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Originally Posted On: https://hoastart.com/hoa-websites/
HOA Websites | Put Your Community Ahead
Thousands of homeowners associations have discovered that an investment in an HOA website makes a great deal of sense to support their community and enhance its functions. But what do HOA websites do, and why would you and your fellow homeowners association administrators need one? What should be on an hoa website? Even more importantly, how do you recognize the best HOA website examples so you can make the right choice among many providers of the software that runs them?
In some states, homeowners association websites have become a legal requirement. Even in states that don’t mandate them, communities like yours adopt HOA website platforms to streamline their administrative functions and enhance communication with residents. Look for some specific types of advantages among the features of HOA websites—and get ready to make a big difference in how easily you take care of HOA business.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A GREAT HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION WEBSITE
You’re accustomed to thinking of websites as online destinations for the latest news, information, entertainment, and shopping. HOA essentially websites cover all those bases in one way or another. What makes a good HOA website? In a nutshell, a good HOA website is an online solution that relays information efficiently and effectively, engages community leadership and residents, and includes a variety of HOA-specific features.
- Documents, including CCRs, articles of incorporation, community rules, and information about a variety of community programs and initiatives
- Management of HOA functions, with support for architectural revision requests, online dues payments, and one-time charges for incidental non-recurring expenses
- Custom forms to obtain information and allow for community voting
- Answers to frequently asked questions about neighborhood features and responsibilities
- Neighborhood news and updates
- Communication functions, including threaded private chat, newsfeeds, and contact forms to reach leadership or request information
- Resident directories with opt-in privacy to protect members’ personally identifiable information
- Announcements, from significant issues of governance to human interest stories and items that are just for fun
- Event information, management, and registration
- Reservations for community amenities
How to recognize outstanding HOA website platforms
The best homeowner association websites use software that combines multiple essential features into a straightforward package that can handle every online need for an HOA or condominium association. When you research these HOA website platforms, look for a feature set that matches up well with your needs at a price that fits your HOA’s budget.
The basis for that price will vary depending on the philosophy of the HOA database you choose. Some software providers create a stripped-down basic package that won’t even enable you to send out invoices for dues and fees, or collect resident payments for these invoices, without spending extra money for add-ons. If these providers were selling new cars, they’d charge you more for door locks and windshield wipers, let alone for air conditioning and cruise control.
Other providers may charge you extra for the HOA website equivalent of a bigger engine or a fancier interior, but you’re always going to get a fully functional website package with a substantial feature set, regardless of which of their package tiers you choose. These providers set up several product tiers—including one at the entry level—but refuse to offer a “feature-starved” package that’s tough to use without considerable addon expense. Instead, they focus on making each package a workable investment for communities with specific needs and budgets.
Surprisingly enough, you can wind up paying more for a “bargain-basement” package with less functionality than for a seemingly more expensive package that starts out with a better feature set. By the time you add on all the subsidiary feature support you need to provide the functionality you’ve identified as essential for your community, that “cheap” alternative doesn’t look so cheap. That’s why it’s important not to let what looks like the price distract you from actual costs.
The right features of HOA website hosting
Whether yours is a small HOA or condominium association with fewer than 50 residents or a big multi-phase development with hundreds of homes, you want your HOA website hosting provider to respect your need for modern, progressive software that receives frequent updates. If you invest in an HOA website platform that’s built on outdated code, your provider will struggle to add new features or maintain existing ones.
Every piece of software requires constant maintenance and frequent updates to keep up with the need for online security as well as the increasing feature sets that customers expect. In this respect, homeowners association website software is no different from your favorite word processing or data analysis package.
Some of this constant focus on new features stems from providers’ attempts to avoid being outdone by their competition, but much of it simply reflects the ongoing need to respond to customer input. The best HOA sites place the highest emphasis on listening to the communities that use their software and implementing new or revised features that customers request.
Along with feature focus and a modern code base, the best HOA website hosting companies give their customers the ability to add as many website pages as they want and upload as many documents as they need to store for easy access. Some providers—often the same ones with the stripped-down introductory packages—offer only a limited amount of online content space or document repository storage with their basic packages, and even restrict their intermediate offerings. Again, by the time you calculate the full cost of the site you need, the seemingly attractive introductory price points disappear in a blizzard of additional charges.
