A homeowner association website gives your community an online focal point to share and receive information about what’s going on. It helps board members and property managers reach residents and vice versa. This article goes through why your community needs a website, how to make your website, and the five best HOA websites. Find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know about websites for your community and a little bit more.
The difference between an HOA website and a portal
Before we get started, an important distinction to make is between a public website and a members-only password-protected area or portal.
A public website can be found by searching on Google, which means that anyone in the world can find it. So, you need to be careful what you post on there. No sensitive information should be displayed on your public website.
Then, you have a members-only space. This can be a password-protected part of your website or a portal that you can access from your website. Neigbrs by Vinteum offers a portal that can be accessed from your public website. If it’s an actual portal, you can have a more sophisticated system including violations, amenity management, and more.
However, if all you need is a place to share more sensitive information with members, then a password-protected part of your website should work fine. For this article, we’ll call it a portal to highlight that it’s different from your website.
Why HOA Websites Matter
An HOA website brings a multitude of benefits to the board, the property manager, owners, and tenants.
Help Communication
An HOA website gives the board a new channel to communicate with residents. It’s a useful one because most people know how to open a website so they can see what you post.
On your website, you should have an announcement or news section. There, you can post information that the whole community should know about. You should decide if you want to allow comments on announcements. Your website should also have a contact form so that residents can easily message the board and ask questions.
If you wanted, you could create a blog for the board’s news and a separate section for residents’ updates. This highlights your residents’ achievements and community projects.
In your members-only portal, you should also have a forum where residents can talk to each other and ask questions.
When a board communicates with its residents it creates trust and increases resident satisfaction, and a website is an efficient way to talk with owners and tenants alike.
Save time and money
How many different tools does your community have at the moment? Some communities that we speak to have Zoom, amenity booking software, package software, and automated call software as well as paying for an email service. Does this sound familiar to you?
Having a website and portal for your HOA can help you. For instance, Neigbrs by Vinteum offers a website and portal that include virtual meetings, amenities, packages, smart calls, texts, and emails.
If you have all of that in one place, you cut down on different software subscriptions and save time by having it all in one place.
Community Hub
Having a website for your HOA provides a dedicated space for your community to come together and share information.
Your community website is your place to share the HOA’s history, pictures of your community, and what you’re most proud of.
In your members-only portal, residents can share pictures they’ve taken and let their neighbors know what’s going on. You can share lists of recommended professionals to help other people out. As well as that, you can include a community calendar. Your residents need to know the maintenance schedule, activities, classes, and meetings.
FAQs and Documents
An essential part of having a community website and portal is having documents available. Putting documents online will cut down on the time the board spends sending people documents and makes the HOA more transparent.
You should have an FAQ sheet that links to important documents and answers those repetitive questions. Then, organize everything into folders: Meeting Minutes, Projects, Newsletters, Finances, Forms, and so on. The easier it is to find files, the happier residents and the community association manager will be.
Organize your HOA
The main function that your community website can serve is to help the board and manager to organize community life.
You can use a website to post news, documents, and events. If you have a calendar or just a list of events this helps to keep residents informed of what is happening and when.
A portal is especially useful to do that as you can use it to help the board and manager in the HOA. It can manage amenity reservations, guest access, package pick-up, maintenance requests, and even parking.
HOA Websites Risks
There are 2 main risks that you need to consider when you’re creating a website, which you can overcome quite easily.
Sensitive Information
The first one is having sensitive information, such as resident information, the HOA’s financial documents, or legal issues, available to everyone on your HOA’s site. You need to think about what will be available to whom.
For instance, you could have community event details available on your website, then keep meeting minutes on your portal so just members can see them. Then residents’ information could be available just to board members within your password-protected portal.
Open Forum
Another risk is using your community association website like a Facebook group or Reddit thread, where anyone can comment. While it is a good idea to provide an open forum in a private group, especially if it’s moderated, it can get out of control on your website, which is something that anyone can find.
Both of these risks are important to discuss with other board or committee members, however, they aren’t roadblocks. You need to be aware of them, and consider them before building your great website.
How To Create Your Website
When you know that you need a website, how do you go about making one? In this section, we’ll talk about who should set up your website. Then, which platform you should use, and how to choose a domain name? We go through setting up and designing your website without needing to code. Finally, we discuss how you add content to your website.
Who Should Make Your HOA’s Website?
If the board would like to build a website but doesn’t know how to, don’t despair. There are several options:
- Hire a freelancer to design a custom website for you. This is more expensive, but it does mean that you can set out exactly what you want
- Ask someone in the community. If you don’t have a board member who worked in software, then maybe a resident did and can help
- Hire a software company. There are a lot of companies, including Vinteum, that create HOA websites and software, which are easy to use.
