If you are an adult care home provider, I know you are busy.  You have residents to care for, a home to manage, a family who needs you, and at some point, you need some “me” time.  The last thing you want to think about is trying to set up and maintain a website for your home.  However, in today’s day and age, any viable business needs a professional looking website.

Why your Adult Care Home Needs a Website

1.  Your competitors have one.  If you want to remain competitive in your local market, you need to have an online presence.  If potential family members are going to be searching for adult care homes for their loved one, the first place they are going to look is online.  Even if they are being referred to your home by an agency or another healthcare professional, they will still want to see what they can find out about your home online.
2. A website is part of your professional image.  Just as how you answer the phone or what you wear creates a first impression, a website is part of your image online.
3. It’s a great way to show off your home.  Tours take time and energy and sometimes they are just a plain waste of time when it’s just not a good match.  You can showcase your home online with nice photos of the inside, rooms, and outdoor spaces.  You can also talk about your house rules (smoking?  pets?) that allow people to determine if your home would be a possible match or not.  A website is also a good place to tell your story, share about your history and why you do this work.  It’s okay to let your voice shine through on your website and let it reflect the values that are important to you.
4. A website is an effective and cheap marketing tool.  Once a website is up and running, it costs about $50 per year for hosting and renewal.  Compare that to the thousands of dollars in advertising costs for newspapers, magazines, or retirement guides and it’s a no-brainer.  Plus, once you have a website up and running, there are lots of free and inexpensive tools to help spread the word about your website online (more on that another day).
5.  A website can tell the world about your vacancies.  If you have a website that is easy for you to update and make changes when you need (I highly recommend using WordPress), you can update your vacancies whenever they change.  You can also let website visitors (potential future clients) know that you are full (for the moment) and have them send you a note to let them know when a room opens up.