What is usually wrong with a veterinary website
Most practices are on a template from a national veterinary marketing company, paying somewhere between $200 and $800 a month for it. The site is not the problem on its own. The arrangement around it is.
- The agency owns the pieces. The domain, the hosting and sometimes the Google Business Profile sit in the vendor's account, so leaving means rebuilding rather than moving.
- The after-hours information is buried or wrong. This is the page that matters most and it is usually a paragraph at the bottom of a contact page. Someone with a sick animal at 11pm should not have to hunt.
- Hours disagree between the site and Google. Whichever one is wrong, the client turns up to a locked door and blames the practice.
- It is slow, because it is a theme carrying plugins. Four seconds on a phone is normal on these builds, and a worried owner does not wait.
- Nothing is structured for AI search. When someone asks an assistant for an emergency vet near them, the answer is assembled from sites that are marked up to be read. Most practice sites are not.
- An accessibility overlay in the footer. The little widget that offers bigger text and grayscale is how a vendor checks the ADA box on a sales sheet. It is not an audit, and it is not a defence.
I do not ship an overlay. I build to WCAG 2.1 Level AA and run a real audit against the finished site, then hand you the findings with citations. That report is not a legal opinion and not a certificate, and anyone selling you one of those from a scan is overselling it.
What I build for a practice
An after-hours page that works
Its own URL, the emergency hospitals you actually refer to, addresses and tappable phone numbers, and honest opening hours. Not a claim of 24/7 care you do not offer.
Services people search for
Wellness exams, vaccinations, dentistry, surgery, diagnostics and the in-house pharmacy, each written as who it is for, what happens, and what you leave with.
Your doctors, as people
Real portraits and short bios, each with its own URL for a multi-doctor practice. Reviews name your staff far more often than your services.
New client and records
What to bring, where to fax records, how long a first visit runs, and a request form that reaches the front desk rather than a vendor's inbox.
Appointment requests
A form that emails the practice or posts into the practice management system you already use. If you would rather people call, I say so plainly and make the number impossible to miss.
Boarding, grooming and daycare
Rates, vaccination requirements and drop-off windows, published rather than hidden behind a phone call. Often better as its own site, see below.
What ships in the code
VeterinaryCareschema carrying your name, address, phone, opening hours and services, plusVeterinarianfor each doctor andFAQPagewhere you answer real questions.- An
llms.txtmanifest and semantic markup, so AI assistants can read the practice rather than guess at it. - Hand-written HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No plugin stack, no page builder, nothing to keep patched. If your practice is committed to WordPress I will build it there instead, and say so up front.
- Core Web Vitals treated as a target rather than an afterthought, with images sized for phones.
- Real accessibility work: contrast, keyboard navigation, labelled fields, alt text, a skip link, and an accessibility statement page rather than a widget.
- A privacy policy written against the California checklist, and no third-party trackers firing before someone has agreed to them.
Two sites, not one, when there is boarding
If the practice runs boarding or daycare under its own name, it usually deserves its own website. A kennel living as one page inside the hospital site competes with the hospital for the same searches and wins neither. Two sites that link to each other give you two search profiles, two Google Business Profiles, and a boarding page that can rank for boarding.
The hospital sends people who need a kennel. The kennel sends people who need a vet, and gets to say the thing no standalone kennel can: there is a veterinary team through the door.
A veterinary practice I built for
The Local Vets, Franklin, Tennessee
A privately owned small-animal practice, built before the doors opened. A pre-launch site has a different job from a normal one: it has to collect interested clients and build a waiting list months ahead of the first appointment, so the whole page is pointed at the email list and the first booking.
Care and services pages, the founder's introduction, a neighbourhood membership programme, FAQ, and directions. Custom-coded, 51 ms server response, owned outright by the practice.
