When I joined the Head Office team at Spire Homecare, our website showed one location, a fraction of our staff and an out-of-date recruitment section. A little over a week after we started building a new one, I presented it to our CEO and Regional Operations Manager. Here's how that happened, and what I learned along the way.
Who am I?
I'm the Projects and Integration Manager at Spire Homecare, and I support every department.
I started in care at 18, while studying for a degree in Psychology. My parents had bought a care franchise, and I wanted to earn money to go travelling with a friend, so I went to work for them. I loved meeting the clients, found it very rewarding and felt I was really making a difference.
After university and travelling, I couldn't decide what to do next, so I went to work with my dad at his care agency. Long story short, my dad retired and I ran the company for 27 years. Over that time we bought the franchise and I rebranded the whole company.
As a small business, rising costs made it very hard to keep going, and I wanted continuity for our clients and staff. In March 2026, Spire Homecare bought the company, and it became Spire Homecare Midsomer. I chose Spire because their morals, ethics and values matched my own, so when I was offered a role in Head Office, I jumped at the chance.
In a previous life I was also a Project Manager at a digital agency, managing website projects with developers, designers, content writers and social media creators. Those skills are what led me to take the lead on the website, and on bringing consistent branding to the whole company.
The old website
When a family member or potential carer landed on the old website, they didn't see a true picture of what Spire Homecare had to offer. It focused on Salisbury, touched on Trowbridge and showed only one location, when in fact we had offices in Salisbury, Trowbridge, Frome and Midsomer Norton. Only a fraction of our staff was on there, and the recruitment section was out of date and showed just one location.
We were telling local authorities and candidates that we were recruiting across all our offices, but the website didn't reflect that. And as a company that had just taken over two local care businesses, more people than ever were looking at the site: staff transferring to us under TUPE, and clients and families moving over to Spire Homecare Frome and Spire Homecare Midsomer.
For new business, the website was holding us back. Potential clients and carers had no idea we could provide care and jobs across a much wider area, and that was hindering the growth of the business.
Starting with the brand
Before touching the website, I started with our branding, as there was no consistency. I produced brand guidelines so that all our documentation was aligned and gave each location its own imagery.
I then created new client folders for our Care Quality Leads to give to potential clients. Each folder has general inserts covering all the services Spire Homecare offers and our Head Office team, plus location-specific inserts with local imagery, charges and the local office team.
The Senior Management Team liked the folders, and together with the consistent branding, they made the need for a new website even clearer.
The agency problem
Spire Homecare had a good relationship with the agency that built its website and was happy with their work. Before I joined, the CEO was the main contact. The website mattered to him, but it was one of many things he had to manage. Shortly after I joined, the website and marketing were handed over to me, with final sign-off from the CEO and Regional Operations Manager.
When I started working with the agency, I found that every change went through a process that took days, sometimes longer. I wrote content for a new recruitment section, and it took weeks to see anything, at a cost each time.
Having worked in an agency myself, I understood why. Spire was a small client, and with scheduling I knew a new site would take months and, I estimated, cost around £10,000. I didn't want to wait, and I knew the CEO wouldn't want to spend that much when I knew new technology could do it for far less.
Making the change
That's where James Burfield, an SEO consultant, came in. James had been building websites using AI alongside SEO modules he had created himself. He took the prototype I'd produced, the content I'd written for the recruitment section and my service inserts and turned them into a working prototype for our CEO and Regional Operations Manager. That took us around six hours.
He then offered to build a full working site for me to present. I'd already collected photos of the whole team, so every staff member could be included. For about a week of evenings and weekends we created pages together, and I asked for changes wherever the wording needed to speak to the right audience. This is where my care knowledge really mattered, and there were a few debates along the way!
I watched James build the site using Claude, Vercel and Cloudflare, and I was amazed. What I had previously watched a team of developers and designers take months to build, with multiple client meetings, was taking shape in hours in front of my eyes. I was learning about code and SEO from Claude with every change we made.
The hardest part was making sure all the content on the site was written by one of our team. I wanted to get across that although Spire Homecare is a large organisation, with over 250 employees delivering more than 3,500 hours of care a week, people never become just a number. Every employee and every client matters. That's what impressed me about Spire, and why I chose them to buy my business and accepted a job with them.
When I presented the site a little over a week later, it was very well received, with very few changes needed.
The new website
The new site is something we're all very proud of.
- All offices are clearly shown. Each office has its own page with the areas it covers, its team, the services it provides and its CQC rating.
- Every service is showcased, and the information can be downloaded straight from the site.
- Every staff member has their photo and job title, and you can email them with one click.
- An in-depth recruitment section, with an embedded video explaining our recruitment process. Job adverts pull through automatically from SeeMeHired, the software our recruitment team uses.
- The option to arrange a care assessment throughout the site, to make getting in touch as easy as possible.
- A blog section, set up on James's advice, where our staff share their own experiences.
All the feedback we've had has been positive. Organic visits rose from 188 in September 2025 to 262 in September 2026, an increase of around 39%.
What's changed for us
I can now make a change in minutes, sometimes seconds, that would have taken days before. New sections or big changes take hours rather than weeks or months. And the cost to Spire Homecare is my time, not an agency's hourly rate with fixed costs built in.
My advice to other care providers
Don't be scared of AI. Take the time to research it and read up on it and get advice from people who know what they're talking about. It can save you a lot of money and transform your online presence.
The possibilities for our website are endless, and we have lots of great ideas being discussed at our marketing meetings. If you'd like to talk about anything in this blog, please don't hesitate to contact me or our CEO. We'd be happy to grab a coffee and answer any questions.
Keep visiting www.spirehomecare.co.uk/ to see how it grows and look out for my next blog on why real experience matters in everything we publish online.
Last reviewed by Caroline Burfield, Projects and Integration Manager.