A care home website has one job: to get a family from a search to a visit. It has to say what the home offers, what it costs, how admission works and how to book a look round, and in England it must also show the home's current CQC rating, which Regulation 20A requires on every provider website. On the 20 Italian care home homepages we checked on 13 November 2026, none showed a price and only 2 explained how to book a visit.
It looks like an easy site to build: garden photos, a phone number, a paragraph about care.
Then you look at what families search for. In the UK "cqc rating" gets 2,900 searches a month and "care home fees" 880 (Google Ads, 12-month average, read on 13 November 2026). These are sons and daughters checking two things: is the home any good, and what will it cost.
The mistakes we see most often on care home websites:
- hidden fees: no figure, not even a range, so the family goes to a directory to find one;
- key documents buried in a PDF, or missing, when they are the ones families and regulators look for;
- no route to a visit: just a phone number, with no visiting times, no form and no word on vacancies.
An honest note first: we have never rebuilt a care home website. We have rebuilt websites that got traffic and no results. For Scovaventi the new Shopify shop, with Google Analytics 4 live from day one, made €77,000 in sales in its first year; before that, nobody knew where orders were being lost.
At Valore Solare the problem was the opposite: 15,267 "conversions" in one month against 5,467 clicks. They were technical events, not quote requests.
What does that have to do with a care home?
A care home also needs to know how many families asked for a visit through the site, and very few measure it. In this guide:
- what 20 care home websites actually contain, from our Italian survey;
- the rules that put things on your website, in the UK and in Italy;
- the fees page and the route to a visit;
- forms, costs and AI answers.
Let's start with the data.
What care home websites contain (none of 20 shows a price)
On 20 care home homepages read on 13 November 2026 in Genoa, Bologna and Palermo, all 20 worked on a phone, but none showed a fee and only 2 explained how to book a visit. The method: we ran the searches "rsa genova", "rsa bologna" and "rsa palermo" with DataForSEO, localised to each city on mobile, and took the homes' own websites from the map pack, the "related websites" block, the results and the AI Overview sources.
Of the 23 domains found, 3 could not be read: that left 20 homepages, 10 in Genoa, 8 in Bologna and 2 in Palermo.
| What we looked for on the homepage | Sites (out of 20) |
|---|---|
| Works on a phone | 20 |
| Google Analytics or Tag Manager | 15 |
| Tap-to-call phone number | 14 |
| Cookie banner from a consent platform | 14 |
| WhatsApp contact | 12 |
| Public funding or accreditation mentioned | 11 |
| Contact form | 9 |
| Statement of services (carta dei servizi) mentioned or linked | 7 |
| Link to a "transparency" page | 5 |
| The word for "fees" (retta) | 4 |
| Embedded video | 4 |
| Virtual tour | 3 |
| Visiting times or visit booking | 2 |
| Vacancies or waiting list | 2 |
| Admission form or documents | 2 |
| A price per day or per month | 0 |
| LocalBusiness structured data | 0 |
The zero on price is the number that matters.
Meanwhile the directory Peranziani.it ranked second in both Bologna and Palermo, and in Palermo its title promised "prices and availability". The family that wants a number finds it there, not on the home's own site.
One SEO finding too: in Genoa none of the 9 organic results was a care home's own website, only directories and listings. How to win those positions back is covered in our care home SEO guide; here we focus on what families find once they land on your site.
The pages a care home website must have (CQC rating and key documents)
In England a care home website must show the latest CQC rating, legibly and conspicuously, with the date it was given, plus the CQC website address and where the full assessment can be found: that is the wording of Regulation 20A as CQC publishes it. CQC provides digital graphics for providers' websites, and failing to display ratings is an offence.
That is the UK's clearest website rule.
Italy has two of its own, and they make a useful comparison. Article 13 of law 328/2000 requires every care provider to adopt a statement of services and to "publicise it adequately to users", and makes it a condition of accreditation. Only 7 of the 20 homepages mention or link it.
Law 24/2017 goes further for healthcare facilities: article 4(3) requires them to publish on their website data on all compensation paid out in the last five years. Only 4 of the 20 sites, all in Bologna, link a transparency page that mentions the law or compensation.
| What to publish | Rule | Where on the site |
|---|---|---|
| CQC rating with date and link to the CQC report | Regulation 20A (England) | homepage and every location page, using CQC's website graphics |
| An indication of weekly fees for self-funders | CMA consumer law advice (UK) | fees page linked from the main menu |
| Statement of services | Law 328/2000, art. 13 (Italy) | an HTML page plus a downloadable PDF |
| Compensation paid in the last 5 years | Law 24/2017, art. 4(3) (Italian healthcare facilities) | a "transparency" page in the footer |
The other pages, built around what families search for (nursing or residential care, dementia care, fees and funding), are listed with UK volumes in our care home SEO guide.
How to write the fees page (why none of the 20 sites shows a price)
A care home fees page should say what a week costs, what is included and what is charged as an extra, and separate self-funded places from places funded by the council or the NHS. In the UK this is not only good practice: the Competition and Markets Authority, in its consumer law advice for care homes, expects homes to give families upfront information, including through their websites, including an indication of the weekly fees charged to self-funders.
What if fees change every year?
Give the range and the date. A line such as "self-funded residential care from £X to £Y a week, updated April 2027" does more than "contact us for a quote", because it answers the search.
What to put on the page:
- the weekly range by type of care (residential, nursing, respite), with the date;
- what is included and what costs extra: meals, laundry, hairdressing, chiropody;
- how council and NHS funding works, with a link to the local authority page;
- who to call for an exact figure.
None of the 20 Italian sites in our sample gives a figure, and Italy has no national rule like the CMA's. In both countries, the home that publishes a range stands out.
Families look for your fees and find them on a directory?
