- Senior Living SMART

Senior living website design involves so much more than fonts, colors, images, and layout. Sure, those things are important. But if your site only looks pretty, but doesn’t convert anonymous website traffic into leads, what’s the point?

Bottom line: Your design strategy must go hand-in-hand with your overall marketing strategy. Follow these tips to accomplish exactly that.

Design your site for multiple buyer journey “pathways.”

Remember, the buyer controls the sales process, not the other way around. In fact, buyers often interact with content anywhere from 8-10 times (if not more) before showing any interest in talking to sales.

As a result, your senior living website design needs to enable the buyer to take the next logical step in their specific journey. On the home page, provide clear paths. If they self-identify as an older adult researching senior living communities for a move within the next year, provide a logical path through the site. The same is true for an adult child looking on behalf of a parent.

By providing paths that reflect each buyer’s journey, you’ll increase conversions along the way. How so? Well, the various conversion points will happen in a way that makes sense to that particular buyer.

For example, for the adult child, you’d offer content downloads that make sense to them, such as “A Guide to Helping Loved Ones Make the Move to Senior Living.” On the flip side, for an older adult evaluating different communities, you might offer content like: “What to Expect in Your First Month Living in Our Community.”

On any given page, make it clear what people should do next.

Your senior living website serves as your virtual storefront. Brick-and-mortar retail stores are designed to lead people deeper and deeper into the store so that they stay in-store longer. (The same is true with grocery stores—that’s why the meat and deli departments are in the back of the store.)

Your senior living website design needs to do the same thing: You need to entice people to stay and explore your site. Here are some strategies for keeping people invested:

Use sticky menus. Navigation that remains at the top even as people scroll can be an excellent way to keep people oriented as to where they are—and to stop them from backing out in frustration.
Use well-designed and thoughtfully placed CTAs. The CTAs should lead people to valuable content that will help them on their journey. Read more about the power of CTAs in senior living marketing.
Use video. Video tends to increase the time spent on a page. Studies suggest that including video on landing pages can increase conversions by as much as 80%. But like anything else, you need to be thoughtful in how you use video—where it’s placed, how it integrates with the page, how quickly it loads, and so forth.

Be mindful of how your senior living website design renders across all devices.

Creating a consistent experience is key to consistent conversions. If the desktop experience is fine, but the experience on a phone leaves a lot to be desired, you might lose the person to a competitor simply due to that frustrating experience.

When we say a “consistent” experience, we don’t simply mean making sure the site looks exactly the same across all devices. The experience on smartphones should be different from the experience a person has on a desktop since they are two very different devices. What you want to avoid is having someone experience a disconnect from one device to another—the branding should be consistent, as should the pathways people follow. But how you optimize your site for mobile will and should be different.

For example, you might need to adjust CTA designs so that they’re super easy to read on mobile. Your font and text size on mobile might need to be different from the desktop experience. You get the idea. (Need more tips? Read HubSpot’s article on how to optimize websites for mobile users.)

Now, if you’re thinking smartphones aren’t as popular with your key demos, think again. Sure, the Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1945) might not be married to them. But the demo right behind them—Baby Boomers—most certainly are (and so are their kids). In fact, according to this report from HigherVisibilty, “In the first quarter of 2021, 54.8% of web searches were done via mobile devices (excluding tablets).” And guess what? That number is only going to go up.

Practice good technical SEO.

When we talk about search engine optimization (SEO), we’re usually discussing it in relation to the copy on the page. But technical SEO is just as important. And that’s specifically something the web team needs to shoulder.

What is technical SEO? Backlinko has a good definition: “Technical SEO is the process of ensuring that a website meets the technical requirements of modern search engines with the goal of improved organic rankings. Important elements of Technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering, and website architecture.”

Run A/B testing with various elements of your senior living website design.

If you want to boost conversions, run A/B tests of various design elements to see which ones give you the biggest increase. Simple things—from font size to text color—can greatly impact conversions.

SEO guru Neil Patel lists 19 obvious A/B tests to conduct on your website. His recommendations include:

Typography
Colors
Font size
CTA design and placement
Landing page styles (long copy vs. short copy – layout plays a critical role)

Don’t treat your senior living website as a static thing.

This is especially true after launching a new site—or relaunching an existing site. It’s easy to think the heavy lifting is over and that you can just sit back. While this might have been OK a decade ago, it’s not the case today. Monitor analytics (especially on high-priority landing pages), conduct A/B testing, and adjust things, as needed.

Experiment with interactive elements within your senior living website design.

Building off the above point, be willing to try different things, from live chat to pop-ups. The challenge is seamlessly working these elements into your senior living website design so that they feel natural rather than intrusive. (And the look-and-feel needs to reflect the brand.)

Need help rocking your senior living website design?

Let’s boost conversions on your senior living website. Either opt for our budget-friendly website audit. Or we can chat about a custom strategy. Either way, get in touch!

Is the site older than five years?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for senior living website designs to look dated. (This is true for any design.) While there’s no rule saying that you must redesign, you should take a hard look at the site if it’s older than five years.

If the site is still delivering solid results, you could leave it alone or simply do some cosmetic refreshes here and there. If you go this route, however, you might want to start thinking about a redesign in a year or so—and start planning (and budgeting) for it now.

Does the site render well across all devices?

And when we say all devices, we mean all: desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones (all of which have various screen sizes). If you’re not sure, run some tests. Look at the site on different devices. Does the site remain easy to navigate and read (a must, especially for your target audience)?

If the answer is no, seriously consider a redesign. A good web developer will create a senior living website design that renders properly across all devices. This will keep users happy as well as Google, which is important from a search perspective. Reminder: Google has publicly said, “We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results.”

Is your site accessible to everyone?

Have you heard of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? Its goal is to provide “a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.”

We’ve always advocated making senior living websites accessible to everyone, especially since our target audience is an older demographic, many of whom have aging eyes. Over the years, we’ve taught many clients about the value of adjustable text sizing, strong color contrast with fonts and backgrounds, avoiding layering text over images, and using alt tags to describe images. (Just to name a few best practices.)

So ask yourself: Is your site accessible to all people? If the answer is no, you need to address this. The solution might not involve a complete gutting of the website. (We can help you with this step, thanks to our collaboration with UserWay, our accessibility compliance partner.)

Is the site delivering results?

To achieve these results, your site needs to deliver a fabulous experience at every point in the buyer’s journey. Between the analytics and your own gut, you probably already know the answer to this question. If your site isn’t delivering strong ROI, it’s time to revisit what’s going on—and to make plans for a redesign, if necessary.

Still not sure? Maybe it’s time to perform an audit of your online presence.

Remember, your website is the primary hub of your overall online presence, but all those other online hubs—think social media platforms, Google My Business, and directory listings—need to work in concert with the main hub, your senior living website. So if you haven’t performed an audit of your overall online presence in the last couple of years (or ever), then that’s a good first step.

The audit will automatically answer all of the above questions. You can do the audit yourself. Or you can order a budget-friendly audit from us. We provide a fresh set of eyes and objective assessment—along with a concrete plan for making fixes that your team can run with. Learn more about our Total Online Presence Audit here. And, as always, reach out if you have questions.

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Senior Living Website Design: Tips to Boost Conversions