong with a photo a client sent them by message. We shoot the team and the workplace, and use illustration or type where a photograph would be inappropriate.
Stage 5: forms and the CRM
The two forms are the engine of the site, so they get built properly rather than pasted in from a vendor snippet.
The family enquiry becomes a short branching flow: what kind of help, children's ages, hours as structured rows, live-in or live-out, location, start date, budget with a gross or net note. The candidate registration collects role type, availability, experience, qualifications and first aid with expiry, checks held, driving, right to work and a CV upload.
Both post server side into your CRM with the fields mapped, plus a mailbox fallback so nothing is ever lost when a token expires. We test both against a real record in your system before launch.
Stage 6: build and review
Two rounds of feedback, a week apart. Round one is content and structure: is the vetting page true, are the fees right, does the candidate page say what you require. Round two is detail: wording, photographs, ordering.
Two rounds is deliberate. Open-ended revision is how a six week build becomes a six month one.
Stage 7: launch week
Redirects from the old site so existing links keep working, analytics and enquiry tracking so you can see which page produced the family, a search console account, and the pages submitted for indexing. We watch the forms for the first week and check every submission arrived in the CRM.
You get a recorded walkthrough of how to edit fees, vetting stages, team members and role listings yourself.
What we need from you, in one list
Your real vetting process. Your fee structure and terms of business. A morning for photography. Two rounds of feedback. Access to your CRM, or the name of whoever administers it. That is the whole ask.
What slows a build down
Waiting on the vetting write-up, because it is the one thing only you can supply. Photography scheduled around a busy month. And a CRM nobody has admin access to any more, which is worth checking in week one rather than week five.
Where this sits
A two-route structure, a vetting page written from your real process, stated fees and forms wired into your CRM are what a nanny agency website build produces, and the same process runs across our childcare websites. Packages are on pricing. Six weeks, four commitments from you, and the family enquiry arrives as a brief.