Care Home Website Design
Websites that help families choose your care home or home care service with confidence. We design and build websites for care providers across the UK, from a residential home to a home care agency covering a county, with a page for each type of care, the CQC rating shown as the rules require and a careers section that recruits.
A Care Website Is Read by Worried Families at the Hardest Possible Time
The person reading a care home website is rarely the person who will live there. It is usually a daughter or son, often after a fall or a hospital stay has made it urgent, trying to work out whether this is somewhere their mother would be safe and happy. They want to know what care you provide, whether you have a room, roughly what it costs, what the inspectors said and how to look round.
Care is a different design problem from any other sector. The website has to be warm without being glossy, honest about fees without reading like a contract, and easy for an anxious relative, or an older person arranging their own care, to use on a phone. It also has to recruit the carers and nurses who judge you as an employer by the same pages, and in England the rules decide how your CQC rating appears.
DigitalPod is a UK web design studio that has built for the social care sector: Simply Social Work is a national social work assessments platform with a bespoke admin system and screen reader support. We work with you entirely online, design every site from scratch and hand-code it for speed and accessibility. Care home websites start from £2,400, with a fixed price agreed before any work begins.
What We Build Into a Care Provider Website
CQC Rating Shown Correctly
Your current rating, the date it was given and a link to the CQC assessment, displayed legibly where families will see it and updated when a new report is published.
A Page for Every Type of Care
Residential, nursing, dementia, respite, home care and live-in care each get a page explaining who it suits, what a day looks like and how it is staffed, matched to the way families search.
Virtual Tours and Real Photos
Photography of your real rooms, lounges, gardens and food, a video walk-through for families who live far away, and residents and staff shown only with their consent, never a stock image of strangers.
Arrange a Visit or a Call Back
A short form to arrange a visit or ask for a call back at a time that suits, beside a phone number tappable on every screen, because many enquiries still begin with a nervous call.
Careers That Actually Recruit
Live vacancies, an application form that works on a phone, and pages about training, shifts and what it is like to work for you, so people searching "care home jobs [town]" apply to you directly.
Accessible for Older Visitors
Larger type, strong contrast, generous buttons and full keyboard and screen reader support, because many visitors are in their seventies and eighties and judge the care by a site they struggle to read.
The Pages a Care Provider Website Needs
- Home. The care you provide, where you are, whether you have availability and how to arrange a visit, with your CQC rating and a photograph of the real building.
- Types of care. A page each for residential, nursing, dementia and respite care, explaining who it suits and how it is staffed, so a family searching "dementia care near me" lands on the right answer.
- Home care and live-in care. For domiciliary and live-in providers, pages explaining hourly visits, overnight and live-in care, the areas you cover and how a care plan is built.
- Life in the home. Rooms, gardens, menus, activities and visiting arrangements, with recent news and photographs that show the place is alive. This page answers the unspoken question: would Mum be happy here?
- Fees, funding and admissions. Indicative weekly fees for self-funders and what they include, a plain guide to funding routes from local authority support to NHS continuing healthcare, and how admission works.
- Our team. The registered manager by name, the nurses and senior carers, their qualifications and how long they have been with you, because staff turnover worries families and stability is worth showing.
- Inspection reports and reviews. Your CQC rating with its date and link, or your Care Inspectorate, CIW or RQIA report, with reviews from carehome.co.uk, homecare.co.uk and Google and a word on anything the inspectors raised.
- Careers and contact. Current vacancies with an application form that works on a phone, plus phone, a visit or call-back form, directions, visiting hours and the legal details a care business must publish.
Not sure how many pages you need? Our guide to what pages a business website should have walks through each one, and every project starts with a page plan agreed before any design work begins.
Trust, Accreditations and Compliance for Care Homes
Families are handing over someone they love, and often much of that person's savings, to people they met an hour ago. Nothing on the website matters more than proof that you are what you say, and some of it is required by law:
- CQC rating in England. Regulation 20A requires rated providers to display their current rating, the date it was given and a link to the CQC assessment, legibly and conspicuously, on every website describing their services. We build it in using CQC's own guidance.
- The other UK inspectorates. Scotland's Care Inspectorate publishes grades and reports, Wales has Care Inspectorate Wales and Northern Ireland the RQIA. Their display rules differ from England's, so check the guidance, but families read the reports the same way, so link to yours.
- Fees in the open. The Competition and Markets Authority's consumer law advice for care homes expects key information, including indicative fees for self-funders and what they cover, to be easy to find before anyone enquires. Hidden fees look evasive to families too.
- The people and their training. The registered manager named and pictured, nurses with their NMC registration, carers with the Care Certificate and any dementia or end of life training, plus membership of bodies such as Care England or the Homecare Association where you hold it.
- Reviews and real photographs. Reviews from carehome.co.uk, homecare.co.uk and Google shown with the reviewer's relationship to the resident, and photographs of your own building, staff and residents, taken with consent, because families can spot a stock photo instantly.
