Get the Look You Want for Your HOA Website—And More

You probably spend more time online than ever before, and as the number of websites you visit continues to grow, you start to recognize functions, features, and appearance attributes that increase or limit the extent to which individual sites appeal to you. Some of these criteria relate to how easily you can use these sites, or how much useful content they contain. Others reflect how well or how poorly you think these sites are designed. Some of these factors are subjective, and you’ll find that some people don’t agree with your opinions. However, some of these factors determine how thoroughly the sites present an attractive, functional appearance that showcases useful content.

Depending on how long you’ve been online, you may not remember the early days of the internet, in which page elements blinked, spun, changed colors, and generally behaved like a two-year-old trying to get your attention. Fortunately, today’s sites don’t look like that, but not every site matches its appearance to its content in a way that makes them complement each other. Ideally, the design of every site should match the context, purpose, and personality of the entity that posts it, and homeowners association websites are no exception to that rule.

When you’re setting up an HOA website, you may think that you need to sacrifice appearance for functionality or vice versa. You may find an online software product that offers the features you want, but the sites it builds look a bit more like web 1.0 than a 21st-century online destination. Look around a little further, and you may encounter a software product that enables you to create a great-looking site that doesn’t include many of the features that your community finds essential.

You want both, and what you need is an HOA software provider that values aesthetics as much as functionality, one that understands the specialized needs of communities like yours and provides those features in an attractive package that your membership will enjoy using. Additionally, along with specific features, you want those features to be easy to use.

At HOAStart, we created our homeowners association website software to offer your community all these things. We understand that functionality is the most important criterion when you’re choosing a website software provider. If the site you build through that provider works well but doesn’t look good, however, no one will want to use it, much less use it all the time. We also understand the essential difference between complex features and complex functionality. You expect intuitive software that offers self-guiding processes and makes essential functions easy, not a confusing product that you find difficult to understand, customize, use, and navigate.

But the look of your site remains incredibly important because along with serving a functional purpose, it’s also a marketing tool. The design of your HOA website should reflect the identity of your community, the expectations of your residents, and the style that you present to the world, reinforced by the covenants that govern the way your neighborhood looks. When prospective homeowners see your site, it should help them understand and appreciate what it’s like to live in your community.

You probably don’t want to spend a large sum of money engaging a design professional to create a site for your community, but you still want the kind of distinctive appearance that a professionally designed site provides. You also don’t necessarily want to go the do-it-yourself route, because even though some modern content management systems can make website design much simpler than it used to be in the early days of the internet, it’s still not a task for the faint of heart or for novices with more ambition than time.

To balance these needs with the kind of functionality and cost effectiveness that you expect from an HOA website, HOAStart created attractive, professionally developed site-design templates that you can customize to make your site express your community’s unique personality. These clean, modern designs feature a modular approach so you can add content where you want it and specify how it appears. Our color schemes are fresh and appealing, and even the placeholder images we use to show you how your website can look uphold the aesthetics of an up-to-date online design. At the same time, we incorporate a broad range of easy-to-use functions that present a comprehensive approach to your community’s needs for communication, neighborhood spirit, and a cohesive approach to upholding your covenants.

When you set up an HOAStart website, your benefit from private messaging that enables your residents to chat securely without having to resort to social media, and a message board that can enable you to pin news items to the top and offer residents the opportunity to comment. Set up online bill payments and process these payments with ease—without the hassles of researching, selecting, and dealing with payment processors. Define and accept reservations for community events, with diverse options for ticket packages, multi-day happenings, and separate activities. Make item-by-item decisions about which features are public, which are private and accessible only to community residents, and which you designate as off-limits to any resident who falls behind on dues or fees payments. Create a ticketing system to accept, process, and approve or reject architectural change request submissions.

From the homepage of your website through every page and feature it contains, you want it to be a friendly, welcoming, straightforward destination that your HOA’s residents will visit time after time to communicate with one another, take care of their obligations as homeowners association members, and even collaborate with one another to accomplish goals that are important to them.

Can you have it all—features, intuitive functionality, easy design, and attractive appearance—in a website software product that is as respectful of your budget as it is of your goals? When you choose HOAStart as your website software provider, the answer is yes, and you’ll enjoy the attractive convenience your site provides. Why settle for less than all the features, functionality, and aesthetics that you expect when you can get all of them in one place? Sign up today for a free 30-day trial and experience the HOAStart difference.