Little Sprouts Daycare · Childcare

Letting parents see the day before they book it

Choosing a daycare is one of the more anxious decisions a parent makes, and Little Sprouts' site gave them nothing to go on — a nice illustration and a phone number. We built a site that shows the actual day, so a tour is confirmation, not discovery.

Role: Website redesign, UX, build
Year: 2025
Deliverables: Responsive site, program pages, tour booking, daily schedule

The Little Sprouts Daycare homepage shown on a laptop and a phone, a friendly illustration of children and caregivers with the headline Nurturing Young Minds. — A warm illustration with nothing behind it — no program details, no schedule, no way to book a tour without calling during nap time.

The problem

Little Sprouts has waitlists in every age group, built almost entirely on parent referrals. The website hadn't needed to work hard — until a director noticed prospective families were touring once and not enrolling, more often than the waitlist numbers should have allowed.

The reason became obvious on the site itself: a homepage illustration and three nav links leading to pages with a paragraph each. There was no way to see what a day at the centre actually looked like, no program breakdown by age, and booking a tour meant calling the front desk during hours that overlap with nap time and pickup.

For parents comparing several centres before their child's spot opens, the ones that showed the most — photos, schedules, specifics — were winning the decision before Little Sprouts even got a tour booked.

The approach

Three moves, in order.

Break programs out by age

Infant Care, Toddler Program and Pre-K each get their own page, so a parent can find the specifics for their own child instead of one generic overview.

Show the actual day

A visual timeline — arrival, circle time, lunch, nap, outdoor play — replaces vague reassurance with the specific rhythm a child will actually experience.

Let a tour be booked in one form

A short request form captures the child's age and preferred program, so tours are scheduled around the centre's day rather than around whenever the phone gets answered.

The work

What we built.

The new homepage

The new Little Sprouts homepage on desktop and mobile: children playing, masked inside a soft organic shape, beside a headline reading Where little ones grow. — The homepage, showing the actual room. Real children inside a soft organic mask — warmer than illustration, and honest about what a parent walks into.

The programs page: a three-card grid for Infant Care, Toddler Program and Pre-K, each with a friendly rounded icon and short description. — Programs broken out by age, so a parent lands on the page that's actually relevant to them.

The book a tour page: a form with child's age, preferred program, preferred date and parent contact info fields. — Booking a tour without needing to call during the one part of the day the front desk is busiest.

The daily schedule page: a vertical timeline with time stamps for arrival, circle time, lunch, nap time and outdoor play, each with a small colourful icon. — The actual rhythm of the day, visible before a parent ever sets foot in the building.

Also delivered

A short photo-consent-gated gallery of real classroom moments, refreshed each term, so the site keeps showing the centre as it actually is rather than a single set of stock illustrations.

Results

First enrollment cycle on the new site.

+56%

Tours booked online

+31%

Tour-to-enrollment conversion

−40%

Front-desk calls during nap-time hours

Age-specific program pages, up from one

“Parents were touring and still not sure what a day actually looked like. Now they walk in already knowing the schedule, and the tour just confirms what they already believed — that's a much easier close.”

Naomi ChastainDirector, Little Sprouts Daycare

Figures are illustrative of the outcomes this engagement was designed to produce and are shown here for portfolio purposes.

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