What’s a dog’s breakfast website?
It’s a mess.
It’s a jumble of poor design, mish-mash content and dodgy code.
It fails to rank on Google.
It only brings you the occasional fee-conscious client.
And since it’s the first thing people see about your business – it damages your vet clinic’s reputation.
Talk about a wasted opportunity…
Instead let’s talk about how to avoid ending up with a dog’s breakfast website for your veterinary business and how to become the proud owner of a powerful business growth tool instead.
How does it happen that highly intelligent vets who care enormously about the quality of their work think that their most important marketing tool can be a thrown-together mess?
There are two key reasons.
Firstly, I just don’t think vets realise how important their website and marketing are.
I know from my practice days that most of the time I had my head down consulting, operating and running the businesses. I didn’t lift my head and look around enough.
Today, many vets simply keep working and don’t appreciate the power of digital marketing to grow their clinics (or send them backwards).
Have a look at this article about what a good website can do for your vet practice for some further thoughts.
Secondly, the ‘I can do it all myself’ attitude.
I know this troublemaker personally and have to overcome it every day of my business life.
When the troublemaker is in charge, I think I know best and that I can learn to do anything. And, of course, I don’t think anyone else can possibly do as good a job as me.
Lol! How ridiculous.
After 15 years running a vet practice and over 15 years in the professional marketing arena, I can tell you that both professions are equally challenging, and neither should be left to an amateur.
Building a successful veterinary website is difficult. It takes a team with hard earned and current skills in strategy, SEO, design, UX (digital user experience), content creation and photography.
You should definitely be involved and make sure your voice is heard.
But if you try to do this yourself – it will be a dog’s breakfast.
Dog’s breakfast websites are fairly easy to spot.
Firstly, there is no design integrity.
You’ll see colours that jar, mismatched fonts, irregular spacing, jumbled, messy layouts and mismatched images.
On the other hand, a website with design integrity simply feels nice. It has consistent colours and fonts and plenty of space for everything to breathe. It’s professional – like you.
Secondly, the content on a dog’s breakfast site is all over the place. There is no consistent voice and no flow. There is generally too little content, so people can’t really get a handle on your practice, or way too much technical information (often written to impress fellow vets) that goes over clients’ heads.
A professionally written veterinary website is friendly and pitched at a level owners understand. It has a consistently warm and inviting tone. It will leave readers clear about what your practice offers, what you stand for and feeling they can trust you with the care of their pet.
The other common issue with the Dog’s Breakfast veterinary website is the poor quality code. These sites are are usually off-the-shelf templates or tacked-on afterthoughts to veterinary operating systems. They are slow to load and not structured for Google, so they fail to rank. (More about how to improve vet clinics’ ranking on Google here.) Often, users are frustrated by buttons and links not working and go to your competitor.
When you consider any vet website company, look carefully at the following:
First question: what have they done for others?
Have they taken many vet practices like yours and created awesome websites and marketing that have delivered ideal clients and return on investment? Do you like the work they have done? Or are they a dog’s breakfast outfit?
Ask for proof and references.
Next, ask yourself: Have they taken the time to really know and understand your practice, clients, and growth objectives?
This is vital.
You must represent a true and honest version of your veterinary business on your website and in your marketing. Any mismatch will result in a loss of trust, the wrong clients and a waste of opportunity.
No website and marketing team can accurately represent a practice they don’t fully understand.
Every practice is unique.
A cookie-cutter plan with your logo pasted on the front is a big red flag.
Finally, consider that low cost may be a high cost in the end.
A low-cost solution can take your business backwards and your competitor forwards representing a false economy and a wasted opportunity.
Deb Croucher is the founder of SVMG, a strategic growth partner for veterinary businesses. A former veterinarian and practice owner, Deb combines industry fluency, commercial strategy, and structured marketing systems to help clinics, specialists, suppliers, and industry partners become clearer, more trusted, and better positioned for growth.
Find answers to common questions about our clinic and your pet’s visits below.
A veterinary growth system brings structure to the parts of marketing that often operate separately: positioning, content, search, campaigns and reporting. SVMG operates that system end-to-end, so activity is not just happening, it is connected, measurable and aligned with how the veterinary market actually makes decisions.
Most agencies deliver services in separate pieces: a website, campaign, content plan or ads. SVMG works at the system level, taking ownership of how those pieces connect, perform and support long-term visibility, positioning and growth.
Yes. Veterinary practices and industry partners operate differently, so the system needs to reflect the audience, decision process and commercial reality of each business. For clinics, that may mean attracting better-fit clients and protecting position; for industry partners, it may mean improving visibility, sales support and market response.
In most cases, disjointed marketing is not caused by a lack of effort. It happens when activity is spread across channels without a clear structure behind it. That’s where bringing everything into one connected system changes how the business is understood and how it performs.
Search is shifting from broad keywords to more specific, question-led queries across Google and AI tools. SVMG builds search and content into the system, so veterinary businesses are easier to find, easier to understand and better positioned when the right clients, clinics or decision-makers are actively looking.
Yes, especially if the activity is there but the direction is unclear. What typically happens is marketing exists across websites, content, social, email or ads, but no one is owning how it all works together. SVMG steps in where structure, accountability and stronger market alignment are needed.
