The waiting room is now online

A1. The research question

When a pet owner looks an independent vet clinic up online, usually on a phone and often worried, can they find out how to reach it and when it is open, whether it sees their kind of animal, what to do if something happens after hours, whether they can book without calling, whether it is taking new patients, who the veterinarians are, how they could pay for a large bill, whether an anxious animal will be handled gently, roughly what a visit costs, and whether other owners vouch for it?

Population. Independently owned US veterinary practices with one to three locations and their own website, in four groups: general and family practice, emergency and urgent care, specialty and referral, and mobile and house-call vets. These are the veterinary businesses a small or mid-size web agency can realistically win as clients.

A2. Who was studied

The sample was built from local search listings and state veterinary association directories, city by city, then screened so that every site in it is one an independent agency could realistically win.

Source	What it contributes	Sites
Local search, general practice	Independent general, family, small-animal, feline-only and mixed-animal practices found in local search results and state veterinary association member directories, city by city	127
Local search, emergency and urgent care	Independent 24-hour emergency hospitals and veterinary urgent care clinics found in local search results, city by city	39
Local search, specialty and referral	Independent specialty and referral practices (surgery, internal medicine, oncology, cardiology, dermatology, ophthalmology, dentistry, rehabilitation, exotics) found in local search results and specialty college listings, city by city	20
Local search, mobile and house-call	Independent mobile clinics and house-call veterinarians found in local search results, city by city	33

From list to sample	Sites
Candidates listed	147
Removed at screening: the site refused automated visitors or showed a bot challenge (3)	−3
Removed at screening: parked or placeholder page (2)	−2
Removed at editorial review: none (spam-word, corporate-footer and shared-phone checks found no hijacked domain, group-owned clinic or duplicate)	0
Cohort	142

Region (US Census)	General and family practice	Emergency and urgent care	Specialty and referral	Mobile and house-call vets	All
Northeast	12	8	6	7	33
Midwest	11	8	6	7	32
South	15	6	6	10	37
West	13	8	7	8	36
All regions	51	30	25	32	138

A3. How the sites were read

Pages. The home page, then for each of nine topics (services, new patients, emergencies and after hours, pricing and payment, team, Fear Free and low-stress care, reviews, booking, contact) the best-matching link on the home page.

Speed and accessibility. Google PageSpeed Insights (Lighthouse) on a mid-range phone profile and on desktop, plus Chrome UX Report data from real visitors over the previous 28 days where Google publishes it for the site.

Crawler conduct. One request at a time to each site, at least 400 ms apart, at most ten pages per site; robots.txt is read and obeyed for every page requested; a site that refuses is left out and never retried. The crawler identifies itself as Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ClikitiResearch/1.0; +https://clikiti.com).

A4. What was measured

10 questions pet owners ask before they call or bring an animal in, answered from what each site publishes, and 4 technical checks against published standards. A check passes only when the rule below is met; anything the crawler cannot confirm counts as not answered.

Question	Counts as answered when	Standard
How do I reach you, and when are you open?Tappable phone plus opening hours	The home page has a tappable phone link (not a template placeholder number), and the home, contact or emergency page states opening hours (a day and a time range), or says it is open 24 hours.	Pet-owner question 1
Do you see my kind of animal?Species named, or exotics said yes or no	The home, services, new-patient or contact page says which animals beyond cats and dogs the practice sees (a category such as exotics, avian, equine or pocket pets; a species named as a patient or service; or two or more species), or says plainly that it sees only cats, only dogs, or dogs and cats only. Animals in staff biographies and conditions such as snake bites do not count.	Pet-owner question 2
What do I do if it happens tonight?What to do after hours or in an emergency	The site tells an owner what to do outside opening hours or in an emergency: it is open 24 hours, it names an emergency hospital or number to call or go to, or it takes walk-ins. Menu labels alone do not count.	Pet-owner question 3
Can I book without calling?Book or request an appointment online	A link, button or embedded scheduler lets the owner book or request an appointment online. A scheduling service counts only on its own host; pay, forms, portals, records sign-in and reviews on the same services do not count.	Pet-owner question 4
Are you taking new patients?Says whether it takes new patients	The site says whether it is accepting new patients or new clients (either answer counts).	Pet-owner question 5
Who will treat my pet?Veterinarians named with their degree	At least one veterinarian is named together with a veterinary degree (DVM or VMD), a board certification (Diplomate, DACVIM and the like) or the veterinary school they attended.	Pet-owner question 6
How can I pay for a big bill?Payment plans, financing or pet insurance explained	The site names a financing or payment programme (CareCredit, Scratchpay, Cherry and the like), says it offers a payment plan, explains a wellness plan with a monthly fee, or explains how pet insurance is accepted or claimed. A bare menu label does not count.	Pet-owner question 7
Will my anxious pet be handled gently?Fear Free or low-stress handling described	The site describes gentle handling for anxious animals: Fear Free certification, Cat Friendly Practice status, low-stress handling, or pre-visit medication for fearful pets.	Pet-owner question 8
What does a visit cost?A price shown: an exam, a vaccine or a fee	A dollar price is shown for an exam, a vaccine, a procedure, a house-call or emergency fee, or a wellness plan (discounts, financing limits and deposits do not count).	Pet-owner question 9
Do other owners vouch for you?Reviews marked up, in a widget or quoted	Owner reviews are marked up for search engines (Review or AggregateRating structured data), shown through a review widget, or at least two owner testimonials are quoted on the home or reviews page.	Pet-owner question 10
Technical checks
Loads in under 2.5 s on a phoneLoads in under 2.5 s on a phone	Real visitors on phones see the main content within 2.5 seconds (Chrome UX Report, 75th percentile). Where Google publishes no visitor data, the phone lab test is used.	Core Web Vitals · LCP
Text contrast passes 4.5:1Text contrast passes 4.5:1	No text on the home page fails the WCAG 1.4.3 minimum contrast of 4.5:1, in either the phone or desktop test.	WCAG 1.4.3
Images have text descriptionsImages have text descriptions	Every meaningful image on the home page has a text description (WCAG 1.1.1).	WCAG 1.1.1
VeterinaryCare structured dataVeterinaryCare structured data	The site describes the practice to search engines with VeterinaryCare (or AnimalHospital) structured data.	Schema.org · VeterinaryCare

