The client

Haven Veterinary Practice have two Essex based surgeries in Clacton and Walton. They are well established and have a large, professional and friendly team.


The challenge

This was a straight forward redevelopment project. Haven had an existing website which was out of date in terms of content as well as functionality and usability. They liked a lot of their existing design elements, but knew that they needed to make the copy easier to read whilst introducing more images of staff and pets as well as a virtual tour slideshow which would help visitors get a feel for the two surgeries.

One key challenge was to build the website on a content management system (CMS) so that they update the site themselves going forward at no additional cost.

What we did

During our initial planning stages, we discovered that Haven were paying far too much for their annual hosting of their website, so we tackled that straight away, reducing their annual fee by almost two thirds by moving them to one of our preferred suppliers.

Following this, we created a few design mock-ups of how the new website could look, being sympathetic to existing look and feel and retaining elements and images that they liked, like the three pets in the header. Once a design was agreed, we worked to build the site, transferring the existing site copy, updating it were required, and adding new content.

The staff page was one of the most important pages to update as the staff were all keen to be on their with photos of them and their pets and a little biography.

We developed the virtual tour using images provided by one of the Partners at Haven, and added links to Google Maps, links to external pet care website and optimised the site for search engines to make it easier for people in the local area to find their nearest veterinarian.

Finally, we installed the Adobe Contribute content management system (CMS) to allow for all future updates to the site to be done in-house by the team at Haven. We provided a training manual as well as half a day of training so they fully got to grips with Adobe Contribute.

The results

Haven are very happy with their new website and the staff are all particularly excited to see their photos and biographies on the website as well. The virtual tour works well too, it gives a clear view of all of the on-site facilities and works on traditional computers, tablets and smartphones as well.