- Legal details and privacy. The registered company name, address and number, your complaints procedure, and a privacy notice covering enquiry forms, because the health and family details people share with a care provider are special category data.
How People Find Care Homes Online
Searches for care are local, considered and often made by someone else. "Care homes in [town]", "home care [town]" and "dementia care near me" are typed by adult children, and the results that win are the Google map listings with photos and recent reviews and the websites with a page for that type of care in that place. A page that lumps every service together cannot compete.
Directories carry much of this traffic. Families compare homes on carehome.co.uk and homecare.co.uk, read the inspection reports and often arrive with a shortlist from a hospital discharge team or a social worker. Each route ends with someone checking your website before they call, so it has to agree with your listings and answer what directories cannot: what it feels like, who runs it and whether there is a room.
The other search is for work. "Care home jobs [town]" and "care assistant jobs near me" come from people who will read your careers page, your reviews and your rating before they apply, and who compare you with the agency and the supermarket as well as the home down the road. A site that buries vacancies in a PDF loses staff to employers who make applying easy from a phone.
Every website we build includes the search engine foundations: page titles written around the searches your customers make, fast loading, mobile-first layouts, a sitemap and a structure that matches your Google Business Profile. Our guide to getting found on Google explains what to do after launch.
Already Have a Website? Signs It Needs Replacing
Many care websites were built when the home opened, or came bundled with a directory listing, and have been updated by whoever had time since. If any of these apply, families and job seekers are drawing their own conclusions:
- Your CQC rating is missing, out of date or shown without the date and link the rules in England require.
- One "our services" page covers every type of care, so you never appear for the specific search a family makes.
- There is no fees page, or it says "contact us for details", and families assume the figure will frighten them.
- Vacancies live on a job board or in a PDF, with no way to apply from a phone during a break.
- The photographs show empty rooms from the day you opened, and the news page stops two years ago.
- Small grey text and low contrast make the site hard for older visitors, and screen readers cannot follow it.
Our website redesign service replaces dated or underperforming sites while protecting the search rankings you have built up, and the website redesign guide explains how to decide between a refresh and a rebuild. Launching a new care provider instead? Start with our startup care homes website design page.
Related Work and What Clients Say
Simply Social Work: a national social work assessments platform with a bespoke admin system, a Postgres database and screen reader support, built for the social care sector.
"We required a designer to take our initial vision and develop a website for our company that would be extremely easy to use and would be most appealing to our intended market.Digital pod were an excellent choice and were extremely helpful through the entire process.The end result is something that we are all very proud of and has greatly helped our business expand into a wider market place."
"Patient, knowledgeable, thoroughly professional and highly competitive. Mathew is a pleasure to do business with, his advice and suggestions were timely and well delivered and a real skill in understanding what I was hoping to achieve and delivering it."
"Matthew at DigitalPod produced three websites for my company. Each was well designed and met all the functional requirements for our customers. I was also hugely appreciative of the fast technical support response on the few occasions we needed it. I can strongly recommend DigitalPod."
Care Homes Website Design Questions
Do we have to show our CQC rating on the website?
In England, yes, once CQC has rated you. Regulation 20A requires the current rating, the date it was given and a link to the assessment on CQC's website to be displayed legibly and conspicuously on every website that describes your services, updated within the timescale CQC sets. Providers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should check their own inspectorate's guidance.
Should we publish our fees?
Yes, at least as indicative weekly fees for self-funders with what they include, which the Competition and Markets Authority's consumer law advice for care homes expects providers to make easy to find. Local authority and NHS funding is more complicated, so we write that section as a plain guide and point people to the assessment.
Can the website help us recruit care staff?
It should be one of its main jobs. A careers section with live vacancies, honest pages about shifts, training and progression, and an application form that takes two minutes on a phone brings applicants who searched "care home jobs [town]" rather than paying an agency. With the admin dashboard you post and close vacancies yourself.
Can we show residents in photographs and videos?
Only with consent, and the process is worth getting right. Residents who can consent should be asked and the answer recorded, and where someone lacks capacity their family or attorney should be involved. Genuine photographs of activities and meals with willing residents and staff do more than any stock imagery, and a virtual tour of the building itself needs no consent.
Our current site came with a directory package. Can you replace it and keep our rankings?
Yes. Our website redesign service rebuilds the site on a foundation you own, carries across the content that works and redirects every old address so rankings and links from directories and the CQC site keep pointing at you. You stop paying the monthly package and gain a site you can update yourself.
More answers in our FAQ. See what a care provider website costs on our care homes website design prices page, or, if you are just starting out, read about startup websites for care homes.
Guides to Planning and Costing Your Website
Other Sectors We Work With
We design websites for established businesses and new ventures across the UK. See how we approach other sectors.
Get a Fixed Quote for Your Care Provider Website
Tell us about your care provider, your customers and what the website needs to do, or book a call with our senior software engineer to talk it through. Everything runs online, wherever in the UK you are based, and we reply personally with a clear, fixed price.