Ark Start – Playful, parent-friendly website for a growing group of teacher-led nurseries

2026 – Ongoing

Websites

Ark Start is a group of nurseries, led by qualified teachers and part of the education charity Ark, that aims to give families access to flexible and affordable childcare so every child can have an excellent early years education.

We worked with Ark Start to create a playful, mobile-first website that helps busy parents find and enquire about the right nursery, supports recruitment, and grows with the organisation as new nurseries open.

Designed for busy parents

For many users, mobile devices are the main route to a nursery enquiry, so we designed the signposting and navigation around each step a parent takes: browsing, comparing options, looking for reassurance on quality, cost and funding, and filling an enquiry form.

A map and a listing help parents find their nearest of Ark Start’s nurseries across London and West Yorkshire, and on larger screens a mega menu gives quick routes into each one. Nursery pages are often where parents land from search and digital campaigns, so we designed each one as a single long page with everything a parent needs:an introduction from the manager, team listings with biographies, location details, a fee calculator, and reviews from external platforms.

Image carousels in both slider and tiled layouts capture the atmosphere of each nursery, and key parts of Ark Start’s approach to early years education – which has its own section on the site – appear on every nursery page. Beyond admissions, a jobs listing fed from Ark’s recruitment system supports hiring as the group continues to grow.

In Summer 2026, Ark Start had seven London nurseries with three more underway, and is targeting around 20 settings by 2030. As each new nursery is added in the back end it’s automatically placed on the map, added to the listings and included in the menus.

Joyful, not blocky

Ark Start needed long, playful pages that flow naturally as parents scroll, built from a design system of around 60 layout blocks that editors can combine freely. We paid close attention to where one block meets the next, so a page made of many parts still reads as one continuous story rather than a stack of modules.

To bring the pages to life, we incorporated and extended the rich and characterful elements of Ark Start’s brand. Animal characters for the group’s values – Aim High, Be Brave, Be Kind and Keep Learning – appear on promotional blocks, set into a subtle background environment on landing pages. Small icons from nursery life and background textures of footprints, building blocks and clouds add to the storybook aesthetic without competing with the content.

Answers in the right place

Parents tend to ask a similar set of questions about fees, funding, joining and the nursery day. We set up FAQs as a content type in their own right, with a central page that parents can search quickly by keyword. Editors can also add individual questions to the pages where they’re most relevant, so answers appear at the point a parent is most likely to need them. Each answer is managed in one place, which keeps them consistent wherever they appear across the site.

Knowing what works

Behind the scenes, we built tracking that shows Ark Start which marketing channels lead to enquiries. When a visitor consents to tracking, the site notes where they came from, such as a campaign link (via its UTM parameters), a search engine or another website, and remembers both their first and most recent visit. That information is passed into the enquiry form, so every enquiry arrives with its origin attached. Ark Start can now measure the value of each digital channel and use that to fine-tune its campaigns.