Whether you’re in need of your first-ever home care website or your existing one needs to be retired, these strategies will help you achieve your ultimate goal: attract new clients and caregivers and encourage them to start a conversation with your home care company.
Visually Appeal to Your Ideal Customers
Visual appeal is crucial. Research shows that you have just 50 milliseconds (.05 seconds) to make a good first impression on website visitors before they decide to stay on your site or go. Key feedback from study participants showed that they want simple, familiar design that meets their expectations.
You want a home care website that captures attention and sustains it without overwhelming the visitor. Your site should feature images that let visitors know your care company will positively impact their lives. If you’re unsure how to accomplish this, a good starting point is to build a customer persona. The use of personas was shown to make websites 2 – 5 times more effective and easier to use by the target audience.
However, visual appeal alone isn’t enough to keep people on your site long enough to take action. It’s equally important to carefully think through your content. Does it speak to visitors from their perspective, or yours? Having a company motto is great; but how does it solve their problems? Ask someone outside of your company to read through your content with a fresh pair of eyes. See if what you’re saying makes sense and resonates with them.
And that’s not all. Consider your site’s navigation, layout, and brand as well.
Utilize Standard Navigation Convention
Navigation should be intuitive so website visitors can easily find the information they’re looking for. Use your home page as a funnel that provides easy access to the most important interior pages of your site. Not sure what the most important pages are on a home care website? Reach out to us for guidance.
Additionally, your home page should include these top ten navigation guidelines:
- Use only common, recognizable symbols (such as a magnifying glass as a search icon)
- Denote linked text with a change in color or appearance
- Place your logo at the top left side of your page
- Link your logo back to your home page throughout the site
- Set up your navigation either across the top of the page horizontally or down the left side of the page vertically
- Make your main navigation bar sticky (i.e., remains visible as the user scrolls through the site)
- Include a limited number of menu items
- Keep your navigation options to one or two words
- Make your dropdown menus easy to scan and manipulate
Communicate for Conversion
Once you’ve encouraged visitors to stay on your site through visual and navigational appeal, you need to make sure you’re communicating your message in a way that encourages them to take the next step:
- Rather than writing a novel with long, flowing paragraphs, text should be broken up into bite-size pieces.
- Bulleted lists and bold headings make it easier for readers to skim and scan.
- Eye-catching calls-to-action clearly guide visitors to reach out to you to learn more.
Your goal is to understand and address your visitors’ pain points, and to provide them with a solution. Minimize distractions on your website to allow that solution to be as clear and concise as possible.
Ensure Your Brand Carries Through Your Website
As with all of your home care marketing materials, your website should reflect your brand. It should clearly let visitors know why they should choose your company over your competitors. What makes you different? How do your beliefs about aging align with your potential customers’ beliefs?
Your home care website is your single greatest marketing tool. It can help you attract new clients and caregivers. It’s also where they will go to size up your company. A subpar site leads your target audience to believe your services may be lacking as well, sending them to the next agency on their list to find the help they need.
Creating and maintaining a high-quality home care website, and ensuring it can be found by those seeking your services, isn’t easy. The professional care marketing team at corecubed has decades of experience and specific expertise in marketing for home care agencies. We’d be happy to provide you with an assessment of your existing site with recommendations to give it a boost, or create a new site for you to help your agency grow.
Reach out to us at 800.370.6580 and achieve the results other home care companies are discovering by partnering with corecubed!