On the 20 care home websites we checked, none shows a price and only 2 explain how to book a visit. We review your site with you, from the fees page to your CQC rating and documents, and how many enquiries really come in.
Book a strategy callVisits, vacancies and admission (the route to a first meeting)
A family's route through a care home website has three steps: find out if there is a room, see the home, ask for a visit. In our sample only 2 homepages out of 20 mention vacancies or a waiting list, 2 mention visiting or visit booking, and 2 mention admission forms.
The phone number, on the other hand, is there: tap-to-call on 14 sites, WhatsApp on 12.
So isn't the phone enough?
No, because families search at eleven at night, after dinner, when nobody answers. For that hour you need three things:
- a "Current vacancies" page with the date of the last update, for example "at 10 November: 2 residential rooms, waiting list of about 3 months for nursing";
- a "Book a visit" form with preferred day and time slot, or a calendar linked to the manager's diary;
- the admission pack to download, with the list of documents to bring.
Virtual tours appear on 3 sites out of 20 and video on 4: they help if they show rooms and bathrooms as they are today.
Every visit request should be counted, as at Scovaventi: the method is in our guide on what to do when your website is not generating leads.
Privacy and cookies: what to ask families in a form (and what not to)
A care home form should ask for the minimum needed to call the family back: name, phone number, relationship, type of care, preferred time. Diagnoses, medication, care needs and medical reports are health data, a special category under UK GDPR: collect them at the assessment, not in a free-text box.
A field such as "tell us about your relative's condition" feels kind, but it brings health data into an inbox where it should not land. A simple choice of "residential", "nursing", "dementia" or "not sure" is enough.
On cookies the Italian sample did better than expected: 14 sites out of 20 use a recognisable consent platform and none has the Meta pixel on the homepage. In the UK the same rule applies under PECR: no non-essential cookies before consent. We made the same point about forms in our guides to the pharmacy website and the medical lab website.
How much a care home website costs (prices from public sources)
In Italy a brochure website built by a professional costs between €300 and €5,000 according to the 10 Italian pages on Google's first page for "how much does a website cost", read on 28 October 2026 and compared in our website cost guide, which also covers UK prices. Hosting, domain and cookie consent come back every year.
We found no public price list specific to care home websites, so we do not quote one.
For a care home four items move the quote: the number of homes (one page and one Google Business Profile each), visit booking (a form costs less than a calendar linked to a diary), documents that need updating every year, and enquiry tracking, which quotes often leave out.
Ask for the three-year cost, not just the build. The rules for a site Google reads well are in our guide to an SEO-friendly website. If you want us to handle it, the page is web development.
A care home website in ChatGPT and AI Overview answers (2 homes quoted in Genoa)
AI answers quote care home websites when they find facts written in the text: number of rooms, funding, address, services. In the AI Overview for "rsa genova" on 13 November 2026, the two homes described from their own websites were Villa Duchessa di Galliera, with "117 beds (100 funded by the local health authority)", and Centro Danilo Ravera, with "97 beds" (our translation). The first writes on its homepage "117 places, of which 100 publicly funded": the AI picked up the figure.
In Bologna the sources included the websites of Villa Iris and Real Salus, a YouTube video of Villa Ranuzzi and a Facebook post from Villa Serena about available private rooms.
So is writing the number of rooms enough?
It helps, but nothing guarantees a citation. What you can do is make the site easy to read:
- one sentence per fact, for example "CQC rated Good, 60 rooms, nursing and dementia care";
- families' questions as headings, with the answer in the first lines, because AI tools split a search into sub-questions (query fan-out);
- LocalBusiness structured data with name, address, phone and opening hours: none of the 20 sites had it, as we explain in our local business schema guide.
We also asked ChatGPT, in Italian, what a care home website should have. The answer listed the statement of services, fees and visit booking, but did not mention law 328/2000 or law 24/2017. A site that explains the rules clearly has something to say that AI answers are not finding yet. The wider picture is in our guide to local AI visibility.
The website is the first of three jobs for a care home. The other two are campaigns, in Google Ads for care homes, and enquiries from search, in lead generation for care homes.
Care home website: frequently asked questions
Yes, in England. Regulation 20A requires providers to display their latest rating on every website they maintain, legibly and conspicuously, with the date it was given, the CQC website address and where the full assessment can be read. CQC provides digital graphics for this.
It depends on where you operate. In the UK the CMA expects care homes to give upfront information, including through their websites, with an indication of weekly fees for self-funders. In Italy we found no equivalent national rule, and none of the 20 Italian sites we checked shows a price.
No. Health data is special category data under UK GDPR and you do not need it to call a family back. Ask for name, phone number, type of care and a preferred time, and collect clinical information at the assessment.
It depends: in Italy a brochure website built by a professional costs between €300 and €5,000 according to the 10 Italian pages we read on 28 October 2026. For a care home the quote rises with the number of homes, a visit-booking calendar and the documents you need to keep up to date.
It depends on the country. In England, the CQC rating with a link to the report and a clear fees page; in Italy, the statement of services required by law 328/2000 and, for healthcare facilities, the compensation data required by law 24/2017. Put the content on an HTML page and keep the PDF as an attachment.
In short (and what I would do in week one)
A fees page, with a weekly range and a date.
The CQC rating on the homepage and every location page, linked to the report.
Key documents as web pages, not only PDFs.
Vacancies, visit booking and the admission pack one tap from the homepage.
Short forms, no health questions.
One idea the survey points to, and worth testing: treat your statement of purpose or brochure as the source of the website, not as an attachment. It is already written: services, admission, fees, visiting, complaints. Turning it into pages gives families the answers they search for within a week, in a form AI tools can read, while most homes nearby still keep everything in a PDF. If you want to know where to start with yours, get in touch.
