Websites that Wow

Standing out in senior living

By Nik Edlinger on Feb 28, 2020 in Marketing

The first tour a prospect takes is not at your community. It’s on your website.

Nearly 90% of senior living prospects will visit a community’s website before they ever reach out. For senior living marketers, that means the community’s online presence needs to be as impressive as its physical campus is.

We’re talking clean, modern designs. Engaging content. Interactive floorplans. These elements are essential for educating and converting visitors to prospects. But building out these features is easier said than done. Not many senior living providers have staff with web expertise or the resources on hand to run such a crucial project.

That’s where Yardi can help.

Our RENTCafé team doesn’t just work on online portals for residents and family members. They also have a team of creative professionals who design and develop senior living websites for providers. That includes community-specific websites as well as brand-level corporate sites, all of which can be managed by the senior living marketer from a single solution.

Senior living website themes galore

To make things simple, we’ve already built out over 70 website designs for senior living providers to choose from. There’s a wide range of styles to fit any market, and the themes are configurable too. Unlimited pages are included with any RENTCafé website, allowing marketers to promote their values, activities or anything else about their communities.

If the senior living community wants something uniquely theirs, our RENTCafé creative team can design a full theme to represent the brand’s vision. The team works together directly with the senior living provider to determine goals, feature requirements, content needs and, of course, the look and feel.

Mobile optimized for modern devices

Websites used to have an entirely separate site dedicated for viewing on mobile. But as Google has updated their search algorithm to serve more and more mobile users, those mobile-only websites have fallen out of favor. To show up in mobile searches, sites today need to be responsive by design, meaning the content and images dynamically adjust to fit different sizes.

Not sure if yours meets the criteria? Google now provides a way to test websites for mobility. Senior living marketers can check to see whether their community website is good to go on the go by entering their URL in the mobile-friendly checking tool.

With RENTCafé, every website is responsive from the start. No matter the device used, visitors get a smooth viewing experience without sacrificing usability or functionality.

Encouraging tours of all types

Lots of senior living websites feature galleries with pictures of their rooms. But RENTCafé websites allow providers to take this one step further with virtual 360-degree tours of the property itself. Similar to Google’s Street View, the feature loads an interactive panorama of rooms and spaces within the community that visitors can click and “move” through. The tour can also call attention to specific items and amenities that might catch their interest.

This doesn’t replace the real tour, of course. But it does help prospects self-qualify by determining if the community would be a good fit before they commit to an in-person visit.

One of the best parts of the RENTCafé websites is that they run on the Yardi Senior Living Suite, built right into the same database as the property management and marketing solutions. This allows for powerful options that third-party website agencies can’t provide, like real-time unit availability and pricing as well as online tour scheduling.

The tour scheduler is more than just a simple contact-us form. It gives website visitors a calendar to select a day and time that works for them. They can set their own appointment to view the community without the hassle of back-and-forth emails, and this information is captured in the senior living CRM for easy tracking.

Bringing visitors to the virtual front door

The best-looking website wouldn’t help at all if prospects can’t find it in the first place. So along with website development, RENTCafé offers search engine optimization to ensure that new websites hit the ground running. Pay-per-click campaigns and social media services are also available to get the word out.

If your senior living sites could do with a refresh, get in touch with our RENTCafé team. We can walk you through the site manager system, customization options and features to help you create and manage the website your communities deserve.