3 data-backed tips to convert website traffic into care enquiries

The UK care home market is always dynamic, shifting to accommodate the changing needs of care seekers and presenting a fresh challenge to busy marketers. Right now, with many groups experiencing high occupancy and fewer care seekers looking for placements, competition to secure future residents is at an all-time high.

That means marketers need to find ways to stand out, capture attention, and convert interest into admission faster – before care seekers find what they’re looking for on another group’s website.

So, it’s vital to keep track of the whole journey, marking every touchpoint that leads to a call.

Analysing data from over three million care home website visits and one million care home calls, the 2025 spring edition of our care home trends report uncovered some fascinating insights into care seeker habits and marketers’ strategies. The data shows a tightly competitive market where visitor volumes don’t always translate into calls.

Inspired by this analysis, here are some quick wins that can help you convert more traffic into enquiries for your care home.

1. Your visitor-to-call ratio is more important than you might think

In the 2025 State of call tracking report, we discovered something really surprising about the visitor-to-call ratio (VCR) metric: only 16% of our respondents ranked it as one of their top five metrics. But it’s such an important measure of how effectively you’re converting interest into intent.

VCR compares how many visits your website gets versus how many calls originate on your website; we saw an overall drop in this metric between March 2024 and March 2025. If you’re seeing a lot of visits but few corresponding calls, it likely means one of three things:

1. Care seekers are spending more time on research, and make additional visits to websites to compare their care home options before calling
2. You’re prioritising brand awareness, which means you’re reaching more care seekers but they’re not far enough along their journey to convert
3. There’s something missing from your care seeker journey, and you’re not capturing potential admissions before they go elsewhere

Whatever the cause, if you’re seeing a drop in VCR it’s time to take a beat and audit your website for opportunities to boost conversions.

“Detailed resources that answer care seekers’ top research questions and clear prompts to move onto the next stage in the journey can improve your conversion rate and stop them leaving for another website,” explains Faye Thomassen, Head of Marketing for Mediahawk. “Even something as simple as making your phone number more prominent can make a difference.”

2. Track all your sources for full marketing attribution

In our State of call tracking report, we also saw a dip in the number of marketers using trackable numbers across channels. Many care home marketers are working with smaller budgets at the moment, which naturally leads to teams cutting back where they can.

But if you’re not tracking how successfully your channel mix is performing, you actually risk overspending on activities that aren’t leading to admissions.

The care home trends data from the past year indicates that marketers are being more tactical about how they use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, with Google PPC’s share of leads decreasing while Google organic’s share increased.

“More care home marketers are relying on organic search to bring in care seekers while occupancy rates are high, with targeted investment in PPC to boost visibility for care homes with more space,” says Faye. “It’s a really smart way to manage spend without losing out on key channels.”

When you use call tracking to track numbers across all your channels, you can be more tactical with how you approach every source. It allows you to attribute every single call, so you know whether you’re spending your budget on the right activities.

“More care home marketers are relying on organic search to bring in care seekers while occupancy rates are high, with targeted investment in PPC to boost visibility for care homes with more space. It’s a really smart way to manage spend without losing out on key channels.”
– Faye Thomassen, Head of Marketing, Mediahawk

3. Use AI in a way that suits your care home group

It feels like everyone’s talking about how useful AI can be for marketers – and it is a really powerful tool when you use it in the right way – but in certain sectors, adoption can be complex. Some of the care home leaders we speak to are hesitant to embrace AI, as they’re worried about potential risks to their reputation.

“It’s understandable that leaders are cautious about AI in a sector where the human touch is so important,” says Faye. “Introducing a chatbot or using generative AI for ad campaigns might not be the right choice for your care home group, but there are other ways to take advantage of AI’s capabilities that still help take pressure off marketers.”

Analytics is one of AI’s most mature and widely used applications, allowing marketers to dig deep into the wealth of data generated by their activities without expending hours of manual work.

AI-driven analytics is available in many different forms – but conversation analysis is especially powerful for marketers in sectors where phone calls are such a key source of enquiries. It securely, confidentially, and automatically analyses the content of each call, identifying key topics, logging the outcome, and measuring the care seeker’s intent.

This helps you understand the kind of people who call you, and the best ways to convert them; all positive signals you can use to optimise your PPC ads.

Summary

In a hyper-competitive market, even small changes can make a big difference.

Understanding your VCR and tracking all your sources can help you make decisions that optimise the care seeker journey in powerful ways. And by using AI-driven analytics, you’ll deepen your understanding of who’s calling your care home group and what matters most to them – giving you the insights to increase leads and conversions.