Help and Support
We have been in business since 1974 and one of the key factors in our longevity is our dedication to client support. We are well-known for the high level of support we provide.
If you need our help, we provide it immediately. We do not use a faceless help ticket system, putting your request in a queue of unknown length or duration.
You can speak to us by telephone. Everyone in our Web Team is trained in telephone support, so there is always someone available to take your call and ready to help during our office hours (8.30am to 5.00pm, Monday to Friday).
Requests taken by telephone are frequently dealt with and completed during the call itself. Requests taken by email up to mid-afternoon are normally processed and completed the same day.
We follow new legal and contractual requirements specified by the NHS or the government carefully and incorporate required changes in all our websites. Our Web Team can advise how other Practices have incorporated new requirements into their sites, to save you time spent reinventing the wheel!
NHS Benchmarking and Design Guidance
In 2023, following a period of thorough testing, guidance was issued by the NHS England Primary Care Transformation Team which detailed how to create more usable GP Websites. This was followed up with the release of a 'Benchmarking and Improvement Tool' which was a comprehensive set of guidelines intended to give Practices and ICBs a way to assess how well GP Websites were serving their patients.
We had already been liaising with the Transformation Team so had early sight of this tool prior to its public release and, as our latest templates were meeting the NHS design guidelines, we were quickly in a position to help Practices with both the design and content elements of the benchmarking requirements.
We have worked hand-in-hand with a number of ICBs in assessing their GP sites against either the national benchmarking tool or their own customised version. We gave thorough and direct assistance, helping Practices correct any areas where they were not meeting the required levels.
Our support includes:
- Performing full site audits against the NHS benchmarking criteria
- Checking for missing required content and supplying examples of how other Practices have addressed this
- Checking the reading age on content pages and suggesting how this can be reduced to meet the required level
- Updating websites to use new NHS-style templates
- Active involvement in meetings between Practices and ICBs
There is no additional charge for our support on this or on any other issue.
DIY or WDIFY (“We do it for you”!)
Our GP Website System makes it incredibly easy to change your own website, but if you would like us to make changes for you, we do that too.
Just let us know the changes you need, by email, telephone or even post, and we will do the rest. There is no additional charge for this - it's all part of our dedicated service.
If you are happier to make your own updates, we will set up accounts for as many named Practice staff as you require to have access. Different levels of access allow you to control who can edit the pages of your site and who can access secure form submissions (when in-house forms are used). To get you started, training manuals and guided telephone support are provided from the outset.
We are happy to check any content supplied for accessibility issues and correct those before uploading on your behalf, as recommended in the NHS "Creating a highly usable and accessible GP website for patients" guidance.
"Ask your website supplier to provide a service to upload all content for you and check to ensure it is accessible. Alternatively, have someone who has the necessary skills to ensure all written content is coded for accessibility and checked once it is uploaded."
Above and beyond
We regularly go above and beyond the call of duty to make our GP Website clients happy. This can involve creating custom graphics, building online versions of your forms or surveys on request, adding payment options, liaising with third parties on behalf of Practices and writing custom code. We go out of our way to help.
We regularly check site content to pick up on errors or typos, and to check that images uploaded by Practices are free from potential copyright issues.
We provide advice and support on incoming NHS requirements which have implications for GP websites.
We’ll even help you to promote your website and what it can do for patients by providing free-of-charge eye-catching A3 posters which can be placed in your waiting room.