Website Design for Home Owner Associations (HOA)

Custom website design. A custom website design provides your HOA website with the flexibility you need to effectively brand the association. By having a professional graphic designer create your site from the ground up through wireframes and Photoshop designs, your HOA website will not only represent your brand, but will also set your design miles ahead of others in the industry. While a custom design is ideal if your budget allows for it, it is not always realistic when building association type websites. In these cases, a theme website design might be a more suitable option.

Theme website design. It is understandable that home owner associations often do not have the budget to allow for a custom website design. In this case, we will use a theme website design, or a pre-designed site. With a theme website design, you are still able to achieve a lot of the requirements you believe necessary for the site. A theme may limit you in some aspects like layout and content areas, so it will be important to find a theme that fits these needs. Branding is always important, so we will pull in a designer to make the theme unique by adding your logo, creative images, and adjust the color scheme to match your brand.

Responsive web design. Residents need to be able to access the home owner association website (and association related information/documents) anywhere, anytime, from any device. A responsive web design gives your website the ability to adapt to any device’s size screen. This removes the need for users to zoom in and out and scroll from each side to be able to read your content. Both custom and theme website designs can be made responsive.

Custom website development is essential for the online success of a home owner association website. The great news is that association type websites typically do not need a lot of custom development. Here are the things that we have implemented in the past for these types of websites, but please keep in mind that each solution will need to be tailored to each association’s specific needs.

Easy Content Management.  The admin of a website needs to be able to easily manage and edit content on the site. This should include easy file uploads, page creation, image uploads, and content creation. Five Technology’s content management system (CMS) provides a user-friendly environment for even non-technical admins.

Secure Access/User Logins.  Secure access is an important feature for any home owner association type website. Your admins should be able to easily add important documents (tax info, board meeting agendas, etc.) to pages behind a secure access gateway. They should also be able to easily create and manage user logins for residents accessing this information.

Blog/News Feed.  Keeping your residents up to date on the latest news in the association or even highlighting upcoming events in the area is very important. A blog can accomplish this news curating in a easy-to-use platform. In most cases, this could even replace an association newsletter; which could save time, paper, and hassle.

Agenda App.  Five Technology has developed and implemented a custom website application that makes creating, publishing, and sharing board meeting agendas and minutes easy. Create meeting agendas from a variety of templates based on the type of meeting, add items and subitems, then publish to the website for instant access. During the meeting, you can then access the agenda and add notes, comments, and amendments right from the app, then re-publish it for instant access to the meeting’s minutes by the residents. It even provides for video uploads, if the meetings were recorded. Save time, save paper, save money!

Five Technology’s content management system, the Site Management Console, is a great solution for any HOA website. Website admins need easy accessibility to the backend of the website, and have control over all of its content.

Your website admin can easily be trained to manage and edit your HOA website through this content management system. There is no programming experience needed to make various content changes.
The SMC adds an interactive and advanced functionality to your HOA website. Above all, it puts you and your admins in control. Here are just some of the benefits you have access to using this SMC including:

• Basic content and image management
• Contact forms, information collection forms
• Document management and downloads
• Blog posts, categories, and archives
• Newsletter postings
• Image galleries and slideshows
• Easy to embed videos (YouTube/Vimeo)
• Updated calendars and schedules
• Account management with usernames and passwords