What the Best Senior Living Websites Do
People who manage the best senior living websites don’t get hung up on overall website traffic. Instead, they make sure they have the right balance of first-time visitors vs. returning visitors.
Why? Keep on reading.
Below, we discuss the following:
- Why returning visitors are crucial to the senior living sales cycle
- What percentage of your traffic should be returning visits
- Which areas to review (and fix) to improve returning visits
- What to do if you need help
Why returning website visitors are crucial to the senior living sales cycle
People visiting your senior living website for the first time aren’t going to convert into move-ins on the spot. That’s not how the industry works—not even close.
The senior living sales cycle is LONG and can stretch from months to years. It can take anywhere between 20 and 30 touchpoints to get people through their journey from start to finish. That’s A LOT of touchpoints, each one needing to be just as engaging as the last.
Don’t get us wrong: We’re not trying to downplay the importance of initial website visits. You must get the right people to your website in the first place. But you also need to give them a reason to return repeatedly. If you spend time and money getting people to your site, but your site is simply a glorified brochure that people can consume in one sitting, you’ll have difficulty staying on their radar during their journey.
- What the best senior living websites get right: The best sites deliver an engaging experience. “Engaging” can mean different things to different people. But straightforward navigation, accessibility, custom design, helpful information, and interactive options like live chat, quizzes/self-assessments, 3D tours of apartments, and videos can hold people’s interest while they’re on the site—and entice them to come back for more.
What percentage of your traffic should be returning visits
A healthy senior living website will have around 70 to 75 percent new visitors and 25 to 30 percent returning visitors.
How people return:
- Some will return thanks to your nurturing efforts. They converted on something during their first visit, like a download, and you can nurture them through email marketing moving forward.
- Some will go to your site directly. They’re familiar enough with your name—maybe you impressed them so much on your first visit, or all those remarketing ads have paid off and they know your brand. And they type it directly into their browser.
- Some will return from your Google Business Profile, social media sites, or directory listings. So make sure your info is up-to-date on those places as well.
As mentioned earlier, many prospects require 20 to 30 touchpoints during their journey. If most of your traffic is new, you’re not giving people the necessary touchpoints. You’re NOT going to close someone on their first visit. But someone who’s visited your site multiple times and consumed the content along the way will be much easier to nudge into a tour or participation in some other sort of event, like a webinar.
- What the best senior living websites get right: The best sites are a component of a robust marketing automation strategy that get leads to return to the site. At its simplest, marketing automation delivers the right message to the right person at the right time, and often that message is a piece of content on your website. If you attempted to do this manually, it would be a nightmare!
Which areas to review (and fix) to improve returning visits
Perform an overall website audit
A website audit will give you and your team an overview of what’s working and what’s not, especially from a technical standpoint. For example, it’s loading slowly, or it isn’t rendering well across mobile devices.
Once you have the audit results, you can tackle what to fix. Hint: We offer a thorough, cost-effective total online presence audit of your website. Your team can run with the results—or have us make the fixes.
Perform a content audit (website and emails)
Great content answers people’s questions, gives them important points to consider, and allows them to interact with your community online (for example, through interactive assessments or floor plans). You need a good mix of content types to keep people’s attention and inspire them to return. Think short articles, longer articles, guides, charts, videos, and visuals that tell stories.
Perform an audit of your Google Business Profile—and other review sites
Is your Google Business Profile fully optimized? Before saying yes, ensure you understand everything you can do with your Profile. Here are some tips for optimizing your Google Business Profile. Or ping us if you need help optimizing your GBP.
As for reviews, monitor, monitor, monitor! Reputation management is critical. No one is expecting a perfect 5-star record. A 3.8-star average record WILL be a problem, though. Another issue? Prospects want to see recent reviews, not ones from three years ago. Get in the habit of regularly soliciting reviews from happy residents and their families.
- What the best senior living websites do: The best sites don’t operate in a silo. Sure, your site serves as the primary hub. But plenty of other sites—Google Business Profile in particular—can serve as secondary websites and encourage people to visit your site, provided those secondary sites are also engaging.
What to do if you need help?
We can help you get your website performing as it should be. Get in touch and let’s do this!
