Senior Living Websites

Most (if not all) senior living communities already have some sort of website presence. This is why we recommend regularly conducting a website audit. You can audit the site yourself, or you can contract an experienced third party (like us!) to do the audit for you.

Benefits of running a senior living website audit:

• Gain a fresh perspective. Do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t.

• Challenge assumptions. By looking at real data, such as time spent on pages, bounce rates, and conversion rates, you’ll be able to discern if your site is delivering maximum ROI.

• Identify what’s broken—and create a strategy for fixing. Does your current site render well across all devices? Do you have a variety of ways for people to engage with your site?

• Tweak the buyer’s journey—and the elements supporting the journey. Perhaps you’ve seen new trends, or perhaps you need to adjust certain elements even more due to things outside of your control.

Remember, your senior living website is your virtual storefront. It should be attracting targeted traffic. From there, it should convert people who are close to making a decision and nurture those who are interested but aren’t ready to commit just yet.

Here are some of the items you’ll be evaluating when auditing your senior living website:

• Look and feel. Does the site reflect your brand? Does it communicate the messages you’re trying to get across? Does it feel dated?

• Content. Do you have content for various types of buyers (for example, older adult vs. adult daughter) and for various points on their journey?

• Technical considerations. Do the pages load quickly? Does the site look great on smartphones? Is the site secure? Are you using the best web hosting solution?

An effective senior living website is one that attracts QUALITY traffic. What’s quality traffic? This will vary, depending on your community. But in general, a good definition of quality traffic is this: Older adults (and the people who love and care for them) who are searching online for senior living options in the area where your community is located.

You want to capture those folks, right? Of course you do. And the way do it is through search engine optimization (SEO).

Keep in mind that SEO is a process. It involves building your site and writing your site in a way that tells Google (and other search engines) that YOUR site is the answer to a searcher’s query.

For example, let’s pretend your senior living community is in Fort Lauderdale. Mary, who lives outside of Boston, is seventy-five and wants to retire to Fort Lauderdale. She searches on “great senior living communities in Fort Lauderdale” in Google and clicks on the various options that pop up.

Wouldn’t you want your community to come up on the first page of Google? Of course you would! The right senior living SEO can help make sure that happens.

SEO involves many elements, but the foundational elements involve 1) identifying the keyword phrases that your ideal prospect is searching on and 2) using these keyword phrases thoughtfully throughout your site. That’s a VERY high-level overview, but you get the idea.

Want to learn more about senior living SEO? Here are two resources:

Discover eight senior living SEO must-haves | Gain SEO intel from competitors’ sites

Once you have targeted traffic coming to your site, you need to engage them and convert them into leads. You accomplish this by having a visually pleasing site with lots of relevant content for site visitors to read and interact with.

Website Design: The Look and Feel

When it comes to creating the right look and feel, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the senior living website design say 2020 or 1999? Your senior living website design needs to be modern and fresh. It’s surprising how quickly designs can look dated. Even a five-year-old design can feel old.

• Does the site render well/correctly on various devices? You absolutely need a website that’s “responsive.” In other words, it must automatically adjust itself to render properly on devices of various sizes—desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones.

• Does the site design work for your audience? Your site talks to an older demographic. But not all modern fonts were developed with aging eyes in mind. The good news is you don’t have to sacrifice a modern feel for excellent functionality in today’s design landscape. But you do need to be aware—and, more importantly, make sure your designer is aware—of this specific need.

• Does the site design SPEAK to your audience? More than just colors and font size, you need images that convey and capture your community. Avoid stock photography and invest in pictures depicting real places and real people. Got an awesome bar with a cozy fireplace in your senior living community that residents love using? Make sure you have a photo of that. Use imagery that reflects and reinforces your community’s brand. Think images that tell stories.

• Is the website navigation simple and clear? Organize the navigation in a way that makes sense to site visitors and to the all-mighty Google. Your navigation also needs to adjust for small devices (think hamburger menus on phones). In fact, the navigation in the desktop version of your site will and should look different from the way it displays on phones.

• Is all site navigation clear and intuitive? Think beyond top navigation! Website footers are important, too. Why? Because people are used to doing the long scroll on their phones. They expect the information to be relevant from top to bottom. Your footer serves as a good place to call out important items in addition to other basic footer elements, such as privacy and terms of use.

You never know on which page someone will enter your site. Sure, the home page tends to be one of the most heavily trafficked pages—either through direct traffic or organic search. But people could enter on other pages of your site. For example, a blog post, contact page, or about page.

This is why having clear and intuitive navigation is so important. If the page someone enters on isn’t what they’re looking for, clear navigation can help them quickly spot where they DO want to go.

Clear navigation is just the start, however. To truly engage people and keep them on your site, you need to pay attention to the words you’re using. Content is still very much king.

Follow these content strategies:

•  Create an experience. You want people to have a positive experience on your senior living website. According to a study by Acquina, the top three things people crave are convenience, personalization, and regular interactions.
• Keep it conversational. Keep sentences and paragraphs short, just as you would if you were carrying on a conversation with them in person.

• Include clear “calls to action” (CTAs). What do you want people on that particular page to do? Schedule a tour? Download a piece of content? Participate in a survey? Click to the next page? Tell them!

• Offer different methods of communication. Some people like to read. Some people prefer watching videos. Still others might appreciate the interaction that comes with Live Chat. A good site offers a balanced mix so that people can select what works best for them.

• Give them a reason to come back. Entice site visitors back to your site! You can do this through subscription-based content (like a blog), lead nurturing after the person opts in through a website form, retargeting ads, and social media.

• Be ready to pivot. The pandemic has taught all of us that we must be nimble when it comes to how we communicate with prospects.

When it comes to designing and developing your senior living website, you have options. You could work directly with a web designer. Or you could work with a marketing agency that offers web design/development as one of its services.

The benefit of using the latter is that you can get everything you need in one fell swoop: SEO, messaging/copywriting, buyer persona work, design and development, marketing automation, and lead nurturing. Whereas if you just work with a web designer, you’d only get the site itself, not necessarily other things, like SEO or lead nurturing.

If you go the agency route, choose one that has experience in the senior living industry. Use this article as a guide: Senior Living Websites – 6 Questions to Ask Agencies. And make sure you ask for examples and/or senior living website case studies that demonstrate the agency’s expertise.