Pawlytunnel: creating a bold, practical website for a brilliant dog-friendly idea
I love working on websites where the business itself is a little bit different, and Pawlytunnel definitely fitted that brief.
Pawlytunnel is a secure, indoor dog exercise and enrichment space in East Lothian. Housed inside a huge 90ft x 30ft polytunnel, it gives dogs and their humans a private, weatherproof place to exercise, train and have fun.
It includes astroturf, Kennel Club registered agility equipment and equipment for scent work, enrichment and confidence building. Because the space can be hired privately, it is also a particularly useful option for nervous or reactive dogs, puppies, high-energy dogs, training sessions and owners who simply want somewhere secure to let their dog enjoy some proper off-lead time.
So, a great idea. The job of the website was to make sure people understood it.
What the website needed to do
One of the biggest considerations with Pawlytunnel was that it isn't necessarily something everyone will have come across before.
That meant we couldn't rely on visitors immediately knowing what was being offered or why they might want it.
The website needed to quickly answer some very practical questions. What exactly is Pawlytunnel? Who is it for? What can I do there? Is it suitable for my dog? How does private hire work? And, once I'm interested, how do I book?
There was also a lot of useful information to communicate without making the website feel cluttered or overwhelming.
We structured the site around clear, useful pages including Home, About, Tunnel Hire, Classes, FAQs, Calendar and Contact, with the necessary supporting information and policies sitting behind those main customer journeys.
Throughout the site, the aim was to make it easy for people to move from discovering Pawlytunnel to checking availability, booking or arranging a meet and greet.
Choosing Squarespace
Squarespace was the right platform for this project.
Pawlytunnel didn't need the complexity of a full ecommerce platform. It needed a professional, easy-to-manage website that could showcase the space, explain the different ways it could be used and provide a straightforward route through to availability and bookings.
It also needed to be something that could continue to grow with the business without making day-to-day website management unnecessarily complicated.
Choosing the right platform is an important part of any website project. More functionality isn't automatically better. For a small business, I would much rather build something that genuinely fits how the business operates than add complexity for the sake of it.
Creating the right feel
Visually, Pawlytunnel needed some personality.
This wasn't a business that suited a muted, overly polished or corporate website. The brand needed to feel vibrant, lively, sporty and modern, reflecting the energy of the dogs using the space.
At the same time, we didn't want that energy to translate into a busy website.
The design therefore combines bold branding and strong typography with simple imagery and a relatively uncluttered layout. It feels fun and friendly, but the information is still easy to scan and navigate.
That balance was important. The website needed to appeal to dog owners and capture the spirit of Pawlytunnel, while still feeling like a professional business that customers could trust.
Making the content work harder
A big part of the project was getting the structure and wording right.
Rather than simply describing the facilities, we focused on what Pawlytunnel actually means for dogs and their humans: secure private exercise, somewhere to practise agility or scent work, space for enrichment and training, and an indoor option when the Scottish weather isn't exactly cooperating.
We also made sure the website spoke to owners of nervous and reactive dogs, who may particularly value having a private space without the unpredictability of other dogs appearing.
The homepage was structured to explain the concept quickly, establish where Pawlytunnel is based and guide visitors towards the next step without repeatedly saying the same thing in different sections.
SEO was considered alongside the customer experience too, with clear wording around private indoor dog exercise and enrichment in East Lothian and the surrounding areas, including Edinburgh, Midlothian and the Borders.
The result is content written for real people first, while still giving search engines plenty of context about what Pawlytunnel offers and where it is based.
A website that feels like Pawlytunnel
The finished site is bright, confident and easy to use, but more importantly, it makes a relatively unusual business really easy to understand.
And the client's feedback after the project made this one particularly satisfying:
“From the very beginning, Helen has been incredibly patient, creative, and supportive in bringing my vision for Pawlytunnel to life.”
They also said:
“The website looks professional, is easy to navigate, and perfectly reflects what Pawlytunnel is all about.”
That's exactly what I want a website project to achieve.
A good small business website shouldn't feel as though the business has been squeezed into a template. It should take what makes that business different and turn it into something customers can understand, trust and use.
And in Pawlytunnel's case, that meant creating a website with plenty of personality, while keeping the journey from “What's this?” to “When can we come?” as simple as possible.