Five Rules for Creating a Successful Home Page for a Rehab/Transitional Care Facility
If you’re a regular reader of the Bright Ideas Blog, you’ll notice we spend a lot of time talking about websites. We’ve discussed how to write effective copy for the Web, how to drive more traffic to your site, and how to optimize your site for mobile devices. There’s a reason we spend so much time writing about this important topic. Over 80 percent of American consumers use the Internet to research and purchase products and services, and that number continues to climb. A website client of ours recently told us that their main purpose for creating a web presence was to “establish legitimacy.” If you don’t have an Internet presence, people may think you don’t exist! And if people can’t find you – whether through their smartphone, tablet, or desktop – your ability to reach your audience is greatly diminished.

So, let’s talk about the most important page of your site – your home page. As we’ve mentioned before, studies show the first 10 seconds of a website visit are critical to determining whether a user will stay or leave. If you don’t grab their attention in that span of time, you may have lost them forever. Your home page is truly where the heart and soul of your company should be on display.

So, here are five simple rules for creating a powerful home page.

Pick just one thing to focus on
The temptation to tell your entire story on your home page is very strong. You’ve got so many great things to talk about – your experienced and caring therapists, your fine dining, the comfortable rooms –you want to make sure that every aspect is covered. The problem with that is that if you include too much information, it all gets lost and your visitor will be overwhelmed and move on. One of our clients, Alden, has over 20 locations that specialize primarily in rehabilitation and post-acute care. They also have several independent and assisted living communities and provide memory care services for people living with dementia. They have a good story and a lot to tell. To tell their story in a simple and visually appealing way, we created a large rotating banner that focused on a single aspect of their service. The first image focuses on their core service – post-acute care and rehab.

Talk about how your service benefits your customer
We presented Alden’s rehab services by focusing on its primary benefit – a quick recovery. “Alden is the shortest route to recovery” is a powerful benefit to those who have just had an illness, injury or surgery. Combining that statement with a compelling graphic helps explain this benefit and grabs a visitor’s attention. Subsequent images in the rotating banner provide powerful benefit statements that create interest and capture visitors’ attention. The only other thing on their home page are four smaller visual images that feature all of their core services, allowing visitors to quickly find the service they’re interested in.

Make the page visually interesting
The Internet is a visual medium, so it’s important to create a visual impact – preferably with a strong, single image. With Alden, we used the image of a person achieving success by reaching a goal, supporting the idea that with Alden, you can reach your recovery goal quickly.

Keep it simple
In addition to a simple, compelling design and message (with as little copy as possible), avoid using Flash animation or other overly complicated technologies. The reason here is a simple one: Flash is not supported on mobile devices and more than 40 percent of Internet time is spent on mobile devices and that number continues to climb.  Any home page needs to be designed in such a way that it can be viewed easily on all platforms.

Resist the temptation to talk about yourself
People aren’t interested in how many beds you have or how long you’ve been serving the people of Anytown. They don’t care how long you’ve been in business or how many locations you have. As we mention in Rule #2, because of the small window of time you have to capture someone’s attention, you have to be laser-focused in what you’re going to talk about. So talk about what’s really of interest to your audience – them. Once you’ve grabbed their attention, you can talk about yourself all you want, in the other pages of your site. If they’ve made it past your home page, chances are good they may actually be interested in learning more about you.