A one-woman business, built to be trusted in five seconds.
Shauna looks after dogs, cats and horses in their own homes across Northumberland and Newcastle. Nearly every enquiry arrives on WhatsApp, and she was answering the same two questions by hand every day: do you cover me, and how do I book? The site exists to answer both before she picks up her phone.
- Client
- Johnson's Pet Co
- Business
- Pet sitting & animal care — dogs, cats and horses, Northumberland & Newcastle
- Scope
- Brand direction · website design & build · domain migration · launch
- Status
- Live on johnsonspetco.com since 3 September 2026 · next stage agreed
- Reputation
- 5.0 on Google (her review of us, below) · 100% recommend on Facebook (hers)
Trading for six weeks. A domain that said “opening soon”.
Shauna had been looking after animals since July, with a full diary from word of mouth and Instagram. But everything ran by hand: quotes typed into WhatsApp, client details on a paper form filled in on the doorstep, bookings in a paper diary. And her own domain pointed at a half-finished holding page that told anyone who searched her name she wasn’t open yet.
We started with a scoping call, not a quote. What came out of it was the real brief: stop her answering “do you cover me?” and “how do I book?” one message at a time, and make a stranger trust a solo sitter with their house keys inside a few seconds of landing.
Her voice, her video, and a site that hands the enquiry straight to WhatsApp.
Three brand directions went to her on WhatsApp; she chose the warmest. The hero is her own 40-second video rather than a stock photo of a golden retriever, because the thing she is really selling is herself— DBS checked, insured, first-aid trained, and the person who actually stays the night.
A postcode checker answers the coverage question on the spot. The enquiry form doesn’t email anyone: it opens WhatsApp with the message already written, because that is where she runs her business. Every line of copy is in the first person, in her words, after she read the draft and told us what wasn’t quite her.
The whole thing is hand-coded, with fonts self-hosted and every library removed during review. The page makes no third-party requests at all, so there is no cookie banner to click through on the way to the button that matters.
Days from kick-off call to a live preview she could share
Third-party requests on the finished page — no cookies, no trackers
Of animation libraries removed in review, replaced with a few lines of CSS
Places the copy switched from “Shauna” to “me” once she read it
From the build log and the pre-launch review pass, September 2026.
Small business, full process.
A modest budget doesn’t mean a modest process. Every stage here is the same one we run for a larger client — just sized to fit.
Scoped the business before the site
A 45-minute call about how enquiries arrive, how she quotes, where her time goes and where the diary goes quiet. The website brief fell out of that, not the other way round.
Three directions, one decision
A short brand options pack, sent to her phone. She picked Warm & Personal in a sentence, and that decision governed every colour, font and line of copy that followed.
Built around WhatsApp, not email
Eighty per cent of her enquiries arrive there, so the site sends them there — pre-filled, so a customer's first message already has their postcode, dates and animals in it.
Reviewed it like it mattered
Before launch the build went through an independent five-seat review — motion, visual craft, conversion, accessibility and performance. It found three real bugs live on the preview. All three were fixed before a customer ever saw them.
Rescued the domain
She owned her domain, but where it pointed had been set up under an account that wasn't hers. We traced it, walked her through bringing it back under her own registrar, and switched the site over in an evening.
Kept iterating after launch
Her review notes, a photo of her cat Marcus for the About section, a mobile navigation rebuild after she said the phone view “just keeps scrolling”: each one turned around the same day, because a site is finished when the client says so.
I’ve had a great experience working with Max on my website. He’s personable, knowledgeable and really easy to work with, and has made the whole process feel simple from start to finish. He’s also shown me different approaches and options I didn’t even know were possible, which has been incredibly helpful. I’d definitely recommend him to anyone looking for someone professional, creative and genuinely supportive throughout the process.
Start where the business is.
Shauna didn’t need a booking platform on day one. She needed the enquiries she was already getting to arrive with the answers attached, and a site that made a stranger comfortable handing over their keys. That is what stage one does. The next stage — a digital client form to replace the paper one, then bookings — was agreed once the first was live and earning its keep.