Background
NHS South West Region Digital Transformation team needed to help GP practices reduce pressure on traditional communication channels, while encouraging patients to use online services where appropriate. With growing patient volumes, longer life expectancy and increasing demand on local surgeries, the NHS was aiming for 25% of appointments to be booked online.
However, many GP websites were not giving patients or practice teams the confidence to rely on digital channels. Patients often bypassed websites in favour of phone calls or onsite visits, while GP teams lacked confidence in signposting people online. Existing sites also varied widely, with issues including information overload, inconsistent design, accessibility problems, content discrepancies, technical language, and varying levels of editing capability and analytics understanding across practices.
The challenge was to create a standardised GP website solution that could build trust, simplify access to key services and support different practice structures, including individual GP practices and Primary Care Networks.
Solution
Spindogs delivered a patient-first, standardised GP website solution for NHS South West Region Digital Transformation team as part of a pilot digital transformation scheme. The project began with a three-month Discovery process, using NHS research, GP consultation, patient user groups and stakeholder input to define the technical requirements, sitemap and priority user journeys.
The solution focused on helping patients complete key tasks online, including making, changing or cancelling appointments, requesting repeat prescriptions, accessing test results, registering with a practice, requesting fit notes and finding essential practice information.
Accessibility was central to the work. The website was designed and developed to meet WCAG AA standards, with designs and frontend code reviewed by Tetralogical, a third-party accessibility compliance specialist. The creative approach followed NHS Digital Service Manual principles, creating a familiar, trusted and inclusive experience for patients.
Spindogs also created mobile-first page templates, customisable content blocks, semi-rigid layouts for consistency, flexible page-building tools, exemplar content written for a reading age of 10, training packs, analytics dashboards and marketing materials to help practices promote their new websites and shift patient behaviour online.
Impact
The pilot helped establish the viability of a patient-first, standardised GP website solution, delivering measurable improvements for both patients and GP practices. Following the launch of 17 pilot sites, the websites recorded over 197,000 active users, 67,000 online appointment journeys and 3,000 new patient registrations within the first three months.
The solution also gave practices clearer ownership of their data through GA4, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and individual reporting dashboards. These dashboards help practices, PCNs, NHS teams and project teams understand patient engagement, key user journeys, popular pages and broken pages.
The editing experience made it easier for GP teams to manage their websites while maintaining accessibility, consistency and usability.
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active users in the first 3 months after launch
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online appointment journeys in the first 3 months
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new patient registrations in the first 3 months
“Staff find it easy to maintain and like to have more forms come through electronically. Patients have found the website easy to access the relevant information.”
