Subscribe by Email

We know that seniors and their adult children are visiting your web site, so I would encourage you to make your web site the very best it can be — a powerful web site is a 24/7 opportunity to reach your prospects.

For an operational community, here are 10 powerful web site tips:

1. Your web site is often the first impression a prospect or adult child will have of your community. Web sites need to bring your community to life so prospects are intrigued enough to want to come and visit your community. In the past, communities were worried about “giving too much away” via the web; however, today people expect to be able to gather sufficient information via the web before they will call, email, fill out a form or visit your community. Make sure their first impression is solid enough to keep them from dismissing you after visiting your site.
2. Web sites are living, breathing organisms. It is incredibly important to feed your site with new content, promotions and any other content, photos or graphics that might be appealing to your web site visitors. The days of building a web site and leaving it on the shelf are over.
3. Make sure your site converts! Many of our communities experience 20% of initial inquiries via the web. If you get a prospect to your site, make sure you incorporate promotional call-outs, forms for prospects to provide information, easy-to-find phone numbers and more, so you don’t miss out on a web lead because your site doesn’t ask a prospect to input contact information.
4. Optimize your web site for search engines. Don’t just purchase paid placement, but also optimize your web site for natural search by incorporating appropriate keywords in the copy, including title tags and much more. Smart natural optimization will put your site at the top of the search engines’ list, which will provide you with many more opportunities to get your message in front of prospects.
5. This goes without saying for the industry we are in, but make sure to optimize your web site for the 65+ prospect. Give users the ability to increase the text size, choose colors that work well together, include simple navigation and more.
6. Interactivity is key. Include interesting, sticky interactive components to your web site to encourage users to spend more time on your site. Include calls to action to these interactive components in your offline materials. Don’t just list your URL; instead, give prospects who receive a direct mail piece a reason to go to your web site to learn more about your community. For example, tell them they can go to your web site to view a video, virtual tour, floor plans, etc.
7. Be sure to capture email addresses in simple forms on your web site. Seniors use email, and mining a substantial email database will allow for you to cost-efficiently sell, build relationships and provide information about your community via email in the future.
8. Start incorporating social networking principles into your web site. Start by adding a blog to your site, linking to a video posted on YouTube, and giving users ways to interact with you and/or your interesting, unique residents.
9. And, speaking of video…don’t miss the chance to add video to your site. Video helps bring your community to life, builds credibility and can create trust if used to convey community messages and strengths. For example, if you have a doctor on staff, shoot a short video of the doctor talking about his/her commitment to your residents.
10. Testimonials are very powerful. Include text if your budget doesn’t allow for video. If you can afford video, shoot a few short segments and include some of the following: residents, adult children, caregivers, the executive director and anyone else who helps make your community shine!

Please keep in mind that if you can start with one of these, you’re on the right track. I know you can’t do everything at once, but I usually recommend that we phase in as much as makes sense for our clients and put a plan together for what we want our web sites to achieve. So over time and via a phased approach, we can arrive at a place where everyone feels good about a web site that works hard for them.

Print-Friendly Version