Practice websites

A practice website patients can use, that brings in new patients

We design, build and look after websites for GP practices and PCNs. Patients find what they came for in a tap or two, joining your practice is simple, and the site meets NHS England's standards and your legal duties from the day it goes live.

Why it matters

Patients come to your website to do a handful of things

A site built around those tasks is easier for patients and quieter for your phones. NHS England has tested what works, and we build to it.

80%

of people look at the homepage first when they want to do something on a GP website.16

51%

of patients found it easy to contact their practice using its website in 2025.18

83%

of patients didn't know, or weren't sure, what "online consultation" means.16

50

criteria in NHS England's benchmark for GP websites. Ideally a site meets every one of them well.17

Top tasks

Every task a tap from the homepage

NHS England's research with patients found the tasks people come to do: appointments, repeat prescriptions, sick notes, test results, joining the practice, and the phone number, opening times and address.16 We put them on the homepage, in a menu of six items and in a search box that's always on show.

  • Appointments, prescriptions, sick notes and test results, each with its own page
  • Phone number and today's opening times on every page
  • Written for a reading age of 9 to 11

Joining

Joining your practice, without the doubts

Every registration now goes through NHS England's online service,4 so what makes the difference is everything around the form. Our join page says plainly that nobody needs ID, proof of address, immigration status or an NHS number, checks the postcode against your area, and says what happens next. "Join the surgery" is on the homepage, in the menu and in search, using the wording NHS England found patients understand best.16

  • Routes for babies and children, temporary residents, students, people with no fixed address and anyone registering someone else
  • Paper, phone and in-person help explained
  • Applications go straight to new patient registrations, which checks them and adds each patient to your clinical system

Your duties

Your legal and contract duties, met at launch

GP websites carry duties most patients never notice, until one is missing. Your CQC rating shows with its date and a link to your CQC page, as Regulation 20A requires.19 The site meets WCAG 2.2 AA and has an accessibility statement, under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018.16 And it shows opening times for walk-in, phone and online access, as the 2026/27 GP contract requires.4

  • Privacy notice, complaints procedure and GP earnings as web pages, not PDFs
  • Cookie consent before any cookie that isn't essential
  • The same details on your website, your NHS website profile and Google

Built the NHS way

Looks and works like the NHS services patients know

We build with the NHS design system, mobile first: 81% of visits to the NHS website are on mobile devices.16 There are no pop-ups, no accessibility widgets and no PDFs as the main content, and "request an appointment online" replaces jargon patients don't recognise.16 Pages load quickly on a phone and work before any script runs.

  • A menu of six items, labelled Menu on phones
  • Your current web address kept, with every old page redirected
  • Tested with patients on their own phones, including people less confident online

Kept current

Measured before launch, and every year after

Before launch we score the site against all 50 criteria of NHS England's GP website benchmark,17 and we score it again every year. Your practice manager updates notices, opening times and team pages in minutes, notices that only matter for a while expire on their own, and your reports show how many people open the join page and go on to apply.

  • A benchmark score before launch and every year
  • Notices with an end date, so nothing goes stale
  • Join page visits and applications in your reports

How we build it

Your practice manager is involved at each step, and nothing goes live until you've signed it off.

  1. Benchmark your current site

    We score it against NHS England's 50 criteria and show you where patients get stuck.

  2. Agree the pages

    Pages written from NHS England's tested content, with your services, team and opening times.

  3. Build and test with patients

    We test the top tasks with patients, on their own phones, before anything changes for your practice.

  4. Launch and look after it

    We move your web address, redirect every old page, and keep the site current and benchmarked.

Talk to us about your practice website

Tell us your current website's address, and we'll show you how it scores against NHS England's benchmark and propose a price.