Take your Senior Care Center Website from Good to Spectacular

Websites are the first impression a resident or loved one will have of a senior care facility. A great website is vital for many reasons, and a poor-quality website can be detrimental to the success of even the best facilities, nursing homes, or residential care units.

First, let’s talk about some mistakes that are made on websites. A few of the most common mistakes are: hard-to-find contact information, hard-to-read text, outdated information, too much information, distracting design choices or pictures, and negative reviews or comments.

Not having a poor-quality website is the bare minimum. Taking a good website and making it a great website requires more. So, what makes a spectacular nursing home website? There are seven requisite items that can turn a good website into a great website.

Know Your Website Audience

First, know your audience. Senior care websites are most often viewed by prospective resident’s loved ones. Knowing who will be visiting your website can help you showcase the information that will be the most valuable to the decision-makers.

Cutting-Edge Website Technology

Second, the technology on the back end of your website should be cutting-edge. Websites should be responsive (the website responds to the device size), have back-end services that improve performance, and have a secure server. Unresponsive (built for desktop and does not reconfigure for optimal mobile use) and lower-tech websites are difficult and frustrating to navigate, and servers that aren’t secure are vulnerable to hackers and can be brought down or changed.

Professional Photos and Videos

Third, properly showcasing your facility is vital. Updated and high-quality professional photos (or, even better, a professional virtual tour) can show prospective residents and their loved ones how beautiful and inviting your nursing home is. If the pictures or videos are poor quality, the website visitor will assume the facility is also low quality.

Add Fun and Whimsy to Your Website

The fourth way to get a great website is to add some fun and whimsy. A few of my favorite ways to accomplish this is to add links to social media profiles of the facility, blog posts with fun activity updates and pictures, and positive reviews of happy residents.

Websites Need ADA Compliance

Fifth, nursing home websites must be accessible and follow all legal requirements. In recent years, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) laws have gone into effect that requires all websites to be accessible to sight-impaired individuals. Following the laws for accessibility is imperative, and if those laws are not followed correctly, the facility website may suffer fewer or upset visitors.

Up-to-Date and Relevant Content

The sixth main objective for a great website is keeping all information up to date. This means updating calendars, routinely checking the links to ensure they work correctly, updating staff names and bios, and removing irrelevant content.

Social Media, Links, and Proper Listings for Accurate Search Results

Finally, our seventh item to create a great website is having a strong and wide-reaching web presence. If a great website isn’t getting enough visitors, it isn’t doing its job. Great websites should have excellent traffic, stay up to date with Google requests to help SEO, have a working and updated Google My Business page, have relevant incoming links including to and from your social media, continually add new content, and updated descriptions, alt tags and meta tags which all help to continually get reindexed by search engines.

It can be daunting to take a website from good to spectacular, especially if you aren’t an expert. Having a team of experts build, maintain, and manage your website is the best way to get the most out of your website. YoloCare is a company that specializes in senior healthcare websites and has helped hundreds upon hundreds of nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and short-term rehabilitation facilities achieve their maximized web presence.