The symptom
The site gets visitors. The office still spends every morning on the phone explaining session types and funded hours, and taking messages about viewings. Meanwhile the toddler room has three spaces. People are finding you and not booking. Here are the eight usual causes, in the order worth fixing them.
1. There is one Rooms page instead of a page per room
A parent with a nine-month-old is not choosing a nursery in the abstract. They are choosing a baby room. One page covering all four rooms answers none of them properly and ranks for nothing.
The fix: a page per room, as an editable record. Photographs of that room, the age band, the ratio you are registered for, the room leader and key persons, a typical morning written by someone who works there, the questions parents ask about that age, and Book a viewing with the room pre-selected. Add an availability line the manager keeps current: places now, places from January, waitlist only.
2. Fees are "on request"
This is the single largest leak on nursery websites. A parent comparing four settings needs a number. Withholding it does not create a phone call you can convert; it creates a parent who rings whoever published theirs.
The fix: a fees page with session types as a table, the fee for each, and a worked example of a typical week. Then extras stated: meals, nappies, formula, trips, late collection, registration fee, deposit, holiday retainer. Publish it and edit it yourself each year.
3. Funded hours are a paragraph of scheme names
The second question every parent asks is what funding covers. Entitlements and subsidies differ by country and change, so most sites either say nothing or copy an out-of-date summary.
The fix: write the paragraph for the country you operate in, as orientation rather than advice, dated, and link the official eligibility checker rather than restating the rules. Then answer the part only you can: how funded hours are spread at your setting, whether you stretch them across the year or run term-time, what you charge alongside them, what document you need from the parent, and when funding starts once they have it. Say plainly that entitlements change and the linked checker is the authority.
4. Book a viewing is a contact form
Parents research at night. A form is a message the office reads at eleven the next morning and returns at three.
The fix: live slots on the afternoons you show parents round, in your nursery software if it books tours or in Acuity or Bookeo if it does not. Book a viewing in the header of every page. Confirmation with the address, parking, buggy access, the length of the visit and the fees link. Reminder the day before.
5. The waitlist is a notebook
Families ask to be added, someone writes it down, and when a place opens nobody is sure who asked first or whether they still want it.
The fix: a short Join the waitlist form, child's date of birth, sessions wanted, preferred start, parent's contact, landing in Famly, Blossom or Kinderly as an enquiry. An acknowledgement that says what happens next. A monthly review against occupancy, in date order.
6. The inspection outcome is not on the site
If your last inspection went well, it is the strongest trust signal you own, and a parent will search for it whether or not you publish it.
The fix: show the rating or outcome, with the date, linked to the published report on the regulator's own site. Where regimes differ, say which one applies to you. If the last outcome was not what you wanted, publish it anyway alongside a plain note on what has changed since; parents find the report regardless, and the setting that addresses it looks better than the one that hid it.
7. Staff, vetting and safeguarding are invisible
Parents are handing over a child. They want to know who works in the room, what qualifications and first aid they hold, how they were vetted, and what your safeguarding arrangements are.
The fix: a team page with a photograph, role, qualification and first aid status for each person, and a plain sentence on the recruitment and vetting checks you run. A published safeguarding policy with the designated lead named by role and a stated route for raising a concern, including the external route. Keep it factual and current.
8. The room pages take five seconds on a phone
Photographs are what sell a room and they are also what breaks the page. A parent scrolling during a night feed on patchy signal does not wait.
The fix: export at the widths the layout uses, compress, serve modern formats, lazy-load below the first screen, prioritise one hero image per page. Then measure on a real phone on mobile data.
The order
Fix 2 and 3 first, because they are content and can go live this week. Then 4 and 5, which change what happens at 10pm. Then 1, which is the build work that earns search traffic. Then 6 and 7, which turn a visit into a viewing. Then 8, which makes all of it arrive.
Nobody knows what the site produced
Add tracking on viewing bookings, waitlist joins and call taps, by page and by hour. Most settings that do this find a large share of activity lands after eight in the evening. Without the numbers, every argument about the site is a matter of opinion.
Where this sits
Room pages, a plain fees and funding page, live viewing slots and a waitlist that lands in your software are what a nursery and daycare website is for, and the same conversion order applies across the other childcare websites we build. Work down the list. The rooms fill from the top of it.