TBG & The Shelter Group
The Shelter Group creates, manages, and owns multi-family and senior living communities throughout the eastern U.S. Shelter has a variety of brands and complex market segments including:
- Development, management, and ownership of independent living, assisted living, and Alzheimer’s care communities under the well-known Brightview brand.
- Property management for multi-family communities under the Park View and Shelter Group’s Family Living brands.
- Acquisition of existing high-end senior living communities under the Brightview brand.
- Acquisition of affordable senior living communities under The Shelter Group brand.
Shelter is a longstanding client of TBG (The Berndt Group); we have developed multiple generations of sites for their various brands, taking advantage of new designs and technologies over time. We have developed digital market strategies, content strategies, and implemented robust content management for a set of sites that represent complex, federated content. In other words, centrally managed content populates many different sites, fitting the COPE method: Create Once, Publish Everywhere.
Corresponding with Shelter’s multiple product offerings in a complex, multivariate market, the individual community sites have the challenge of serving two primary audience types:
- Adult children of seniors—usually women—researching assisted living, independent living, or Alzheimer’s care for their aging parents.
- Residents of assisted living and independent properties, who use the sites as a guide to what’s going on in their communities.
Because of this dual-pronged approach, the sites have to strike a strategic balance between reassuring adult children that the purchase of senior living services is not only economical but also the right thing to do for their parents. And the sites must also fulfill the tactical need of informing seniors, and being otherwise generally usable and pleasurable, as they go about their daily activities in their senior living communities.
Photography is a key design element of meeting both strategic and tactical needs; TBG worked with Shelter to generate and edit photos that position the company as a leader in its field and in the individual communities in the regional and economic markets they serve.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is also a major theme for the family of Shelter sites. Because the purchase of senior living services is a big ticket investment, optimization for search and conversion is crucial. TBG worked on structuring content in a way that major search engines favor, increasing Shelter’s search rankings.
The latest project for Shelter features TBG using responsive design for the Brightview Senior Living websites.
Responsive design is a means of using one set of code to look good and work well—to “respond” well—on every screen size and device—no matter the size or orientation. Elements on the page—text, photography, and other features—shift into optimal alignment for the screen resolution you’re using. So whether you’re viewing the Shelter site on your phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer, you’ll be able to use the site without crazy horizontal scrolling, pinching, or zooming in and out.