Home care landing page: why families stop

The person who finds this page is usually an adult child, often at night, after a hospital stay or a fall. They are not comparing philosophies of care. They want to know whether anyone can come tomorrow morning, whether the agency covers their parent's street, and roughly what the help costs. The page opens with a line about dignity and a photo of a smiling caregiver. The inquiry form then asks for the parent's diagnoses, their medications and a home address before it confirms anything. A family in a hurry closes the tab, and the owner never sees the question they could not ask.

• Does the first screen name the towns you cover, not only 'the greater area'?
• Are the services named in plain words, such as help bathing, meals and overnight care?
• Can a family see the earliest start date before the form asks about diagnoses?
• If the only contact is a phone number, is there a written way to ask that needs no call?

The family often arrives from a search on a phone, sometimes right after a hospital stay. The first screen shows the agency name, a warm line of copy and a button that says Contact us. The services sit in a list further down, under names like companionship or personal care. The service area is often in the footer, and the start date is missing, so a family has to guess whether anyone can come this week.

The owner cannot see this order from inside, because the agency's own words make sense to the people who write them. Open the page on your phone in a private window and act as the family. Time how long it takes to find three things: a town on the list, a service named in plain words, and a date someone can start. Note the first screen where one of them is missing. That screen is where the family leaves.

A form that asks for a diagnosis, a medication list and a home address before it asks for a name is a common stop on these pages. Families often do not have the medication list to hand, and they do not want to type a parent's health history into a web form at night. The form also says nothing about what happens next. A family that cannot tell whether the form leads to a call or a bill will close the tab.

The phone number is the second failure. On a phone, a number should be a tap that starts a call. If it is printed as an image, or sits in a header that scrolls away, a family cannot act on it. A simulated visitor cannot make a phone call, so the run stops at a number it cannot dial. Tap your own number on your phone. If nothing happens, a family who needs help today has no route on the page.

Send one simulated visitor from your homepage with this task: ask how soon someone can start care for a parent at home. The visitor is an adult child searching on a phone for help with a parent who has just come home. Put the parent's need, such as bathing and meals, in the visitor profile. Leave the diagnosis out of the task, because the first question a family asks is about the start date, not the condition.

The run follows the visitor through the services, the town check, the start date and the inquiry. It stops at any step that asks for a real card, a Google sign-in or a text code. An agency that takes a deposit ends at the payment step. If the run stops on the diagnosis questions, move them to the follow-up call, then send the same adult child back through the form on a phone.

Landing page testing

Each new intake form, service area or referral page can put the health questions back on the first screen. Rerun the same visitor after every change. If your intake sits behind a login, run the visitor with a test account that holds no client data, and check every preview of the site before it goes live.