GP website templates

Responsive design

This means the website will look as intended on all types of devices, from desktop, through to tablet and mobile. For example, this actual website site itself is responsive. To check this, resize the browser window and see what happens.

You can also use responsiveness to show or hide content depending on the mobile device. For instance, you might not want a large or unwieldy image or table appearing on the page if browsed from a mobile device.

Customisable menus

With responsiveness comes adapatable menus. On a desktop, you have more space for links, but on a mobile, the menus will change according to the screen size, but will still give the visitor access to where they want to go. In the template examples, you will see top menus as well as side bar menus, or side menus change to top menus, as in this site.

You can customise any top and side bar links as wished - you should have an idea of the important areas of your site - those pages whose content you wish patients to really know about - you can use such links, which are generally accessible on all devices, to promote those pages.

You can have a mix of navigation in menus, for instance, simple buttons that take you to a page, or dropdown buttons that display a submenu over existing content, or accordion buttons that display a menu whilst keeping existing content. Try it below:

Customisable headers and footers

Both headers and footer content are customisable. Additional links can be added to the header or footer as you require. For instance in the footer, you might want a telephone number showing on all devices, with the addition of the address showing if on a larger device, or simply a copyright message.

Customisable colours

All colour schemes are customisable. However bear in mind that for NHS England compliance, GP websites should have NHS 'look and feel' - this means distinctive blue identity and logo, hence why there is a predominance of blue. However, you can still if you wish have any colours you like.

Customisable buttons and links

Again all button links, text links, from colour, appearance, shape, size are customisable.

Additional links

If is not a problem to have links to required sites, such as social media, online consultation service, prescription ordering services and so on. You can also have a Google Map embeded on the page, for instance, on the contact or find us page.

Modals

NHS England doesn't like modals because it thinks they confuse visitors and that visitors cannot then exit them. I disagree. Modals (overlays) are in widespread use across the internet and across GP websites in particular as an effective means to get urgent messaging across to users. For GP websites they are especially useful given that changes in the GP surgery's situation can have an important clinical impact, for instance, staff sickness or infection outbreak and there needs to be an urgent way of communicating to patients.

Whilst social media can be used for urgent messaging, significantly more people visit the website home page than the surgery's social media page.

Modals allow content to appear without changing the page and without using up too much space for the overlay content on the page. They are good for visual content, like images or video. As irritating they might be, they are hard to avoid and force focus onto the overlay.

Modals can be used where the intention is clear and where there is a clear option to exit the modal.

This is an example of a modal:

A note on forms

Although I can code forms (there is one below on this page), I find that the effort to create the inputs and validation required is somewhat disproportionate to the actual end result and by hand coding it could therefore increase costs for the client. Even on the Ivy Grove website, we use Google Forms - this enables quick and easy customisation, built in validation and with the addition of competitively priced add-ons, email forwarding and other functions can be easily added.

Additional features

I am more than happy to mix and match features from different templates, or indeed develop other features which are not currently shown on the templates, subject to learning and development time, so that you can achieve the design and end result that you want. I am also open to suggestions on any of these existing templates or if you have a certain look you wish to reproduce, please just get in touch with me.