The honest version
Most independent hygienists asking about a website are not worried about the website. They are worried about how many hours it will take out of a week that is already full of patients, with no reception team to absorb the difference.
So here is the shape of a hygiene clinic build, stage by stage, with the parts that need you marked clearly.
Total time from you, spread over about five weeks: a first call, one session on prices and appointment types, one photography morning, and two rounds of feedback. Everything else happens without you.
Stage 1: the first conversation
Half an hour, on the phone or a video call. What we are establishing:
- Your regulatory position. Whether patients in your country or state can come to you without a referral, what your regulator requires you to display, and what has to be collected before a first visit. You tell us, we build to it.
- Your appointment types and how long each really takes.
- Your prices, including whether they are fixed or from prices, and what changes them on the day.
- What you book on now, whether that is Dentally, Software of Excellence, Cliniko, Jane, Acuity, Square Appointments or a phone that rings while you are with a patient.
- Whether anything currently goes out as a recall, and at what interval.
- Whether you run a plan or membership, or want to.
You get a written scope, a price and a date after that call. No workshop, no lengthy discovery. Our tiers are on the pricing page, and for a single hygienist the answer is usually the middle one, because the site needs booking with recalls rather than twenty pages.
Stage 2: prices and appointment types
The only real homework, and the piece that changes your phone calls, so it earns the hour.
We send a short grid: appointment type, duration, price, fixed or from, and one line of what it includes. You fill it in. Then two sentences that prevent most awkward conversations later: what happens if a visit needs more time than booked, and what your cancellation window is.
If you run a plan, we take the monthly price, what it includes, and where the sign-up lives.
It is built as editable records, so you change a price yourself in two minutes without ringing anyone.
Stage 3: photography
Half a morning, booked around your diary. What we want: the surgery, the waiting area, the front of the building, the parking, and you.
People choosing a hygienist directly have usually never done it before, and they are imagining a room. A real photograph of a calm, clean surgery does more than several paragraphs. Stock photographs of a model with perfect teeth do nothing at all.
If a photographer is not in budget, a good phone in daylight is genuinely fine, and we will tell you which ten shots to take.
Stage 4: design direction
We show the home page as a mock-up. You look at it on your phone, gather every comment into one list, and send the list once. We revise, you look again, we revise again, and the direction is agreed. Two rounds, which is plenty when comments arrive together rather than as six texts over four days.
What we check at this stage: can a patient see the referral position, a price and a Book button without scrolling.
Stage 5: build
Two to three weeks, and you hear from us twice. The pages, in the order they earn their keep:
Home. Prices. Book online. What happens at your appointment. Plans, if you run one. About you. Contact and how to find us.
The what-happens page does more work than any other page on a hygiene site, so we draft it from the first call and send it to you to correct. It describes the visit rather than giving clinical advice, and anything that depends on assessing an individual patient stays out of it and stays in the room with you.
Stage 6: wiring the booking
Your platform is configured or checked against the site: appointment types and durations that match the price list exactly, new and returning flows kept separate, medical history collected through the tool built for patient data rather than a website form, reminders before the visit, and recalls afterwards at your interval with a one-tap rebooking link.
Then we book a test patient from a phone, end to end, and cancel it. We also send a test recall, because a recall that never sends is invisible until the diary thins out.
Stage 7: review and launch
You get a staging link. Same rule as the design stage: comments gathered, sent once, two rounds. Read the price list and the what-happens page as if you were a patient, because those two cost you money if they are wrong.
Then we launch, check speed on a real phone rather than a lab score, and watch the first week of bookings.
Stage 8: afterwards
The care plan covers updates, backups and, most importantly, checking that the reminders and recalls are still going out after each software update. That is the part of a hygiene site that quietly stops working, and the part that pays for everything else.
Where this sits
This is how we run a hygiene clinic website build, and it is the same process behind our dental practice websites, with the regulatory detail taken from you rather than assumed. Packages are on pricing. Four short commitments from you, five weeks, and a site that books the six-monthly visit on its own.