Think about how much effort and attention you put into making your lobby look good. Your furnishings, wall art, colors, and plants have all been chosen with particular care and you strive to keep everything clean, tidy, and welcoming. After all, your lobby is the first thing people see when they walk through the doors of your senior living community, and you want to make a positive first impression.
But have you considered how many potential prospects are forming their first impression of your community long before they even plan their visit? I’m talking about your website; it’s your digital lobby!
So which “lobby” do you think gets the most traffic?
Your answer should be your digital lobby. A large chunk of senior living research is being conducted on the internet. For many people, it’s the very first place they go to for information. So, whereas you might have 10 visiting prospects walk into your lobby in a week, you may have hundreds walking into your digital lobby daily.
Yes, the appearance of your actual lobby is very important. However, how many visitors have you known to walk out immediately after viewing the lobby, no matter what it looks like? This occurrence is surely few and far between.
Yet, this happens all the time with websites. The average time a person spends on a website is two minutes. Two measly minutes! Do you think in two minutes your prospects can find everything they were looking for and become convinced that your senior living community is worth an in-person visit?
I don’t think so. If someone spends that short of a time on a website, they probably spent two minutes clicking around before deciding to visit another one. That means you’ve got about two minutes to convince them to stay.
How do you keep a digital walk-in from being a digital walk-out?
The solution for this problem is found by knowing the most common reasons people leave a website. Here are four:
1. There’s too much going on.
Crowded landing pages are an immediate turn-off for a person who has just entered your website. Having a tidy layout for your web design not only makes it look better, but also makes it much easier to use.
2. The text is difficult to read.
This could be due to text size, an overwhelming amount of text, not enough paragraph breaks, poor grammar and punctuation, or the language being too technical or formal.
3. Poor navigation.
You website needs to have a navigation bar at the top, preferably with subcategories, that show clearly what can be found on each page. For example, under your “About Us” page, there might be links to “Our Story,” “Our Commitment,” etc. You also want to have inter-page links within your actual text. Do you mention testimonials in your “About Us” page? Then provide a link!
4. It’s not easy to find information.
Nothing is quite as frustrating for a web user than to find the words “coming soon” or “call for more info” on a page where they were expecting to find answers. Don’t give your website’s visitors a reason to abandon your site to go to another. Know what they need to know, and give it to them. A “frequently asked questions” page can be a real lifesaver in this situation.
And Don’t Forget About Mobile Users!
Did you know that your website doesn’t look the same on a phone or tablet as it does on a PC or laptop computer? When a web user is using a mobile device, you can add two more reasons to the list of why they’re leaving your site:
- He or she keeps having to scroll/pan/resize.
This problem most often occurs when your website is too wide. When a mobile visitor has to tap and pinch on the page to see the text, chances are they aren’t going to stick around.
- Some content wasn’t visible.
Sometimes, videos and pictures that are visible on your regular website may not be appearing on other devices…at all. You want to make sure these important parts to your website are available to everyone by optimizing them for mobile devices.
Responsive Web Design - A Digital Lobby for ALL Devices
What is responsive web design?
It’s a way to build your website so that it responds to its environment. A responsive web design knows if a person is using a laptop, phone, or iPad, and adjusts the size of the text, width of the page, and layout accordingly.
In other words, it solves about half of the problems that your website visitors deal with that cause them to leave your website before they have the chance to really get to know your senior living community!
Each visitor to your website is a potential lead. Don’t let them walk away. What does your digital lobby look like? Is it as clean and orderly as your real lobby? Are you using responsive web design so that it looks great for all devices? Let Marketing Essentials help. Click the banner below for a free website analysis to see how you stack up against your competition.
