What clients want from your veterinary website

Nearly a third of pet parents in a 2,000-person UK and Australia survey said they had decided against a particular veterinary clinic because of its website. Separately, the CMA looked at UK practices directly. It found that fewer than 40 percent currently publish prices on their website. Where prices do appear, the listing often covers few services and can be hard to find. Independent practices therefore need to review both what clients can do on the website and what the CMA will require them to publish.

What clients look for on a veterinary website

In the cited survey, trust in the vet was the most important factor respondents reported when choosing a practice. Before a client makes contact, the website is one of the only sources of information they have. Clear, accurate content can support an early sense of confidence in a practice; a confusing or outdated site does not.

In the survey cited above, 58 percent of pet parents said they had experienced problems trying to book an appointment. Of those, 34 percent pointed specifically to a lack of online booking. A strong clinical service can still lose clients if booking the next appointment is difficult.

Can clients book an appointment without phoning you?

Online booking allows routine appointments to be made outside telephone hours. In the same survey, 88 percent of pet parents said being able to book at any time, on any device, mattered to them.

In practice, this means:

• Routine appointment types the practice chooses to open up should be bookable online, without a phone call.
• Urgent or clinically unclear requests should go to the practice for assessment. They should not be booked automatically.

Lupa’s features page describes an online booking portal. Each appointment type can be set visible or hidden for online booking, with its own pre-consult questions and deposit rules. Once the booking rules are configured on the PIMS side, the website needs a clear, working route into the booking flow. Which appointment types a practice is comfortable opening up is a decision worth making as a team.

Make pricing easy to find

The CMA’s own review found that fewer than 40 percent of UK veterinary practices currently publish prices on their website. Where prices do appear, they typically cover few services and can be hard to find. Under the CMA’s final remedies, practices operating one or more first opinion practices must publish a standard price list covering defined categories of service: consultation and preventative care, prescriptions and dispensing, surgeries and treatments, diagnostics, and end-of-life care. Where published on the practice website, the price list must sit no more than one click from the homepage, without scrolling, and be identifiable through page navigation and metadata using terms like “price,” “pricing” or “fees.”

The CMA’s Order was published on 22 September 2026. Larger businesses, those operating 15 or more first opinion practices, must comply with the price list requirement by December 2026. Smaller businesses have until March 2027.

Dr Nick Lloyd, Lupa’s Chief Veterinary Officer, has described his own test for pricing transparency this way: “no client should ever be surprised by a bill.” The mandatory price list addresses part of that. Practices may also choose to explain what a standard procedure includes elsewhere on the site, provided this does not conflict with the format the CMA requires for the price list itself.

Make reviews and trust information visible

73 percent of pet parents in the cited survey said they check reviews often or always before choosing a veterinary practice. Genuine, recent reviews sitting only on a third-party platform may not reach a prospective client until late in their search, if at all.

Show a selection of genuine, recent reviews and link through to the full profile. Check the display terms of whichever review platform the practice uses before embedding content directly. A separate guide covers how to do this within the client confidentiality boundaries that matter in a veterinary context.

What happens when someone messages you outside consultation hours?

77 percent of pet parents in the cited survey said they valued being able to communicate with their clinic by text or online chat. The website should explain when messages are monitored and what a client should do if something cannot wait.

Two separate obligations sit alongside this expectation. The RCVS Code of Professional Conduct requires all veterinary surgeons in practice to take steps to provide 24-hour emergency first aid and pain relief, whether delivered directly or through an arrangement with another provider. Separately, under the CMA’s remedies, practices must publish clear, accessible information about their out-of-hours care online. Where the service is outsourced, this includes the provider’s identity, contact details, and when the service is available. Many independent practices already have a solid out-of-hours arrangement in place and have simply not stated it clearly on the website.

If a PIMS can route WhatsApp, SMS and app chat into a single thread attached to the client record, that helps routine messages reach the team without being lost. This does not make any of those channels suitable for genuine emergencies. The website should state plainly that emergencies need a phone call or the named out-of-hours route, not a message.

Provide useful care information

81 percent of pet parents in the cited survey said they wanted easy access to pet care tips and tools through clinic websites. A small number of well-maintained pages can be more useful than a long service list with no context. Examples include seasonal parasite advice, what to expect at a first puppy or kitten visit, and how health plans compare in cost.

Website content should support, not replace, clinical advice. Its role is to help clients understand routine care and know when to contact the practice. Content covering clinical topics should be reviewed and kept current in the same way any other clinical material would be.

What to prioritize first if you cannot do everything at once

Website changes compete with other practice priorities, so sequencing matters. Based on the issues covered above, a practical starting point for many independent practices is:

• Online booking for routine appointment types, since it addresses a commonly reported source of client frustration and does not require rebuilding the whole site.
• Clear, accessible pricing, since this is also a fixed CMA compliance requirement.
• Visible reviews and clear out-of-hours information, which may require less technical work than booking or pricing changes.
• Care content and a fuller pricing breakdown, once the fundamentals above are in place.

The right order depends on the practice’s current website and client base. It is worth confirming locally rather than treating this as a fixed rule.

What this means for your practice

Many of these improvements can be made without rebuilding the entire website. A useful test is whether a first-time visitor can do four things without picking up the phone: book a routine appointment, find clear pricing information, find recent reviews, and understand what happens if their pet needs help outside opening hours.

The pricing update is already required under the CMA remedies. Use it as a chance to review the wider client journey at the same time, rather than treating them as two separate projects.

Book a demo to see how Lupa’s online booking and client messaging tools work in practice.