Learn how to create a home care company website that is a beacon for people in need of care.

For many older adults and their loved ones, the idea of engaging the services of an in-home care provider is intimidating, if not overwhelming. With the fierce competition in the industry, it’s crucial to ensure your care agency’s website is as user-friendly, assuring, clear, and concise as possible.

Often, home care agency owners settle on the fastest and least expensive website rather than a quality-driven one. Others attempt to develop their own website to try to save more money. However, both of these strategies can and usually do hurt agencies in the long run. Thoughtful, industry-specific expertise, planning and execution are key to attracting and engaging your target audiences.

The Ineffective Home Care Website

When planning for your home care agency’s website design (or redesign), avoid:

• Scare tactics. People looking for a care solution have enough to worry about already. The last thing they need is to be inundated with guilt and fear to try to get them to sign up for your services. Rather than using alarming statistics and scare tactics, help solve their problems by providing informative, educational, and relevant content.
• Confusing navigation. People who come to your website should be able to easily find the information they need and clearly understand what actions to take to get to their destination. Becoming lost or confused will quickly encourage visitors to leave and find a competitor’s site that is easier to navigate.
• Overloading. There’s a fine line between sharing helpful information and overloading them with more content than they can consume. Some care companies try to cram as much text as possible onto every page of their website, without considering how people actually read information online. The most user-friendly web text avoids large chunks of text, instead using multiple headings, brief paragraphs and bulleted lists.
• Fancy fonts. It may be tempting to utilize creative fonts with flowing, curly letters, but these are often difficult to read for many people. Bear in mind that your website visitors may be older adults, so a clear, simple font in a larger size is ideal.
• Bad grammar. Although it may be acceptable when texting to skip over grammar and punctuation rules, this does not apply to a home care agency website. Misspelled words, poor writing, improper punctuation, etc. show a lack of professionalism and attention to detail. And the message relayed is this: with these kinds of errors on your website, what errors might you make in caring for seniors?
• No optimization. Too often, people think that you just put your business’s information up on a site and that’s that. The truth is, without thoughtful search optimization, your website may be very difficult for others to find online. Proper website optimization starts with including keywords that people use when searching for in-home care. A well-optimized site must also include meta data, internal linking to help users move throughout your site, and well-written CTAs (calls to action) that will drive users to call, fill out a contact form, download a brochure, apply or other desirable actions. In addition, there needs to be ongoing performance measurement and ongoing optimization efforts to ensure that your website is in fact attracting and converting clients.

Your website is often people’s first introduction to your care company. The best way to make sure you’re leaving a positive impression and to provide your visitors with the information they need is with a high quality, well-thought-out website. Engage the services of an experienced home care marketing agency for a professional website that will resonate with your target market and result in more qualified inquiries.