- DIY. Use a website template to set up your website quickly and easily, without needing to code.
Choose a Platform
Before you create your community association’s website, you need to choose where you’ll host it. Different platforms allow you to use their templates to set up a website for your HOA. In the table below we’ll go through the different options and their pros and cons.
| Solution Names | Benefits | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | Great templates Beautiful design | More difficult to use |
| Wix | Easy to use Good customer support | Can’t change the design after publishing |
| WordPress | Incredible customization Lots of plug-ins | Have to set up a domain yourself |
There are other options out there, but these are the three biggest solutions out there if you want to make your community’s website without needing to code.
Setting up your new website
When you’ve chosen which platform you’re going to use, it’s time to set up your community association website. There are lots of companies out there that make websites for you. If you go with a company that’s specialized in HOA websites, they can also provide you with a portal.
Having a portal is incredibly important as it provides a private space for your HOA members. If you can have a two-in-one website and portal, that is ideal for community life!
Designing HOA websites
The main decision when designing your website is choosing the template. Go through different templates and choose the best one for you. Don’t forget that you can change all the content, what you want to look at is the layout. Your layout changes the focus of the website.
If you move forward with a freelancer, then be clear on what the most important parts of your website will be. However, if you go with a company, ask them what templates they have and see exactly what their websites offer.
Add content to your new website
Even more important than the template you choose is the information you add to your website. The top three most important parts of your website are:
- The community’s name
- A contact form
- The most important documents
You can also include your HOA’s board members, property managers, what’s in the area, what makes your community special, and news (eg projects, rules, meetings).
You could also ask residents what they would like to see on their community website. This can be helpful for you to direct the project.
Choose a Domain name
A domain name means that your website would be personalized, so instead of being communityname.nameofprovider.com, it would be communityname.com.
With WordPress, you have to buy the domain name separately and link it to your new website. If you choose Wix or Squarespace they include a custom domain name. If you already own a domain name, then you can still point it to your new Wix or Squarespace website. With a company, you can buy a domain and transfer it to them or they can buy it for you (normally for a small fee).
Here we’ll go through some different software platforms where you can buy domain names:
- Go Daddy: They’re the biggest player in the market, they have over 50 million domains registered. It’s easy to use and has a nice design.
- Namecheap: Namecheap’s renewal prices are lower than Go Daddy’s on the whole. Their privacy package is free, and I find that you wait for less to speak to their support team.
- Bluehost: The first year with Bluehost is often cheap, but renewals can get expensive. It’s also built to work well with WordPress.
These three platforms let you add emails that would be example@communityname.com. When you buy a domain you need to link it to your new website by changing the domain’s advanced settings to point at your new website.
Templates for HOA Websites
Using the solutions mentioned above, you can use a template that they have to create your website, and it’s a great way to set up your website quickly, and cheaply.
However, there is a better solution, which is to use website templates made for HOAs. That means that the template was built with HOAs in mind so that you don’t have to fit a generalized template to your needs, you just fill this one in with your community’s information and pictures.
What are the Benefits of Using an HOA Website Template?
Using website templates for HOAs have benefits that generalized templates can’t offer. Discover the top 3 benefits:
1 – HOA Oriented Features
HOAs require features that average website templates might not include. These could be amenity reservations or maintenance requests. Having a template made for HOAs means that the layout and different sections will be more appropriate for the community association and its residents.
As we mentioned above, a clear division between your public website and private portal with more sensitive information is important.
2 – Dedicated Support
Template providers that work with community associations, such as Neigbrs by Vinteum, provide dedicated, personalized support to their clients to make sure that they’re getting the most out of their HOA websites.
At Neigbrs by Vinteum, we help you set up your website and get all your information the way you want it. Setting up your website is simple, but it can still feel overwhelming, and we’re here to help every step of the way.
3 – No coding needed
The idea of an HOA website template is that anyone can choose from pre-set designs to create a beautiful, modern, easy-to-navigate internet presence. You don’t need to know how to code, you just choose text and images and click on save.
You can have a high-quality website up in a few hours for your whole community to enjoy.
HOA Website Templates Providers & Features
Using software comparison sites, like Capterra, you can find the best website provider for your community. You can look at the price, reviews, and whether they provide what you’re looking for. This will help you decide what HOA website software is right for you.
One key difference between providers is how they deal with security. It’s important to keep certain information secure and available only to HOA members and residents. There are 2 ways to do that:
- Password-protected parts of your website. This means that when you click on a restricted item, it will ask for your login information. This can be confusing, as it is less clear what is public, and what isn’t.
- Or as we mentioned above, what we recommend is a dedicated password-protected portal. This is a separate tab in your website which leads to a private portal, where everything is password-protected, and the board chooses who has access. You could give access to all residents, or just to owners. This is safer because there is a clear division between your public site and private portal.
