People looking for a home-care service, a day-care centre or a nursing home nearly always land on a website first - and decide within seconds whether to stay or click on. At the end of 2023, around 5.7 million (Destatis) people in Germany were classified as in need of care, roughly 730,000 more (Destatis) than two years earlier. 86 percent (Destatis) of them are cared for at home, mostly with the involvement of relatives who inform themselves on a smartphone in the evening. For these relatives to find what they are looking for, a care website needs not only good copy but above all a well-thought-out page structure: the right pages, a clearly labelled main menu and paths that reach the goal in a few steps. This article deals precisely with that information architecture - which pages are truly needed, how a senior-friendly menu is built and why a flat structure with clear labels produces more enquiries. It deliberately covers the skeleton and navigation, not the individual text content or the mobile layout.
Key takeaways
- Visitors often leave a page after 10 to 20 seconds (Nielsen Norman Group), and during the average visit of under a minute they read roughly a quarter (Nielsen Norman Group) of the text. The page skeleton has to show the way inside that window.
- Seven load-bearing pages are enough: home, services, costs and funding, catchment area, about us and team, careers, and contact with directions. Imprint, privacy policy and accessibility statement sit in the footer, reachable from every page.
- Menu labels need everyday words: services instead of portfolio, costs and funding instead of service, catchment area instead of locations. Five to seven items, the current page marked, and the phone number visible beside the menu rather than buried in it.
- In its strict form the three-click rule is not supported by data (Nielsen Norman Group): drop-off and satisfaction do not change once a task needs more than three clicks. What counts is how unambiguous each step is.
- Costs, catchment area and contact deserve pages of their own. The cost page explains how charges are structured instead of hiding the question in a form; the catchment page answers the location question and supplies the local signal for search engines.
- Careers belongs in the main menu as its own item rather than in the footer, so relatives and nursing staff each get a short, separate path. A flat hub-and-spoke model keeps submenus and deep nesting out of the navigation.
Why Page Structure Decides Over Enquiries
Before a relative reads a single sentence, they have already roughly classified the website. Research by the Nielsen Norman Group shows that users often leave a page after just 10 to 20 seconds (Nielsen Norman Group) if they cannot quickly tell whether they are in the right place. The average page visit lasts less than a minute (Nielsen Norman Group), and in that short time only about a quarter (Nielsen Norman Group) of the available text is actually read. Anyone who fails to offer a clear path in this brief window loses the contact - regardless of how good the content on the subpages is.
This is exactly where page structure comes in. It decides whether a visitor recognises in seconds where services, costs or contact can be found. How hard many websites find this is shown by a broad usability study by the Baymard Institute: across the tested pages, more than 900 (Baymard Institute) usability issues were documented, and around 76 percent (Baymard Institute) of the assessed websites delivered only mediocre or weak guidance on their homepage and navigation. For a care website whose visitors search under emotional pressure and often on a small screen, unclear navigation is an immediate disadvantage. How strongly mobile usability shapes this impression in addition is explored in the article on the care website optimised for mobile relatives.
Structure Comes Before Looks
Which Pages a Care Website Truly Needs
A care website does not have to be large, but it has to be complete. At its core it carries a manageable number of pages that are guided by the questions relatives ask. The homepage is the hub: it provides an overview and branches to the individual topics. From there, six content pages lead to the most important concerns - from services through costs to contact. Each of these pages has a clear purpose and its own place in the menu. Which priorities make sense depending on the care model can be mapped on a purpose-built care website.
Services
Basic and treatment care, companionship and household help, clearly structured. The service overview is the most important entry point for most visitors.
Costs and Funding
What the care fund covers and what remains as an own contribution. A dedicated page removes the most common worry and makes the cost structure comprehensible.
Service Area
Which places and districts are served. Relatives want to know at once whether their location is included - and search engines classify the region better this way.
About Us and Team
Who is behind the service, with real faces instead of placeholders. This page carries a large part of building trust.
Careers and Jobs
Open positions and a simple path to applying. A dedicated career page makes staff acquisition a fixed part of the website.
Contact and Directions
Phone, call-back, form and directions in one place. The final step of every visitor journey must be reachable without searching.
Besides these six content pages and the homepage, the legally required pages - imprint, privacy policy and an accessibility statement - are a fixed part of the skeleton. They usually do not sit in the main menu but in the footer, yet must be reachable from every page. Which details a care website needs here and which additional obligations follow from German advertising law for health services are covered in the article on the legally compliant care website with imprint and HWG.
