The short answer
Real photographs of every room and the outdoor space, the inspection rating linked to the report, and the staff with their qualifications and your ratios. In that order, on the home page, above anything about your philosophy.
Parents check those three before they check anything else, and a nursery that leads with a stock photo of a laughing child and a paragraph about nurturing potential has answered none of them.
Why photographs come first
A parent choosing a day nursery is trying to picture a room they have not stood in. Nothing else on the site does that job.
Lead with the real baby room, the real toddler room, the real preschool room and the real garden, photographed on a normal day with the actual furniture, floor and light. Not a wide angle from the doorway. The view a child has.
Include the parts nurseries hide: the nappy change area, the sleep room, the entrance and buzzer, where buggies go, where lunch is eaten. Those are the details a parent worries about privately.
Photograph the garden in ordinary weather. Every nursery garden looks good in July, and a parent enrolling in November knows it.
If you photograph children, do it under your own consent policy with faces used only where permission is current, and be prepared to remove an image quickly. Plenty of strong nursery photography has no faces in it at all.
Why the rating comes second
The rating is the parent's shortcut for the question they cannot answer themselves. Put it near the top with the regulator named, the registration number beside it, the inspection date, and a link to the report on the regulator's own site rather than a PDF you host.
If your last report was not strong, say so and say what changed. A parent who finds a weaker grade elsewhere after reading a page that never mentioned it stops trusting the rest of the site.
Why staff come third
Once a parent believes the place is safe and can picture the room, they want to know who is in it. Faces, first names, roles by room, qualification levels, how long they have been with you, and who the manager and safeguarding lead are.
Ratios belong here too, stated as numbers per age band, with your room capacity next to them. Say whether those are the minimum where you operate or better than it. Requirements differ by country and region, so publish yours as your own operating figures rather than as a statement of law.
Then fees, then the viewing button
Fees are the fourth thing, not the first, but they must be reachable in one tap from the top of the page and they must contain actual numbers. A nursery that hides its rate loses the enquiry to the one that publishes it.
The viewing button sits in the header on every page, with the waitlist beside it for families whose start date is months away. On a phone, a slim bar at the bottom carrying Call and Book a viewing.
What does not belong at the top
Your philosophy or curriculum approach. It matters and it converts nobody who has not already decided you are safe. Give it a page and link it.
A slider. A video that autoplays. A long welcome message from the owner. The history of the building. Awards from 2014. A newsletter signup ahead of the viewing button.
Stock photography of any kind, including the smiling child in the primary-coloured jumper who appears on four other nursery sites in your town.
The order in one line
Rooms, rating, staff, fees, viewing. Everything else after that.
Build the top of the page around those five and the tour starts with a parent who has already decided they want to like you. That is the whole job of a nursery home page.
Where this sits
Room photography, a linked inspection rating, staff and ratios and a plain fees page are the spine of a day nursery website as we build it, and the same ordering runs through our other childcare and family websites. Package details are on pricing. Show the rooms, show the report, show the people, then ask for the viewing.