What makes a good care home website (and what quietly loses you enquiries)

Most families choosing a care home start the same way: a worried late-night search and a click through three or four websites. Within seconds, half of those homes are mentally crossed off — not because the care is worse, but because the website made a poor first impression. Here's what separates a care home website that fills rooms from one that quietly leaks enquiries.

It passes the five-second test

When a relative lands on your homepage, they're asking one unconscious question: can I trust these people with someone I love? A good site answers it immediately — a warm photograph of the real home, a clear name and location, and a calm headline that speaks to the person, not the building. A dated template, stock photos of models, or a wall of text fails this test before they've read a word.

It leads with trust, not features

Families aren't comparing bed counts; they're looking for reassurance. The signals that matter most:

• Inspection ratings (CIW in Wales, CQC in England) shown plainly, not buried.
• Real reviews from families — ideally via an independent site like carehome.co.uk.
• Honest funding guidance, because cost is the question everyone's anxious about and few homes address well.
• Faces and names — the manager, the team, the people who'll actually be there.

The enquiry is never more than a click away

The single most common mistake is making people hunt to get in touch. "Arrange a visit" and a phone number should be visible on every page, and the contact form should be short and unintimidating. Every extra click or field is a chance for a nervous relative to give up.

It works for the people actually using it

Your audience skews older, and many will be on a phone. That makes two things non-negotiable: accessibility (large legible text, strong contrast, screen-reader friendly — to WCAG 2.2 AA) and speed (a site that loads in about a second, not five). These aren't technical niceties; they're the difference between someone reading on or bouncing. In Wales, a proper bilingual site (English and Cymraeg, done properly rather than a translate widget) signals respect and reaches more families.

What quietly loses enquiries

If you only audit your own site for a few things, make it these:

• It's slow, or breaks on a phone.
• The "contact" page is the default template page, or the form is broken.
• No inspection rating or reviews anywhere.
• Stock photography instead of the real home.
• No funding information.
• It hasn't been updated in two years — stale news pages quietly signal a home that's stopped paying attention.

None of this is about flashy design. It's about removing every small reason for an anxious family to look elsewhere. Get the trust signals, the enquiry path, the speed and the accessibility right, and the website starts doing what it should: turning a quiet search into a booked visit.

This is exactly what we build for care homes — see our approach to care websites, or look at Tregwilym Lodge, a bilingual dementia care home site rated Good–Excellent by CIW.