Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cozy cohousing home near downtown Sacramento

[Karen Carlson (kcarlson2]

Is there a reason why this discussion is under the subject line of "cozy 
home..."?

Karen c


On Jan 9, 2014, at 8:20 PM, Muriel Kranowski wrote:

> 
> I don't mean to offend, but I do think the "we don't need no stinkin'
> website!" folks are looking at it from the wrong perspective - that is, if
> promoting resales is important to them. The significant perspective is that
> of the possible outside purchaser, one with no prior connection to the
> community.
> 
> These days, people who have serious intentions typically don't just phone
> and say "tell me all about your community." They expect to learn some basic
> info about you before they decide to make that first contact, and they
> expect to find that basic info on your website. I suspect that mindset has
> been encouraged by the easy availability of on-line reviews for products,
> restaurants, and just about everything that you can buy or rent or
> experience - people want a preview before making any kind of commitment.
> 
> I also think that not having a website gives the impression that your
> community is closed to new people. It's like saying "Move along, find
> another community to check out, we're not in marketing mode here."
> 
> You can look at other communities' websites and crib heavily - no need to
> be super-creative. You do need a few photos, but surely someone has a
> digital camera or at least a smartphone?
> 
> You need to say how many units, their general configuration and size,
> describe the common house and the site, and anything special or unusual
> that you do or have - your particular "flavor" as a community - and of
> course, give people a way to contact you, by phone if you have a contact
> person who enjoys chatting with people, and (or only) by email. You can
> link to the national website cohousing.org to provide the basic FAQs for
> "What Is Cohousing." Have someone who can write well (even, or perhaps
> preferably, someone who doesn't live there) review it for good English
> usage and a coherent and welcoming message before it goes live - sloppily
> written text will hurt your community's credibility.
> 
> It's true that someone needs to be the website manager if only to update
> the Units for Sale/for Rent page, but once you've put a basic website in
> place it need not take a lot of time or special know-how to keep it up.
> Just don't let anyone create for you a highly technical site that only he
> or she knows how to maintain; stick to basic easy-to-use website-building
> software.
> 
> Plan to look at it every few years so you can update if needed. We did a
> complete overhaul of our original website about 5 years ago and haven't
> changed its basic layout since - added a few photos to the Photo Gallery,
> and of course the sales/rentals page is kept up-to-date.
> 
>     Muriel
>     Shadowlake Village Cohousing, Blacksburg, VA
> 
> 
> 
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