Labelling the Main Menu Clearly and Senior-Friendly
The main menu is the map of the website. What matters is not how many items it contains, but how accurately each item is labelled. The Nielsen Norman Group captures this in the concept of information scent: a menu item must give a sense in advance of what lies behind it. Vague, creative or in-house terms weaken this scent and leave relatives guessing. For a disproportionately older audience this matters especially: someone looking for costs clicks on Costs - not on Service, Offering or Portfolio.
| Common Menu Label | Clear for Relatives | Why the Clear Version Wins |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio | Services | States concretely what the service provides |
| Philosophy | About us | Leads predictably to team and values |
| Service | Costs and Funding | Names the concern instead of a catch-all |
| Locations | Service area | Tells relatives whether their place is covered |
| Get involved | Careers | Short, familiar and free of jargon |
Besides clear words, usability counts. A senior-friendly menu is easy to read, large enough to tap and operable with the keyboard. These requirements coincide with the criteria of an accessible care website: sufficient contrast, understandable language and a visible marker of where you currently are. A menu that works for people with limited vision is easier to operate for everyone else too.
- Five to seven main items so the menu can be grasped at a glance
- Concrete, everyday words instead of creative or borrowed terms
- Order by importance: services and contact well to the front
- A clear marker of the current page so orientation is preserved
- On the smartphone a collapsible menu with large, tappable items
- The phone number visible next to the menu, not hidden inside it
The Three-Click Rule: a Myth With a True Core
Hardly any rule of thumb is as widespread as the three-click rule, according to which every page should be reachable in at most three clicks. In its strict form, however, it is not supported by data (Nielsen Norman Group). A frequently cited analysis found that the dropout rate does not rise and satisfaction does not fall once a task requires more than three clicks (Nielsen Norman Group). Users do not count clicks - at every step they ask themselves whether they are still on the right path. What is decisive is therefore not the number of clicks, but the effort per click and the information scent of the label.
The True Core of the Rule
Costs, Service Area and Contact as Dedicated Pages
Three pages deserve special attention in the architecture because they feed directly into an enquiry. The cost page answers the question many relatives shy away from. It need not be a price list down to the cent, but it should explain the cost structure and get its own menu item - a cost question hidden in the contact form is found by hardly anyone. How the economic benefit of such a page can be estimated is shown in the article on the costs and benefits of a care-service website.
The service-area page serves a double purpose. For relatives it clarifies in seconds whether their own location is covered. For search engines it provides the local signal that decides visibility in the region - a connection the article on the local findability of care services examines more closely. Finally, the contact and directions page bundles all paths to the first conversation: phone, call-back, a lean form and directions. It is the destination the entire structure runs towards.
Every Page With a Clear Purpose
Planning Careers Firmly Into the Architecture
In many care businesses, staff acquisition is now as important as winning clients. Yet the career page often hides at the bottom of the footer. For a website that is also meant to reach care staff, that is a structural mistake. The career page belongs as its own item in the main menu so that interested people find it without a detour. From there a short, clearly labelled path leads to the open positions and to a simple application - ideally without a lengthy cover letter. How such a career page with a recruiting function is built helps decide whether visitors become applicants.
Two Audiences, One Skeleton
Planning a Flat, Sound Page Hierarchy
The individual pages want to be connected into a comprehensible order. A flat hub-and-spoke model has proven itself: the homepage forms the hub, from which the main pages branch off like spokes. Supplementary content, such as individual care models or regions, hangs off the appropriate main page instead of opening another menu level. This keeps the menu short, and every important page is reachable without deep nesting. Which refinements are added depending on the care model is best discussed using concrete project examples.
| Aspect | Flat Structure | Deeply Nested Structure |
|---|---|---|
| Paths to the goal | Few clicks, straight from the menu | Relatives get lost in submenus |
| Main menu | Five to seven clear items | Many levels with dropdown menus |
| Findability | Search engines capture the pages easily | Important pages sit too deep |
| Maintenance | Clear and easy to keep current | Confusing, pages age unnoticed |
| Mobile | The menu stays easy to operate | Nesting becomes tedious on a phone |
Part of the hierarchy is also the question of what belongs in the main menu, what in the footer and what on subpages. Legal pages, privacy and an overview of the care sectors are well placed in the footer, while the load-bearing topics belong in the main menu. This distribution is not a detail but the difference between a website that calmly guides visitors to their goal and one that overwhelms them with options.
A good page structure is something the visitor barely notices - they simply find what they are looking for in seconds. Structure only becomes conspicuous when it is missing.
How the Structure of a Care Website Is Built
A sound structure does not emerge as a side effect but in clear steps - starting with the audience's questions, not the business's preferences. From more than 50 website projects (project experience), we know that the greatest leverage lies early: those who set the sitemap and the menu labels cleanly at the start build the site only once and save themselves later rebuilds. The following six steps have proven their worth.
- Collect questions: capture which questions relatives and applicants actually ask and derive the necessary pages from them.
- Draw the sitemap: homepage as the hub, the six content pages as spokes, legal pages in the footer.
- Label the menu: choose a concrete, everyday word with clear information scent for each item.
- Set the hierarchy: decide what belongs in the main menu, in the footer and on a subpage.
- Implement: build the structure technically, accessible, mobile first and with short load times.
- Test with real people: have relatives solve a typical task and sharpen the labels wherever they hesitate.
Start With the Sitemap
Sources and Studies