One live-in care provider, covering three counties, with eight service lines. It publishes its day rates. It has a guided tool that asks a family a handful of questions and returns a suggested package with an indicative weekly figure before anyone speaks to anyone. And it has a login where a family can read the care notes for their own relative.
That is one client, not a specialism, and I would rather write that sentence than imply otherwise. The build predates Kestrel: I was the developer on it during four years at a web studio in East Sussex, where I owned the delivery. Everything below comes either from that work or from other regulated fields where the same problems appear, and I have said which is which.
Not a list of things to sell you. These are the six patterns I see on nearly every care site I am asked to look at, and most of them are decisions rather than mistakes.
A family comparing live-in care against a residential home wants one number. Most provider sites will not give it, so the visitor leaves and rings whoever will. The number is not the problem; being the only one who will not say it is.
The form collects a name and a message, so the first call is twenty minutes of establishing hours, nights, mobility and who is actually deciding. Multiply that by the enquiries that were never going to convert.
Rating, registration number, complaints route and statement of purpose are usually three or four clicks down, when they are the things a cautious family looks for first and a commissioner checks immediately.
Forty place names in a footer is not coverage, it is a signal that nothing here was written for anywhere in particular. It reads as thin to a reader and to a search engine, and it has been penalised for years.
The question a daughter two hundred miles away asks is whether someone turned up and what happened. Answering it by phone, every time, is a staffing cost disguised as good service.
Care sites are commonly written for commissioners and inspectors. The person actually reading at eleven at night is a relative who has just realised this cannot go on much longer.
A weekly range, stated plainly, next to what residential care costs in the same county. It reframes the figure before anyone has to defend it on a call, and it filters the enquiries that were never viable.
A few questions about hours, mobility and nights, returning a sensible package and an indicative weekly figure. Labelled an estimate, never an assessment, and it ends by handing a qualified enquiry to a human.
One page per area that says something true about that area, or no page at all. This is the mechanism my own WordPress plugin exists to enforce, and it refuses to publish a page that scores too low.
Rating, registration, complaints route and the documents a commissioner asks for, structured so both a person and an assistant can find them in one hop.
Logins, a permissions model and a record of who saw what. This is a web app rather than a page, and it is priced and scoped as one, because a care record bolted on with a plugin is a liability.
Short sentences, the hard questions answered rather than deflected, and no photography of models pretending to be someone's mother.
Publishing rates. The objection is always that care is individual, that a number without context is misleading, and that the sales conversation is where value gets explained. All three are true, and none of them is a reason to be the only provider in the county whose site will not answer the first question a family has.
A range works. So does stating what it depends on, and putting the residential-care figure for the same county alongside it. Done that way the number stops being a liability and starts doing the argument for you, before a human is involved. If you genuinely cannot publish one, the guided estimate is the next best thing, and it is better than a contact form.
I am not a compliance consultant. I will not draft your statement of purpose, audit your policies against the fundamental standards, or advise on what your rating should say. I structure that content and make it findable; the words are yours or your consultant’s.
I will not build anything that implies a clinical assessment has happened when it has not. A guided tool returns an estimate and says so. And I will not write copy that promises outcomes for a vulnerable person in order to win a search ranking, which rules out a good deal of what currently ranks.
What a build involves and what the stages are is on the website design and build page. A family portal is a web app rather than a website, priced and scoped differently. Every figure I charge is on pricing, the other sectors I have built for are listed together, and the service-area mechanism described above is the plugin I built and still run, which you can try on that page.
I think so, and I know it is the argument most providers push back on. A family comparing live-in care against a residential home is trying to answer one question, and if your site will not answer it they ring the provider whose site does. Publishing a weekly range next to what a care home in the same county costs also does work no sales call can: it reframes the number before anyone has to defend it.
It filters them, which is the point. The enquiries that stop coming are the ones that were never going to convert, and the ones that arrive already know roughly what they are committing to. That is a shorter, calmer first conversation.
Up to a point, and the limit matters. A few questions about hours, mobility and whether nights are involved can return a sensible package and an indicative weekly figure. What it must never do is imply a clinical assessment has happened. I build these to end with a recommendation and a range, clearly labelled as an estimate, not an outcome.
Yes, and it is the single feature families ask for most. A daughter two hundred miles away wants to know someone turned up and what happened. That is a login, a permissions model and a record of who saw what, so it needs building properly rather than bolting on a plugin. Expect it to sit in the web app range rather than the brochure range.
I structure it and make it findable. I am not a compliance consultant and will not draft your statement of purpose or check your policies against the fundamental standards. What I will do is make sure your rating, registration details and complaints route are not buried three clicks down, because that is where they usually are.
One, and I would rather say so than imply a specialism. It was a live-in care provider covering three counties, with published rates, a guided needs tool and a family portal. Everything on this page comes from that build or from work in other regulated fields. If you want a studio with twenty care clients, they exist and I am not it.
A brochure site with published rates and service-area pages sits in the bespoke range, £3,900. Add a guided needs and estimate tool and it moves toward the upper bespoke figure. A family portal with logins and care records is a web app, £7,500 and up, and starts with paid discovery at £950 so the number is real before you commit.
Real numbers from your device and connection, not a screenshot of a score I chose. Nothing is sent anywhere. The measurement happens in your browser and stays there. If one of these ever reads amber on my own site, you will see it, which is rather the point. I audit these for £650.