What it costs
Practice
$1,800
up to 10 pages, one-time
- Home, about, doctors, services
- New client and records
- After-hours and emergencies
- Contact with a map
- Privacy and accessibility pages
- All-Category audit at launch, a $499 report, $0 due
Growth
$3,500
up to 20 pages, one-time
- Everything in Practice
- Per-doctor pages
- Species or service lines
- Location pages for a second site
- Reviews page with schema
- All-Category plus Plan Conformance
Care
$79 to $299
a month, 14 day cancel
- Host at $79: hosting, SSL, backups, uptime
- Local at $149: edits, SEO, GEO and AEO monitoring, review requests, a quarterly re-audit
- Grow at $299: more hours, more pages, continuous monitoring, a monthly re-audit and a written monthly summary
- You keep the files if you leave
A boarding site as a second property is quoted alongside the main build rather than at full price again. I do not run ads and I do not post to your Google Business Profile. What the monthly plans buy is monitoring: where you rank, whether the AI engines cite you, and what breaks after launch.
What a year actually costs
| Packaged veterinary marketing agency | Willhite Strategy Group | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | around $3,000 | $1,800 |
| Monthly | $199 to $400 | $149 |
| Launch audit | a slide in the sales deck | All-Category report, included |
| Year one | $5,388 to $7,800 | $3,588 |
| Who owns the site | often the vendor, and often contested | the practice, from day one |
| Leaving | a contract and an exit conversation | 14 days, and you take the files |
| Stack | WordPress theme plus plugins | hand-written, nothing to patch |
| Accessibility | an overlay widget in the footer | built to WCAG 2.1 AA, audited, statement page |
Agency figures are the published ranges for packaged healthcare and veterinary marketing companies. I am not describing any single competitor, and prices vary by contract.
How it goes
- A call. What the practice does, what is broken, what you want people to do when they land.
- A sitemap. Agreed before anything is designed, so nobody is surprised by what is and is not in the build.
- A staging link. You watch it come together and say what is wrong while it is cheap to change.
- Photography. Your team, your rooms and, with permission, your clients' animals. I do not use stock photographs of other people's pets, because that is the fastest way for a practice to look like every other one.
- Launch and audit. The site goes live and the Sentinel report runs against it, so you start with the findings in hand.
- Care, if you want it. Month to month. If you would rather run it yourself, that is a supported answer and the files are yours.
Veterinary web design questions
Do I own the website?
Yes. The code, the domain, the hosting account, the Google Business Profile and the analytics are all in the practice's name from day one. If you leave, you take the files. I do not hold a domain to keep a client.
How long does it take?
Most practice sites launch in 4 to 6 weeks from the first call. What usually decides the timeline is photography and confirming your services, hours and after-hours referrals, not the build itself.
Will the site meet ADA and WCAG?
I build every site to WCAG 2.1 Level AA and audit it against that standard before launch: colour contrast, keyboard navigation, labelled form fields, alt text, and a real accessibility statement page.
What that does and does not mean: my reports are automated audits with citations. They are not a law firm opinion, not a VPAT, and not a guarantee of compliance. If you need a manual review or a formal VPAT, that is separate work and I will quote it. I do not ship an overlay widget, because an overlay is not an audit.
Do you write clinical content?
No. You supply anything clinical. I structure it, shorten it and mark it up so search engines and AI assistants can read it. I will not invent treatment claims or outcomes for a veterinary practice, and I will not put a veterinarian's name on words they did not approve.
Can you move me off my current vendor?
Usually. The awkward part is rarely technical: it is finding out who actually holds the domain and the Google Business Profile. I check that early and tell you what I find, including when the answer is inconvenient. The migration itself preserves your content and your existing search rankings, with a DNS cutover that does not take the site down.
Do you do boarding sites too?
Yes, and usually as a separate site rather than a page. A kennel with its own name and its own customers competes with the hospital when it lives inside the hospital site. Two sites that cross-link give you two search profiles instead of one.
Do I have to sign a contract?
The build is a fixed price agreed before I start. Care plans are month to month with a 14 day cancel, and you keep the files either way.
Are you only in California?
I am in Santa Rosa and can meet in person across Sonoma, Marin, Napa and Solano. The veterinary work is not limited to that: The Local Vets is in Franklin, Tennessee. Practices anywhere in the US are fine.
A note on compliance. Sentinel accessibility and privacy reports are automated audits with citations. They are not a law firm opinion, a VPAT, or a guarantee of compliance. I do not collect clinical records on a brochure site. Appointment forms go to the practice email or to the practice management system you already use.