Easy HOA website creation
If you’re not an experienced website designer—and most homeowners association administrators are not—then the idea of creating an HOA website from scratch probably seems like an intimidating challenge. By the time you settle on a popular content management system such as WordPress, find a website theme you like, convince your HOA board to support it, and learn to customize it, you’re several months beyond your site development target date, still struggling to identify plug-ins that can provide essential features.
Beyond the difficulties of wrestling with unfamiliar software, you’re also up against the need to ensure that all aspects of your site work together harmoniously. You’re almost certainly not going to find a website theme developer who also specializes in programming all the pieces of HOA-specific software support that need to find their way into your finished site—and when you try to make all these separately developed pieces of site code cooperate with each other, you quickly find out that that’s often not possible.
Plug-in A fights with your theme. Plug-in B advertises a feature set that it delivers only if you pay for an advanced version. Another feature that you desperately need—for example, secure online billing—requires you to find and integrate a payment processor, and their pricing may include fees that exceed the amount you’re willing to hand over from your association dues.
The solution to all this confusion, and the easy way to avoid all these hassles in the first place, is to look at HOA website platforms that put together all the functionality you need—including the secure online payment processing—into one complete, seamless package.
Top essentials of HOA website design
You want your condominium association or HOA website to look sleek, professional, and stylish, with intuitive navigation and plenty of places to add essential content. How do you achieve all those goals without hiring an expensive design pro or teaching yourself website design?
With the right HOA website design resources, that’s actually an easy question to answer. The biggest difference between the average do-it-yourself collection of website software and a purpose-built HOA website builder is the full set of professionally designed, flexible site themes, page templates, and color palettes that help amateur HOA website creators achieve professional results.
If you’re concerned about the ability to build a distinctive, individualized, unique online presence based on prebuilt themes and templates, don’t be. The right HOA website design resources provide a framework on which you build your site, but that framework provides so many customization options that no two sites built on it look the same.
As you’re researching HOA website platforms, ask to see sample sites and even actual customer results. If you see a cookie cutter look, walk away—or, if you’re otherwise impressed with the provider’s offerings, ask for a hands-on demo or trial period so you can see for yourself what the software can do.
What makes an HOA website great
Homeowner association websites play a vital role in serving the needs of a healthy community. The best HOA websites offer specific types of high-value features that make them great community assets, including the following capabilities:
- Highlight the supportive ways your homeowners association treats the members of your community. Reinforce how thoroughly you’re here to serve them, and how well you anticipate their needs.
- Fulfill requests for architectural modifications and maintenance services efficiently. Make all of these types of requests electronic to help HOA maintenance personnel and procedures stay organized.
- Pay HOA dues securely online. Every homeowners association website should provide the option of an easy-to-use online payment portal. Those payment features should extend to any community features that involve dues and fees.
- Control the way you brand and market your HOA. Custom homeowners association websites make it easy for you to apply your branding elements, including your logo, and show what makes your HOA or condominium association the best.
- Provide mobile-friendly responsive features that present a consistent—and easy to read—experience regardless of whether you visit the site on a desktop or laptop computer, smartphone, or tablet. Browser windows scale intuitively to retain the look and feel of your site design on screens of any size.
- Simplify the process of creating attractive website pages with professionally created page templates that combine flexible design features with high-quality aesthetics. With an HOA website template, you can build an online presence quickly, efficiently, and effectively.
- Present a customizable homeowners association website that showcases the unique features of your community or condominium association. Always answer the question, “What makes this HOA special?” with compelling visual and verbal support.
Access your website anytime and from anywhere
When you go through the process of starting an HOA or get involved in helping administer an existing homeowners association, remember that your community or condominium residents and your HOA board members need access anytime and from anywhere for better participation in and management of your HOA. That access includes community data, documents, financials, features, and more. The easiest way to supply that access and enhance community management is through homeowner association websites that put information a few clicks away from anyone with the need for it.
That access includes long-standing residents as well as prospective and new homeowners, whether those new residents buy in to a new construction phase or acquire existing properties. Community websites can serve as the interactive equivalent of an attractive online brochure for prospective home buyers, sharing the spirit of your neighborhoods as well as the latest news about available properties. Additionally, a web presence provides essential information for new homeowners, so they don’t have to guess at trash pickup schedules, school districts, utility providers, or the best local service providers.
A well-functioning HOA website also makes quick adaptations and alterations easy, and gives your HOA team the flexibility to add or remove information at any time, even while they’re away from home. Intuitive page-construction and page-editing features speed up the process of creating, adding, modifying, and removing pages and information, and provide easy templated resources to set up photo galleries, post documents and newsletters, and let residents know about upcoming events. The combination of speed, ease, and results gives the best association websites their power and convenience.
