Ever pack for a weekend excursion only to realize you’ve loaded up practically everything but the kitchen sink? For many of us, it’s in our nature to consider all the what-ifs and over pack. Just one may over prepare for a short trip, you may be stuffing too much information into your home care website.

While it’s tempting to make sure you’re explaining every facet of your business and services, this overload of information often backfires. In our work, we see too many home care websites that are “kitchen sinking it,” or trying to say and do too much, and it ends up overwhelming the site visitor who is already overwhelmed as it is. Instead, it’s important to consider the psychological journey of senior care buyers and tailor your website to create a reassuring, calming, and positive experience for the user while also encouraging him or her to call your agency to learn more.

Make Your Home Care Website Buyer-Friendly

The web has become the place that members of all generations turn to get information. The results of the 2015 Private Duty Benchmarking Study show that 40.5% of leading home care providers rated web sources as their top consumer marketing source. And those numbers continue to grow each year. As more seniors and baby boomers turn to the web to research their home care options, creating a website that is comforting, accessible and user-friendly, as opposed to throwing every bit of information you have at them, is key to gaining their business.

Make your agency’s home care website buyer-friendly with these simple steps:

1. Brand it: Your brand is your business’s personality, its story, the reason you do what you do. It’s also your opportunity to connect emotionally with potential clients. Your website is where most people first come into contact with your brand, so it is important to make a great first impression. Your logo should be pleasing and prominent, and your messaging needs to explain your “why” and be consistent with your printed marketing materials, giving you a clean, consistent, professional look. The brand and design experts at corecubed can help agencies created a well branded agency identity that readers will respect and remember.
2. Make it readable: Readability comes in a variety of forms. First off, make sure your website is using at least a 12-point font to ensure that older adults don’t have to strain to read your content. Also, avoid fonts that look fancy, but are actually challenging to read. Readability also takes into account how people naturally read online, which is to say they don’t read, they scan, making large bodies of text difficult to read. As often as possible, break down information into smaller sections, using headers and bulleted or numbered lists to make text easier to skim.
3. Make it easily navigable: Your home care website’s navigation menus are the user’s map to getting around your site, so make the paths as clear as possible. First, put your navigation menu in a standard place, either horizontally across the top or vertically down the left side. Then make sure the menu is labeled clearly – About Us, Home Care Services, Contact Us, etc.
4. Skip the jargon: The home care industry is complex enough. Don’t confuse your readers with industry jargon or acronyms, and resist the urge to over explain every single service you provide. Strive to keep content simple, relevant, clear, and to the point, and encourage readers to call you if they have questions or would like more information.
5. Answer frequently asked questions: If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’ve likely racked up a list of questions that seniors and their loved ones ask on a regular basis. Compile these questions into an FAQ page, use them to create educational blog posts, etc.
6. Show how your agency creates positive solutions: Above all else, people searching for home care options are searching for solutions. Your website should showcase how your agency’s services provide these much needed solutions. A well laid out services page and testimonials from satisfied clients illustrate why your agency is the right choice for older adults in your area.
7. Make good use of your blog: Of course a large part of your marketing should be educating potential clients and referral sources and setting your agency up as an industry leader. Your blog is a great place to post educational resources, caregiving tips, new information about your company, new services, etc. It’s also the best spot to further explain your services and go into detail on how your agency can assist with special care needs, like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s. And, a regularly updated blog is great for SEO! The corecubed team has a deep understanding of the importance of blogging and web content, and we can help your agency create and share valuable marketing content to attract and convert prospects into customers.

Is your home care website attracting visitors only to overwhelm them with a kitchen sink approach? Let the experts at corecubed help you strategize your layout and content and help you not only attract users, but convert them into clients as well. Contact us to learn more about our services and how we can help streamline your site for optimum results.