Case study
A skin clinic built around saying no
Marleigh Skin Clinic is fictional. The UK rules governing medical advertising are not. I used those rules to build a page where restraint, published fees and a doctor who will say no become the reason to book.
The usual skin-clinic website starts with a polished face, a treatment menu and a free consultation. That combination creates the exact doubt its buyer arrived with: am I about to be sold something I do not need?
Marleigh starts somewhere else. A consultant dermatologist tells you what she is looking at, prices the whole plan, and gives you time to go home before anything happens. The page does not try to make restraint sound exciting. It makes restraint visible, specific and bookable.
The brief I wrote myself
Turn medical restraint into the reason to choose
The audience is not looking for transformation. She has spent months watching clinics on social media and is frightened of being processed, overtreated or pressured into deciding in the room. A referral may have supplied the name, but the website still has to confirm that the clinic is medically credible before she will book.
The brief was to make that credibility inspectable. Put the named doctor and public registers before the treatment list. Publish the fees. Explain the appointment. Let people book at night without talking to a sales team. Keep the medical patient and the person worried about a mole visible on a site category that usually sidelines both.
The constraint I added
The public page cannot advertise a prescription-only medicine
UK law and the CAP Code prohibit public advertising of prescription-only medicines. The restriction reaches further than body copy: names, abbreviations and indirect phrases cannot be smuggled into navigation, prices, URLs, metadata, alt text or testimonials.
I treated that as an information-architecture rule, not a disclaimer problem. The page promotes a consultation for lines and wrinkles, routes people by concern rather than product, removes promotional urgency, and gives every cosmetic decision a cooling-off period. Compliance and conversion ended up pointing in the same direction.
The decisions
Five calls, each removing a reason not to book
Put the doctor before the services
Most clinic sites leave the team near the footer. Marleigh introduces Dr Elin Marchetti immediately after the hero, with her specialty, registration and a direct link to the public register.
That order is for the person verifying a recommendation. She does not need another claim about confidence. She needs to know who will examine her, whether that person is qualified, and whether the claim can be checked somewhere the clinic does not control.
Give people three concerns, not a treatment catalogue
The first choice is what brings you in: something worrying, a skin condition, or lines and skin quality. A visitor does not have to diagnose herself or learn a list of products before she can move forward.
The same three doors drive the booking flow. Pick the concern, see a real-looking time with the named doctor, then enter your details. The booking feels like choosing care, not filling in a lead form.
Charge for the consultation and explain why
The category default is a free consultation. Marleigh charges £50 or £250 depending on what the appointment is for, then says what the fee buys: the doctor's time, a diagnosis where relevant, and the complete plan in writing.
Free has a cost. It turns the appointment into the point where somebody has to sell. A paid consultation allows the doctor to recommend nothing and still have done the job she was booked to do.
Replace transformation imagery with evidence
There is no before-and-after gallery and no stock model touching perfect skin. Those images are legally difficult in parts of this category, and they intensify the buyer's fear of looking treated.
The replacement is a set of numbered dermatology plates built in CSS and SVG: measured skin fields, depth diagrams, dates, scale bars and clinical captions. They teach something useful while making the visual identity feel documented rather than decorated.
Make every important number look recorded
Marleigh uses Newsreader for headlines and prose, Schibsted Grotesk for interface copy, and Martian Mono for every price, date, depth and registration number. A figure changes typeface even inside a sentence.
The page follows the same logic. Cool photographic grey replaces the category's warm cream, madder red works like a clinician's pen, and white rectangles behave as documents. The identity does not borrow credibility from luxury. It builds credibility from records.
What didn't work first
The first brand direction used a clinical blue accent and a warm paper ground. Both looked respectable and both were too familiar. Blue made the page fall back into the medical default. Warm paper cast the same yellow tone the rest of the beauty category uses.
The final system uses neutral photographic grey because it does not push colour onto skin, with madder red reserved for rules, ticks and marks. The change made the visual argument as specific as the conversion one.
The record
- 3
- concern-led routes into care
- £250
- published skin-consultation fee
- 4
- steps from concern to booked
- 0
- promotions or countdown timers
No treatment menu and no self-diagnosis
Diagnosis and the complete plan in writing
Time is chosen before personal details
Real availability supplies the only urgency
The numbers are part of the product. Prices, dates, credentials and availability are stated where a patient needs them, then set like measurements rather than marketing claims.
What this means for a trust-sensitive business
You do not need to run a clinic for this approach to matter. If customers arrive worried about pressure, hidden costs or whether your credentials mean anything, louder persuasion makes the problem worse.
The useful work is structural: show the person responsible, let people check the evidence, state the price, explain what happens next, and remove the parts of the journey that feel like a trap. That is design doing commercial work before colour or animation enters the conversation.
For regulated businesses, the rules are not copy to add at the end. They belong in the navigation, the booking flow and the offer itself. Build around them early and the result can be clearer than an unrestricted competitor's page.
Closest service: Website design