Petffisio, a case in point.
Just a few years ago, Newenglish had the pleasure (more like can’t stop from deeply smiling kind of pleasure) of creating a brand, website, all the communications, and the full interior (everything, apart from the medical kit) of a huge veterinary hospital in Surrey called The Ralph. The founders had the amazing principles of wanting to be totally respectful of animals and their staff. That doesn’t sound that amazing, but speak to any veterinary nurse, or even vet, and you’ll quickly discover that not all outcomes are the ones we would like. Sadly, animals do die, and this means there is a high burn-out and much worse amongst veterinary staff.
These guys were taking huge risks, as were the bank and investors, but like us, they were all convinced that a Veterinary Hospital built to the highest medical standards, which looks after the wellbeing of its staff (unusual in the sector), felt like it would do well.
It’s been a huge success. It surpassed its own financial expectations, hitting profit 2 years prior to projections, and with over 170 staff on board, news of The Ralph has spread nationwide.
The visual language and tone of voice that Newenglish Studio have established in the outpouring of the bold and confident brand personality has become well known in the sector. Vets who refer to The Ralph, professionals who attend CPD sessions there, and professionals who just now know about it respond positively to the vast, but easy to navigate, website and love the building when they visit.
And then…
In Wales, an animal Physiotherapist and Hydrotherapy working with dogs, cats and horses, who was looking to expand her business from visiting clients to having her own premises with specialist Hydrotherapy pool and all the equipment at hand, as well as the luxury of space to do gait analysis, etc. She’d admired how The Ralph was designed as a space, the brand, and their website, and approached Newenglish Studio to see if we could create a name, brand and website for her small business.
So, what about a small business?
Because we love to see businesses of all sizes flourish, we were delighted to be asked to take on this commission. Given the right foundations we’re able to build and change perceptions with good design using brand through to everything online, including web and animated social media advertising assets.
Before we begin to work with someone new, we carefully explore who we might be potentially working with in our conversations. What’s their approach to how they do business and how they work with clients [or not!]? If it’s a large organisation like The Cooperative, who we’ve also recently started working with, these questions are answered beforehand, with their reputation and company ethos.
Rosy ticked all our boxes.
A caring professional wanting to expand her practice so she can help more animals. She’d never once mentioned expanding profits. We know from experience that with her skills and attitude, backed with our design skills, her business will flourish.
West Wales Pet Physio was the name of the business, and Rosy, our client wanted to change it to something less wordy but that places her business in West Wales.
After some thought, we looked up the word for physiotherapist in Welsh: ffisio. Joining the words ‘pet’ and ‘ffisio’ felt good. We also liked the friendly way it sounds, a reflection on the gentle, caring head of the business. Also, what designer doesn’t like the gift ligatures ffi gives? We recommended our client purchase the URL for petffifio.wales to further re-assure her clients (referring vets mainly) that the practices is in Wales.
Rosy had said in our briefing that she just loves it when a dog, cat or horse, after a course of Physiotherapy or Dog Hydrotherapy, comes back to the best health it can be in. She also loves working with dogs who do Dog Agility, giving them Physiotherapy and Hydrotherapy as an ongoing part of their training to keep them in top form and injury free.
So, what do we consider when creating brands?
When we design brands, we always take into account the sector, and the audiences. Like The Ralph, the first point of contact is online, and the website is used in the first instance by referring Vets, and secondly by new customers checking out where the vet has referred their animal to and returning customers
This got us thinking and led to us having the idea of the winking animal within the type-form for the logo. We were all smitten at first sight. Of course we couldn’t resist animating it too. Here is a mark that is strong, professional and friendly, the colour palette was perfect too. Totally appropriate for the business, sector and audiences, being soft and re-assuring with the pink, friendly and professional with the deep teal blue.
Easy to use for our clients and great user journeys (UX design)
Don’t you just love it when it all feels easy and seamless? We do too, so as always, the website design and production were done from scratch, with clarity, and an easy user journey (that’s for everyone who looks at and uses the website). We’re not great fans of templates, preferring full control of the design (so it’s right for the purpose) and a clean, bespoke back-end CMS, so our clients have the easiest time possible managing their site and making changes to pictures and information. Our ‘how to’ videos, bespoke for every website we create, also makes it easy for our clients and prompt memories of how to manage the information and photos on the site.
The home page has carefully crafted text for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), as we have done throughout the site. It’s easy to find out what is on offer, dig down deeper for more information or simply get straight to booking if that’s what you want to do.
Rosy felt it was important to tell her own story of how she became a Vet Physiotherapist so her story of how from the Army Veterinary Corps, she became a fully qualified Vet Physiotherapist. The story visually unfolds as you read it on the page.
We were also keen to help new clients understand what to expect at the first visit. The page begins with a video of a dog playing with a stick and unfolds with the gently animated information of the four things that will happen.
We’ve threaded in further reassurance with a ‘Read our reviews’ button that is accessible from the right hand side of the page throughout the site, making it easy for people to access a live feed of the Google Reviews.
With all business websites, it is important to be able to have everything you need to run the business from within the site. So our booking forms, Payment and Veterinary referral forms all run an online Diary for Rosy and feed her with all the information she needs to run her business efficiently.
Any new website and new URL benefits from backup
To promote the new website and raise awareness of her business we have produced a small animated social media campaign for Instagram and Facebook, which is being geographically targeted to vets and dog owners. Physiotherapy and Hydrotherapy for dogs is what Rosy wants to focus on, while also continuing equine and cat therapy, so we produced two adverts, to cover each of these.
Rosy has been a great client to work with and I, for one, would be more than happy to have her care for our two studio dogs!
Newenglish design put my vision into reality. It’s more than I could have imagined. The team have gone above and beyond and created this website which works seamlessly for my small business.
Rosy, Petffisio owner
