When choosing care for your loved ones, you naturally prefer a trusted friend over a stranger. You want to ensure they will be happy, safe, engaged, and treated with care and respect.
This same principle applies to families selecting care homes. They seek familiarity and trust. The care industry is both competitive and sensitive, with decisions driven by love and concern for family members, often accompanied by a range of emotions.
Having a strong, consistent brand across all your care homes (if you manage several), and all your customer touchpoints acts like a comforting thread, giving families peace of mind and making you stand out from the rest.
Your brand is the friendly face and warm handshake that welcomes new residents and their families. It's not just about a logo or a tagline; it's about creating a sense of reliability and compassion that people can trust, whether it’s your website, your brochure, your staff or your building: a great brand identity flows through your organisation.
Understanding the impact of branding
Let’s talk about the power of branding. Think about some of the brands you know and love - your local cafe? Apple? Microsoft? (OK. Probably not Microsoft). When you think about their products or services, you probably don’t think about the features, but how they make you feel. That’s the magic of branding.
Now, let’s look at branding and UX in the context of care homes. A strong brand can shape perceptions and build trust among potential residents and their families. Your brand is more than your logo or colour scheme. Your brand is the tone of your communications, the warmth of your welcome, and the stories you share.
When families are looking for a care home, they want to feel reassured and confident in their choice. Your branding is crucial here. Your website tells them who you are, what you stand for, and what they can expect. It can turn a nervous visitor into a happy resident by creating a sense of trust and reliability.
We've worked with Audley Villages for a long time. As a luxury retirement brand, everything they stand for - quality, care, commitment - is weaved through their digital presence. Through their "Audley Stories" campaign, they share real stories from residents, showcasing the vibrant community and high-quality care they provide. These stories are powerful - they create an emotional connection and give an authentic glimpse into life at Audley Villages.
“Our conversion rate has improved year on year and engagement has gone up too, which is a great indicator that the changes we’ve made to the website are working well and have made a good impact,” - Samantha, Audley Villages.
When you understand and harness the impact of branding, you can create a strong, positive image that resonates with potential residents and their families.
Building frictionless experiences
Overhauling the design and branding of your website is more than just giving it fresh look. This is your opportunity to create a user-friendly, secure and accessible website for residents, their families and your staff.
Here’s how we work with you to get from basic to brilliant:
Strategy and Consultation
We start with strategy sessions that involve key stakeholders from marketing, IT, design and security to ensure every aspect of your project is considered. It’s this collaborative approach that ensures all perspectives are taken into account, laying the best foundation for success.
Launch Accelerator
Our unique digital roadmapping Launch Accelerator offering wraps up research and testing early concepts into a distinct mini-project, effectively de-risking complex projects. We conduct in-depth user research to gather valuable insights into your various users’ needs (internal and external!), the technology requirements, and more. This discovery phase helps us to identify priorities, uncover potential risks or challenges, and aligns everyone’s approach before moving to the build phase.
The Build
Our goal is to build a digital experience that not only looks great but also functions seamlessly, reflecting the quality and care your home provides.
We prioritise intuitive, easy navigation, and the backend is designed to be straightforward and user-friendly, so that it’s simple for your team to update and manage content.
We ensure that all SEO, security, and accessibility standards are met. This means your website will be search-engine friendly, secure, and inclusive for all users. By meeting these standards, we create a digital presence that embodies your care home's values and provides a safe, welcoming environment online.
Measuring Success
Here’s where all that hard work pays off. Once your website is live, we focus on using data to measure success. By continuously monitoring the performance of your site and gathering user behaviour feedback, we make sure it’s doing all it possibly can to meet your objectives. (Quality, learning and collaboration is important to us). This focus on outcomes allows us to make informed decisions and adjustments, so your website continues to serve users effectively.
Connect with your audiences
To build a care home website that ticks all these UX and branding boxes it needs to be welcoming, informative, easy to navigate.you need to provide the right content for all audiences, from potential residents and their families - to staff and healthcare professionals.
Don’t make me think, said Steve Krug. And he’s right. Website users don’t want to have to trip over your navigation, strain to read your copy on mobiles, or decipher your complicated pricing structure.
Here are some of the important factors that need to be considered:
Visual appeal and usability
A beautiful website with clear content and intuitive navigation makes a world of difference. Your site needs to look great on any device, with mobile optimisation a key priority. Make every visit to your website a pleasant, productive experience.
UX and accessibility
Optimise user experience with relevant information that serves to engage, persuade and convert visitors at their fingertips. Easy-to-read text, straightforward menus, and compatibility with assistive technologies takes away any potential frustration, providing your audiences with a positive experience in what can be an emotionally fraught time.
Showcase social proof
Building trust is so important. Highlight testimonials from residents and their families, include photos that capture the life and community of your care home, and be sure to display your CQC credentials prominently! Transparent pricing, heartwarming stories from staff that clearly demonstrate the connection between carers and residents, and a clear complaints procedure all help to reinforce your commitment to excellence.
Support marketing activities
An A+ website is nothing without marketing. To boost traffic and conversions, you need to base SEO best practice into the site, right from the start. And while you’re at it, why not integrate your site with your CRM, add powerful analytics for making data-driven decisions, and automatically generate social media-friendly image sizes. Add tags and filters for different audiences, so everyone can find what they’re looking for and share it with others.
Security and data protection
Care and nursing homes should always take data protection very seriously, but when you’re entrusting the build of your website to a third-party it’s normal to feel nervous. Don’t be afraid to demand regular proof that security and data protection standards are being upheld across your websites or applications, and that someone is keeping track of third-party integrations, patching, and the collection of any sensitive personal information.
Partner with us
Talk to the team about what challenges you’re facing with your care home branding or website, and we’ll start an authentic, honest conversation about how best you can achieve your objectives.