A5. The website score

Each site's overall score (0 to 100) is Clikiti's website score, rubric 2.0.0. It measures the website, not the clinic, and the pet-owner questions above do not feed it. It is a weighted mean of five pillars:

Pillar	Weight	Based on
Usability	30%	Checks of the home page for broken links and images, and an expert review of the page as rendered on a phone and on a desktop screen, against Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics. Each issue must name the heuristic, a severity on the Nielsen Norman Group scale and the exact element or wording; issues without all three are discarded, and two independent passes must agree.
Speed	25%	Google Lighthouse on a mid-range phone (60%) and on desktop (20%), and real-visitor Core Web Vitals from the Chrome UX Report (20%) where available.
Accessibility	25%	Google Lighthouse accessibility audits (70%) and Clikiti's own WCAG checks of the served page (30%).
Search	10%	Google Lighthouse SEO audits (60%) and Clikiti's own search checks of the served page (40%).
Trust	10%	Google Lighthouse best-practice audits (40%) and security header checks (60%).

Within a pillar, each issue costs points by severity (critical, high, medium, low) and by how many times it occurs; issues based on judgement count at 70% of measured ones, and duplicates of the same root cause count once. On the four clinic profiles, the number out of 100 is this overall score, and each dot is one check in its group: filled when the site passes it, hollow when it does not.

A6. Precision

With 138 sites, a share reported for the whole sample is precise to within ±8.3 percentage points at 95% confidence (worst case, a 50% share; 1.96 × √(0.25/n)). By type: general and family practice ±13.7 (n = 51); emergency and urgent care ±17.9 (n = 30); specialty and referral ±19.6 (n = 25); mobile and house-call vets ±17.3 (n = 32). Differences between types smaller than these margins should be read as similar. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers; medians are the middle value of the sites in a group.

A7. Quality control

• Every home page in the cohort was fetched and its title checked against the listed practice before scanning, and every home page was checked for text from gambling, pharmacy, adult or crypto spam
• Every site was checked for a corporate-group footer or 'part of the family' statement, and for duplicates of another practice on a different domain
• Detection rules were checked against the evidence they record for a sample of clinics in every group, and revised before the final run
• Every published figure is recomputed from the data at build time, and a statement in the text that the data does not support stops the build
• Results are published only after automated checks for missing data, anonymity, accessibility of the report itself and the margin of error statement pass

A8. Limitations

• A point-in-time snapshot: sites change, and a site may have improved or declined since it was read.
• Only public pages were read: the home page and pages it links to. Client portals, chat widgets, pharmacies and multi-step booking flows were not tested.
• Answers are read from the page as a server delivers it. Content that only appears after scripts run in the browser (some schedulers and review widgets) is not seen, which the study counts as a gap a search engine or a slow phone would also meet.
• 5 candidates blocked automated visitors or served a parked page and are not in the study; sites behind such protection may differ from those studied.
• Ownership was judged from what each site and public listings say. A practice sold to a group without saying so on its site may remain in the study.
• The study reports what a website shows. It does not judge any clinical care, outcome or price, or compliance with any state veterinary board rule.
• Automated accessibility tests find only part of what WCAG covers; keyboard and screen-reader use need a manual audit.
• The sample is a structured list of real, independent practices, not a random draw. Margins of error are given as a guide to precision, not as a guarantee that the results hold for every clinic in the country.

A9. Data, licence and corrections

The aggregate results are published as CSV and JSON beside this report under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: you may reuse, adapt and share them, including in client proposals, with a credit to Clikiti and a link. No per-site results are published. Corrections and removal requests are reviewed and answered personally; see the end of this report.