Does an adult family home really need a website?
Honestly, not every home does. If you are full, always have been, and fill from word of mouth within days, you do not need one. This page is about the other situation, and about what a website is actually for, which is not what most people assume.
The short version
- A website is not for finding new families. That is what Google Maps, listings and referrals do.
- It is for the moment after somebody says your name. A discharge planner recommends you, and that night the family Googles the name. What comes up decides whether they call.
- Word of mouth still needs somewhere to land. A recommendation with nothing behind it leaks.
- You should own it. Domain registered in your name, not your marketer’s.
- You do not need one if you are reliably full and never have a vacancy longer than a week or two.
- One filled bed pays for it many times over. A Washington private pay room is $5,000 to $8,000 a month.
The mistake almost everyone makes
Owners assume a website is a way to be discovered by strangers. Then they get one, nothing happens for a month, and they conclude it did not work.
That is the wrong expectation. Discovery is what the map and the listings do. A website does something different and, for this business, more important: it is what a family checks in the gap between hearing your name and picking up the phone.
That gap is where homes lose residents without ever knowing it happened. A hospital social worker says “there is a home in Lynnwood you should look at.” The daughter searches the name that evening. If nothing comes up, she does not call and ask why. She just moves to the next name on the list, and you never learn you were in the running.
What happened to us. My parents ran their home for months with nothing online. I built the site, put it on Google, and in the first week a daughter searching after her father’s hospital discharge found it, toured, and moved him in. He is still there. That is one bed at about $5,000 a month, from one website, in week one. I am not promising you the same result, and nobody honest would. But that is why I do this.
When you genuinely do not need one
Skip it for now if
- You are consistently full and vacancies fill in under two weeks from your existing referral relationships.
- You are all-Medicaid with strong case manager relationships and placements arrive reliably through them.
- You are not licensed yet. Spend the money on your training and inspection first. Come back the month before you open.
- You cannot answer the phone. Sending more families to a number nobody picks up wastes the money.
You probably do need one if
- You have had a bed empty more than a month. That is $5,000 to $8,000 gone, and it recurs.
- You are newly licensed. You have no reputation yet and nothing for a family to check.
- You are paying referral commissions. One commission is often more than a website costs outright.
- Somebody Googles your home and finds a directory listing rather than you.
What a good one actually needs
Not much, and far less than most agencies will sell you. Families in this situation are stressed, on a phone, and deciding fast.
- Real photos of the actual home. The single most important element. Bright rooms, the yard, the dining table. Phone photos beat stock photography every time, because families are trying to picture their mother in that room.
- What you actually provide, in plain words: private or shared rooms, memory care, mental health, developmental disabilities, hospice support, ambulatory or not, languages spoken.
- Whether you have an opening, and whether you take private pay, Medicaid, or both. This filters out calls you cannot serve.
- A phone number that is tappable and a short contact form.
- Speed. It has to load instantly on a phone on mobile data at 9pm.
- Your city named clearly, because that is what people search.
Things you do not need: a blog, a resident portal, animations, a chatbot, or eleven pages. A home is not a hospital chain.
Not sure whether you need one?
Send me your home’s details and I will show you exactly what a family searching your city sees right now. If the honest answer is that you do not need a website, I will tell you that, because a home that is already full is not a client I can help.
Owning it, and the trap to avoid
The most common way owners get hurt is not price, it is ownership.
- Register the domain in your name. Your name on the account, your card or a card you control. If your marketer owns the domain, they own your address, and leaving means starting over.
- Keep Owner access to your Google Business Profile. Add people as Managers, never share the password.
- Get the files if you ever part ways. A site you cannot take with you is rented.
- Watch for monthly fees that never end. A small home rarely needs a subscription. After a one-time build the only genuinely recurring cost is the domain, roughly $40 to $60 a year.
- Be sceptical of a free website. If it is free, you are usually paying with your domain, your data, or a lock-in.
What it should cost
For a single adult family home, a complete one-time build, sensibly priced, sits in the high hundreds to low thousands, and after that only the domain renews. Compare that to a single placement commission, reported at 85% to 100% of a resident’s first month of rent and care. On a $6,000 room that one referral costs more than the website, and the website keeps working afterwards.
You can see the homes we have built, live and clickable, on our work page.
Common questions
Does an adult family home need a website?
Not always. If you are reliably full and fill vacancies within a week or two through existing relationships, you can skip it. If you have had a bed empty more than a month, are newly licensed, or are paying referral commissions, a website is usually the cheapest fix available.
What should an adult family home website include?
Real photos of the actual home, the care you provide in plain language, whether you have an opening, whether you take private pay or Medicaid, a tappable phone number, a short contact form, and your city named clearly. It must load fast on a phone.
How much should a website for an adult family home cost?
A complete one-time build for a single home typically runs from the high hundreds into the low thousands, after which the only ongoing cost should be the domain at roughly $40 to $60 a year. Be cautious of open-ended monthly fees for a small home.
Who should own my domain name?
You, registered in your name. If a marketer owns your domain they control your address, and moving away from them means losing it. This is the most common and most damaging trap in small-business web work.
Will a website fill my beds?
Nobody honest can promise a number of calls or move-ins. What a website reliably does is make sure you are not eliminated in the moment after somebody recommends you, which is where homes silently lose residents.
Is a Google listing enough on its own?
It gets you found on the map, which is essential. But a listing lives on Google’s property and shows what Google chooses to show. The website is where a family actually decides. See our Google Business Profile guide for the other half.
Serving adult family homes across Washington
We work with licensed adult family homes throughout Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston, Spokane, Whatcom, Skagit, Kitsap and Clark counties, including Everett, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Marysville, Mill Creek, Seattle, Bellevue, Kent, Renton, Federal Way, Auburn, SeaTac, Shoreline, Kirkland, Tacoma, Lakewood, Puyallup, Olympia, Lacey, Spokane, Spokane Valley, Bellingham, Blaine, Vancouver and Mount Vernon.