You love animals. You care about pet parents. You empathize with their struggles and celebrate their joys. You also want to make a difference in the well-being of animals in your community. I may never have met you, but I know all this about you because you have dedicated your life’s work to serving pets and the humans who care for them.
How will visitors to your website know all this about you? There are ways to help your prospective customers discover that you care. With strategically placed photos and content, you can show website visitors that your pet service or pet product company is a business that truly cares.
Here are a few places to begin:
1. Share your personal story, your “why.” Why do you work with pets? Why does animal well-being matter to you? Why do you help pet parents every day? You can share this story on your About page or feature it in your blog and link it back to your About page.
Be sure to weave your “why” through the rest of your website content as well. You won’t have your personal story on every page. But as visitors read each page, they should hear your “why” coming through in the information you share and how you say it.
2. Highlight a story that shows how your clients matter. You can feature this story in your blog with client permission. This feature is different from a testimonial or case study. Instead, this is a brief story you share from your point of view, reflecting on a specific client success or a more general client situation. You write a few observations on why it matters to you that this problem was solved for your client.
I will give you an example, but the possibilities are as varied as the work you do. I will be forever grateful to the vet that helped my cat get healed from a kidney infection. Not only do I thank the vet for saving her life, but also for educating me that she needed food that was phosphate-free and that our local water supply had too much mineral content for her system. She lived a long and healthy life because this vet cared.
That’s the story from my perspective. If you were my vet, what would the story be from your perspective? Why is it important to you that you helped my cat heal and taught me how to find the right food and water to keep her healthy? That’s the kind of reflection you want to feature on your website.
3. Show photos on your website of you interacting with pets. The way people appear when they are engaging with an animal speaks volumes about how they care.
If you serve different kinds of animals, you may want to include photos of you working with different types.
To place your photos strategically, research which pages on your website get the most immediate traffic (besides the home page). Place your photos there.
Be sure the photos don’t look staged. Have the photographer take candid shots. If your photographer is a volunteer, be sure they know how to photograph animals and how to do quality candid shots. Many hobby photographers have those skills.
4. If you have employees or volunteers, write a blog post highlighting one of your people, what kind of work they do for your customers, and why they love pets. Include two photos, a good quality, friendly-looking headshot of the person, along with a more interactive photo of the person with a pet. (Remember, always ask permission of individuals and pet parents before including any photos of people or animals on your website or blog.)
5. Demonstrate your interest in community pet life and giving back. Create a community pet resource page on your website or write a blog post that features a local event or community service related to pet well-being.
6. Focus on pet safety with a blog post that includes safety tips—pet safety at home, when traveling, for a senior pet, for a new puppy or kitten, for fish in the winter, and other safety tips relevant to your clients. Try to create a new blog post once a year, focusing on a different aspect of pet safety. Go ahead and mark your calendar to repeat annually: “Update website today with a new blog post on pet safety tips.” Keep it simple: a bullet point list will serve the purpose well.
Highlight “Pet Safety” on an appropriate page of your website, and link those blog posts to that page so people can find them easily. Each time you write a new pet safety blog post, add the title to that page with a direct link.
When you visibly advocate for pet safety by making it a featured and annually updated part of your website, you stand out as someone who will walk the extra mile to care for your pet clients. That page shows how much pet well-being matters to you.
7. Create a blog post that explains how one of your products or services contributes intentionally to pet well-being and family peace of mind. Your “why” should come through here again. It’s not about getting a sale. It’s about showing why you chose to offer that product or service in the first place: to make the lives of pets and pet parents better.
You are a busy pet professional, so it may take time to add each of these features to your website. That is okay. Each of those features shows your website visitors that pets matter to you. Start with one and grow from there. Even one of those features will go a long way to give your prospective customers a sense of who you are and peace of mind in engaging your business.
P.S. Clutch, the amazing Yorkie, has added a comment:
“Miss Janet, I’m glad that vet helped your cat get better.”
Me too, Clutch. Thank you.
Janet Eriksson 