Senior Living Website of the Future: A Case Study

Vitality Senior Living wanted to build a senior living website of the future. We worked with them to integrate website design and function to align with their sales culture.

Vitality wanted to accomplish the following with their new senior living website:

• Provide the right content at the right time to the right prospect
• Create a highly engaging site that would encourage visitors to stay longer and keep them coming back
• Represent senior living in a positive light using vibrant images and positive language
• Engage prospects in every stage of readiness, not just those ready to move in within the next thirty days
• Allow prospects to self-select their stage of readiness, consume content created for that stage, and advance seamlessly through the journey
• Automate lead nurturing campaigns for earlier-stage prospects while advancing prospects who are ready to engage with the sales team
• Generate high quality, organic leads

Step #1: Personas, Stages of Readiness, and Content – Oh My!

We created buyer personas and mapped the buyer’s journey based on three stages of readiness: Research, Planning, and Action.

First, we created a buyer persona for the adult daughter and the older adult prospect and mapped out motivations, obstacles, priorities, wants, and needs for each. Then, we were able to plan the right content that would be valuable to each persona. In addition, we could organize the blog and resources by stage of readiness.

For example, a prospect in the beginning stages of Awareness and Research usually wants to know where they will live, what they will do, who will take care of them, and if they can afford to live there. Someone in a Planning or Action stage needs to know how they are going to downsize, which community will be the best fit, when to make the move, and how to have the conversation with the family. Once we completed this, we created a blog calendar and the writers got to work. We moved on to the next step – engagement.

Step #2: Drive Traffic To the Site & Keep Them Coming Back

Vitality didn’t want to use traditional senior living labels, such as seniors, assisted living, or memory care. Instead, they wanted positive age-neutral descriptions, such as older adult, lifestyles, and choice. As a result, we had to get creative in using keywords to drive search engine optimization.

To engage website visitors, we included several Senior Living SMART partners in the development of the website.

• Site visitors can take a Roobrik assessment. Each assessment takes 3 to 5 minutes and leads prospects to a personalized Care Fit Report that presents their best care options. Prospects can share their report with other family members or save it for later. This keeps them on the website longer and increases return traffic and conversions.
• We also added interactive room planners for each community. This way, prospects in Planning or Action stages can choose an apartment style and design it by adding furnishings. These room planners by NextGenTools are the only ones that work on mobile devices and allow prospects to share their completed design on Facebook or email to other family members. This increases time-on-page by 6 to 8 minutes and creates a reason to come back to the website.
• Future enhancements include adding live chat to improve conversion from anonymous visitor to qualified leads and tours. With SiteStaff, we are getting 40% conversion from chat to lead and 20% conversion from chat to scheduled tour!

Step #3: HubSpot & CRM Integration

Vitality wanted to automate lead nurturing strategies for all of the leads that are earlier stage. An “earlier stage” lead is a person who is not ready to tour or talk to a sales person, but they’re still expressing interest. Vitality also wanted to be sure that “urgent” leads quickly went to the sales team.

As a result, we recommended integrating the website with HubSpot (for automated nurturing). We also recommended integrating the site with their senior living CRM (they use Sherpa) to connect leads in an Action Stage to the sales team for face-to-face and voice-to-voice relationship building.

The results? A senior living website of the future!

The new Vitality website is attracting more of the right traffic, engaging them longer, and speaking to (and converting) them throughout their journey.

Want to take your senior living website to the next level? We’d love to help! Request your free 30-minute brainstorming session or fill out the form below to get a website assessment.

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