We have gone through a lot of veterinary websites. The faults are remarkably consistent and they have very little to do with how much the site cost. A $20,000 build fails the same way a $400 template does, just more handsomely.
1 to 4: the ones that lose the call
- Opening hours as a table, not a state. A grid of seven rows requires the visitor to work out what day it is and compare. “Open until 7pm” requires nothing. For a worried person at 6.40pm these are completely different experiences.
- The phone number inside an image. Not tappable on a phone, invisible to screen readers, invisible to search engines, invisible to AI assistants. One mistake, four failures.
- No species list. The most under-used line on veterinary websites. “Dogs and cats. We do not see rabbits, birds or reptiles — for those, [name].” Two sentences that prevent a wasted journey and a one-star review.
- No out-of-hours route. Where should somebody go at 2am? If your site does not say, they are googling it, and whoever they find may keep them.
5 to 8: the ones that lose the trust
- Stock photography of other people's clinics. Pet owners recognise stock imagery more readily than practices expect, and the inference is not that you are busy — it is that there was nothing worth photographing.
- A team page with no team on it. Or worse, a team page listing someone who left in 2022. People choose a practice by who answers the door; an out-of-date team page is actively worse than none.
- Copy that could be any practice in any state. “Compassionate care for your furry family members.” If you could paste it onto a competitor's site without anyone noticing, it is doing no work. Specifics do: appointment length, how long the vets have been there, what you do not do.
- A contact form that pretends to be a booking. “Request an appointment” that sends a message nobody reads until Monday. Either book properly or say plainly that you will ring back within one working day. More on this in online booking for veterinary practices.
Every one of these is a practice being vague where it could easily be specific.
9 to 11: the ones that lose the search
- Hours and address inconsistent with the Google profile. iVET360 found 62% of consumers avoid a business whose information is wrong, and inconsistency between site and listing also suppresses local ranking directly. See the profile guide.
- A homepage that takes nine seconds. Borah Labs put the veterinary sector average Largest Contentful Paint at 9.31 seconds in 2026 against a 2.5-second target, and it is nearly always unoptimised photographs. How to get it back.
- No structured data worth reading. Most veterinary sites carry a bare Organization block and nothing else — no opening hours, no services, no FAQ markup. Which means that when an assistant is asked “is there a vet open near me”, your site has nothing to offer it. See getting cited by AI search.
Fixing them in the right order
Not all eleven are equal. If you are working through this with limited time, the order we would use:
- Phone number as tappable text, hours as a live state, species list. One afternoon, and it addresses the biggest leak.
- Google Business Profile matching the site exactly. Another afternoon, and it is the highest-return SEO work available.
- Image optimisation. An hour, and it typically removes most of the page weight.
- Real photographs and a current team page. Takes longer because it needs a shoot, and it is the one that most changes how the practice feels.
- Structured data and the booking flow. Genuinely technical; this is usually where a build comes in.
You can score your own site against all of it with our clinic website checklist.
Questions we get asked
What are the most common veterinary website mistakes?
Opening hours shown as a table rather than a live open/closed state, a phone number inside an image rather than as tappable text, no list of which species the practice sees, and no stated out-of-hours route. Those four lose more calls than any design problem.
Why is my veterinary website not generating enquiries?
Most often because the three things a visitor needs in the first few seconds are not visible without scrolling: whether you are open, how to call you, and one obvious next step. The second most common cause is a Google Business Profile that is incomplete or inconsistent with the site.
Does stock photography hurt a veterinary website?
Yes, more than practices expect. Pet owners recognise stock imagery readily, and the inference drawn is that there was nothing at the practice worth photographing. Real photographs of the actual team and building are among the cheapest trust signals available.
What should I fix first on my clinic's website?
Make the phone number tappable text, show hours as a live state, and add a species list. Then make your Google Business Profile match the site exactly. Those two afternoons stop the worst of the losses. What they will not do is make a dated site look like a practice people trust; that takes a redesign.