What a Boarding Kennel Website Needs

The emotional situation is the brief

A customer choosing a kennel is leaving a member of their family with people they have never met.

They are imagining the worst and looking for reasons to trust you or to keep looking.

Every other local service sells convenience, price, or quality, and this one is selling reassurance.

So the site's job is to show them exactly what happens, in detail, before they ever telephone.

Show the actual place

• The kennels or rooms themselves.
• The outdoor space.
• Where they sleep.
• The staff, with names.
• Animals who are actually there.

Stock photographs of unrelated happy dogs are worse than no photographs at all, because anybody who has looked at three of these sites recognises them and draws the obvious conclusion about what you are hiding.

Describe the day

Which is the single most reassuring thing you can publish.

What time they are let out, how many times a day, for how long, and whether it is individual or group.

When they are fed, whether you use the owner's food, and what happens if an animal will not eat.

Whether there is one-to-one time and how much.

Where they are overnight and whether anybody is on site.

That last question is the one owners want answered most and almost nobody addresses it directly.

Requirements go in full and in advance

Since discovering them at drop-off is the worst possible moment.

Every vaccination you require, by name, with how far in advance each must be given.

Your policy on flea and tick treatment, on unspayed animals, and on behaviour, including what happens if an animal cannot be safely handled.

What to bring and what not to bring.

Somebody booking a fortnight before a holiday needs to know today whether a vaccination is required with a two-week lead time.

Put it on its own page and link to it from the booking form, since it is the thing that most often derails a booking.

A worked example

A kennel had a site with three photographs, a price, and a contact form.

They added a page describing the daily routine hour by hour, a full requirements page, twenty photographs of the actual facility, and short profiles of the two staff.

Bookings rose noticeably and, more usefully, the telephone conversations changed from interrogation to arrangement.

Owners started arriving having already read the requirements, with the right paperwork in hand.

Drop-offs became considerably faster, which mattered more in daily practice than the extra bookings did.

The whole change was describing in writing what they already did every day.

Nothing about the kennel itself was different afterwards.

They had simply never told anybody what happened between drop-off and collection.

Publish the rates properly

Which is straightforward here and frequently muddled.

The daily rate per animal, the rate for a second animal sharing, and what a day means, since check-out time decides whether a return counts as an extra day.

Peak season and holiday rates, stated in advance rather than discovered at booking.

What extras cost: medication administration, extra walks, grooming, or collection.

And the deposit and cancellation policy, which is the term that causes disputes.

Say the check-in and check-out windows clearly, since those are also the hours when your staff are busiest.

An owner arriving outside them without warning is a problem for both of you.

Say what happens if a flight is delayed, which is the situation that produces most of the awkward calls.

Say what happens if something goes wrong

Which is the fear underneath every enquiry.

Which vet you use, whether you will use the owner's vet, and who authorises treatment if the owner cannot be reached.

Your limit for treatment without contact, and how you handle costs.

Whether you are insured and for what.

Addressing this directly is uncomfortable and it is precisely what an anxious owner is looking for evidence about.

A business that has thought about it and written it down is obviously safer than one that has not.

Updates during the stay

Which is now expected and is a genuine differentiator.

Say whether you send photographs or messages, how often, and whether it costs anything.

Owners on holiday want a photograph on day three more than they want anything else you offer.

Where you do not do it, say so, since an owner expecting updates and receiving none has a bad fortnight.

It is also the thing most likely to produce a review, which for this business is the main marketing channel.

Answer the cat question separately

Since cat owners are looking for different things and are usually an afterthought on these sites.

Whether you board cats at all, whether they are housed away from the dogs, how much space each has, and whether they can see or hear dogs from where they sleep.

That last point decides the booking for a good share of cat owners and is almost never addressed.

Give it its own page rather than a line on a dog page, since somebody searching for a cattery will not find a paragraph buried on a kennel page.

The same applies to any other animal you take, which is worth listing plainly since people ask about rabbits and birds constantly.

The counter-case

Many kennels run full without any of this.

A long-established business with a waiting list and a steady stream of repeat customers gains little from a better site.

Publishing a daily routine also creates an expectation you have to meet on a day when two staff are off sick.

And photographs of real animals need owner permission, which is an extra step every time.

Show the actual facility, describe the day hour by hour, publish the requirements in full, and say what happens if an animal is unwell.

What to build first

1. Twenty photographs of the real place.
2. The daily routine.
3. Whether anybody is on site overnight.
4. Full requirements, with lead times.
5. Daily rates and peak rates.
6. The vet and treatment policy.
7. Whether you send updates.

Step three answers the question owners think about at two in the morning, and almost no kennel site in the country addresses it directly.

Building trust without a review history is covered in the business with no reviews at all.

Frequently asked questions

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