Creating Senior-Friendly HOA Websites
It’s important that your website is accessible to all members of your HOA, including senior residents.
High Contrast
The first step to a senior-friendly HOA website is to choose a template that has high-contrasting colors, for instance, black text on a white background. Try to avoid using yellow, green, or blue, these are harder to see as our vision decreases.
Clear Menu
When you’re setting up your menu, create it in a way that it’s easy to navigate your website. You can use a technique called breadcrumbs, which is text at the top of the page where the user can click to go back. This makes your site easier to navigate.
Large Clickable Items
When you add a button or hyperlinked text, make sure that is a good size, so that people can easily click it.
Provide Clear Instructions
When you launch a new website, you should provide instructions in a video or pdf document, which shows your residents how to use their new website. At Vinteum, we provide a training manual and videos. We also offer ongoing personalized training for board members during our white-glove onboarding process.
The Five Best HOA Websites
We reviewed a lot of community association websites to find the top five HOA websites to provide you with some incredible examples of what you should include in your website.
Stonegate Country Club
Stonegate Country Club is located in California, and it’s a beautiful association with incredible amenities and a lake.
What We Love
We love that they regularly update their website with news including events for residents, how to log in and use their member portal, and COVID-19 protocols. They also have information on their property management company, committees, and board members easily accessible.
Our favorite part might be ‘What We Offer’, which showcases their facilities, activities, and beautiful outdoor spaces.
What Could Be Improved
Nothing! This is an incredible website that has beautiful images, helpful information for residents, and entices prospective owners.
Beau Chêne
This Louisianian community’s website has absolutely everything that buyers and residents would need to know about the community, and a bit more.
What We Love
Beau Chêne’s website is beautiful, the photos are stunning. It gives you a real feel of the community, and it also gives insight into the history of the property. This is fascinating when your community has such a rich history. All the information that would interest buyers, and that residents could need, is right there on the website.
The news section is informative and gives you a sense of community within Beau Chêne. The website appears to reflect the community’s spirit, which is a great tool to promote your HOA. They also have their Facebook page linked to their website. Having a Facebook page promoting your HOA is an excellent way to keep in touch with residents and also make your HOA known.
What Could Be Improved
The website could have a more modern look. The home page has a lot of places to click, and too much choice confuses visitors. If we could give Beau Chêne one piece of advice, it would be to have one or two main buttons on the home page. The rest should be in the menu or the footer.
Walden Lake Community
Walden Lake is a rural community in Florida, and its website focuses on the green spaces in the community.
What We Love
The simplicity of this website is what makes it one of the best. They make the outdoors their selling point, making it a very attractive-sounding HOA. It doesn’t show any of the buildings, instead, the website focuses on their stunning lake and incredible wildlife. It has maps of all the different neighborhoods and a small description of each one.
What Could Be Improved
The biggest problem with Walden Lake Community’s website is that it’s not the most intuitive website. The information is very spread out and hard to find. Also, having a picture behind the website’s information is distracting.
Aragon Neighborhood Association
Aragon Association’s website includes beautiful pictures and their lifestyle and amenities sound amazing.
What We Love
That home picture is great quality, they reach prospective buyers and residents through their website. They include a FAQ, which is always useful, and their wonderful amenities. As well as that, they talk about their architecture and buildings which is wonderful to satisfy curiosity.
What Could Be Improved
Aragon could include pictures of their amenities and more information on what’s going on in the community.
Park Lido Townhomes HOA
Park Lido Townhomes with stunning secrets, which is attractive for potential buyers and makes residents feel proud of where they live.
What We Love
That first picture is gorgeous, and the quality of the photos continue in the image gallery. Their description is complete, which talks about the houses and community, which is useful for possible new owners. It also talks about their management company, which includes contact information for residents.
They have information on community improvements and local news, the new website uses. as well as a roof replacement, vendors, and the architectural request form. All of this is key information for residents, which makes it a community hub.
What Could Be Improved
It would be nice to have more pictures of the townhomes and to include any houses that are for sale or rent. Other than that, it’s an incredible website.
Do You Need Help Creating HOA Websites?
Now you know everything about HOA websites, it’s time to make one! If you don’t want to make your community’s website yourself, then we can help you. Neigbrs by Vinteum provides you with easy-to-use, modern HOA websites and portals. You tell us what you would like, and what’s important in your community and we help you achieve that.
When you first sign up, we do the heavy lifting for you. We upload your residents, set up your website, and add your documents, amenities, and service requests. Then our customer success team teaches you how to use the software. We have six different website templates so that your website reflects your community’s character.
Sign up for a free demo to find out how we can help you improve communication with a website and portal.
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