Cura Dental

People choosing a dentist are usually comparing two or three practices on a phone in a few minutes, and they're quietly worried about two things: will it hurt, and what will it cost. The new Cura Dental site answers both before it asks for anything.

I was the designer, digital marketer, and developer. I audited the practice's existing Squarespace site, rewrote the structure around patient questions, designed a system from the logo's own colors, and built every page. Every fact on the site (prices, credentials, insurers, hours, reviews) comes from the practice. Anything they haven't confirmed yet, like a Google rating or offer expiration dates, is a flagged setting rather than an invented number.

1. Critical

   Nowhere to actually book.

   There was no booking form and no online scheduler. Contact meant a phone number, an obfuscated email, and "Learn more" buttons, with no click-to-book on mobile.

   How I solved it

   A booking path on every screen: the header button, a working appointment card in the hero, a sticky card beside every service page and blog post, and a Call / Book bar fixed to the bottom on phones.

2. Critical

   Pages showed the wrong content.

   The Root Canal and Emergency Dentistry pages displayed Oral Surgery copy, and even their page titles said "Oral Surgery." An emergency blog post's prevention section contained teeth-whitening text.

   How I solved it

   Rewrote all eight service pages from the practice's own copy, corrected, each following the same outline so a mistake like that would stand out.

3. Major

   The strongest trust signals were buried.

   Dr. Rosario's real headshot appeared only on the About page, the hero used an AI-generated stock smile, and reviews scrolled past in an endless ticker that was hard to read.

   How I solved it

   Put Dr. Rosario's real photo and credentials in the first screen, and gave reviews a calm, readable section that rotates on its own.

4. Major

   Search signals were weak or duplicated.

   Blog URLs ended in random strings like "-96zrw", two financing pages duplicated each other, and there was no structured data for hours, FAQs, or the practice itself.

   How I solved it

   Keyword-led titles, clean URLs with 301 redirects, and full schema markup (more in the SEO chapter).

5. Minor

   Three typefaces and no system.

   Urbanist for headings, Poppins for body text, and Helvetica in places.

   How I solved it

   One typeface (Urbanist) and a documented token system, viewable on the site's own design-system page.

The practice's logo is a single-line tooth drawn in two inks, cyan and purple. I built the whole site from that: white card stock, those two printed inks, navy text. The signature element is a real appointment card in the hero. Pick a reason, a day from the practice's actual hours (Wednesday shows as closed), and a time, and the card writes a "Your visit" line, then opens the request form already filled in.

My first version used warm terracotta and an editorial serif. It looked polished, but it didn't match the brand at all (the logo is cyan and purple), it recycled the old site's generic headline, and most of its images were grey placeholders. The second used a porcelain base with a deep violet accent. Closer, but it still read as "a nice dental template" rather than this practice, and it moved every URL, which would have thrown away the rankings the practice already had.

• A live "Open now · until 5 PM" status, calculated in New York time, so visitors know whether a call will be answered
• A request form that reads the reason, day, time, and offer from whatever link opened it, validates in plain language, and shows a "Requested" stamp when it's sent
• Offers designed as tear-off coupons ($195 new-patient visit, $495 Zoom! whitening) that link straight into the form
• On the emergency page, Call comes first and first-aid steps come before anything else
• Insurance and financing on one page: all nine insurers, Cherry, CareCredit, HSA/FSA, and the 10% Community Heroes discount

• Kept the live site's URL slugs (/cosmetic-dentistry/, /tooth-replacement/ and so on), and 301-redirected the seven URLs that had to change
• A unique, keyword-led title and description on every page, and one H1 that names the service and Cliffside Park where it reads naturally
• Structured data on every page: a Dentist profile with hours, prices, accepted payments, and nearby towns, plus MedicalProcedure, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, and BlogPosting where they apply
• Every service links to three related services, and every blog post links to its service
• Local copy names the neighboring towns patients actually come from: Fort Lee, Edgewater, Fairview, Palisades Park and more

Purple carries headings and primary actions; cyan marks status and small accents; navy carries the text. Urbanist is the only typeface. The small details borrow from a real appointment card: chosen options get a punched-hole mark, the "Your visit" line writes itself in, and coupon stubs tilt as if they're being torn off. All of it stops for visitors who turn on reduce motion.

Searches like "dentist near me" happen on phones, often while someone is already hurting. On mobile, Call and Request a visit stay pinned to the bottom of every page, tap targets are at least 44px, and type stays large enough for older patients to read comfortably.

• Semantic HTML, a skip link, and visible focus states
• Responsive images in two sizes, lazy-loaded below the fold, with the hero image preloaded
• prefers-reduced-motion respected for every animation
• A dedicated accessibility statement page

The things the practice still needs to supply (an online scheduler link, a form endpoint, a verified Google rating) are single settings in that file. Set the scheduler URL, for example, and every "Request a visit" button on the site becomes "Book online."

• 24 pages organized around the questions new patients actually ask
• A way to call or book on every page, pinned on mobile
• Real prices, insurers, and financing up front instead of buried
• Wrong and duplicated content fixed, existing URLs kept, and full structured data added
• One content file the practice can update without touching layout code

This is a client project, so I'm measuring it against the goals we set rather than a controlled experiment. Once it's live, the plan is to track calls, form requests, and organic traffic, and to check Google Search Console two weeks after launch for any 404s from old URLs.