Benefits of an HOA website
You gain many benefits when you create the best HOA website for your HOA. Without question, setting up an HOA website can help lower your administrative costs while it gives residents 24/7 access to your neighborhood information. Additionally, HOA websites make four key elements available so members can communicate effectively with your HOA board. Those include the following:
- Newsletters
- Meeting minutes
- Official documents
- Forms for the neighborhood
An HOA website is highly beneficial to the functionality of a healthy community and the vital activities that every well-run HOA performs. Among those beneficial functions:
- Neighborhood announcements
- Collecting HOA dues
- Online forms and documents
- Newsletter and meeting minutes
- Resident surveys
- Photos of your neighborhood
- Sponsor engagement
- Classified ads
- Lost and found
- Message board
An HOA website can be an excellent communication tool. When you archive past items in an online repository, residents can review older minutes to understand and appreciate current and past board accomplishments. That context helps them participate in HOA affairs and even apply to become administrators themselves.
For communication, HOA websites keep information and details always at every resident’s fingertips. They’re a powerful communication tool that gives you a quick, easy way to share great news about community or condominium association improvements and vitality. When you keep homeowners informed about what’s going on in their condominium websites and neighborhoods—including both good and bad occurrences—you help ensure that your residents understand their roles in making your community a success. An HOA website helps residents see the purpose and the benefits of following HOA or condominium association rules.
Put an HOA website to work for your community
The best HOA websites make your HOA administrative work easier and help you connect with residents. Think about what you can accomplish with this essential technology.
- Build a stronger, closer-knit community
- Ease communication between residents and HOA management
- Keep your community well informed and knowledgeable about HOA affairs
- Provide a centralized place to store and retrieve information
- Make payments easy, quick, and secure
- Automate management functions for greater administrative efficiency
A customized HOA website provides all these features and a lot more. In today’s digitally connected, it’s easy to see the value that an HOA website can offer you.
A sense of community: HOA websites bring people together
When you use online technology to get connected and share common goals, you put your community and your residents first.
With the right homeowners association website software, new homeowners no longer have to wait two to three weeks for the management team to send them documentation, provide information in response to questions, and handle other paperwork.
With HOA online payments, residents won’t need to snail-mail checks or pay in person. Homeowners association websites provide a secure payment portal for dues and fees, so residents can take care of their financial obligations in privacy and comfort.
Homeowner association websites enable HOA administrators to create customized information-gathering forms and ballots—and eliminate the need for paper forms. Now community members can submit online ballots, questionnaires, and amenity reservation forms with a click of a button.
Instead of residents sharing issues, complaints, and concerns on third-party social media platforms, now they can direct and submit these concerns appropriately through your HOA website. The HOA website’s private chat feature enables your members to ask questions or voice concerns in a private forum that you can control. To preserve cordial interactions, newsfeed and chat management enables administrators to remove posts that violate community discussion protocols or lock down communications to provide a read-only bulletin board.
Homeowners association website login credentials
Consider the benefits of HOA and neighborhood websites:
- Share information and post important documents in a secure online environment.
- Enjoy unprecedented 24-hour online access to a central hub of vital information.
- Access community announcements wherever you go.
An outstanding HOA website provides every HOA member with secure login credentials. Sign in to the site with a username and password to access all of the website’s features, both public and private. To share information only with the right people, administrators can make web pages and documents accessible only to people on specific committees, or limit access until residents pay outstanding dues invoices.
Create your distinctive website look with beautiful designs
At HOA Start, our designs make it easy to create a beautiful, functional custom website—and do it quickly.
While you’re setting up your site, you’re also responsible for many other tasks. That’s the often-hectic life of a volunteer homeowners association administrator. So to achieve the look and functionality you want from your website on your desired schedule, the best HOA website platforms provide you with attractive page resources that make quick work out of HOA website design.
Remember that an HOA website builder needs to respect your busy schedule. It should provide design resources you can use to build pages with a few quick clicks, pages that look as if you spent all day on them even though you achieved the right look in only a few minutes.
Enjoy the advantages of affordable HOA websites
Whether you need condominium association website or you’re asking yourself why you need a neighborhood association website for your HOA or master association, HOA Start has what you need to build your online presence today. We provide association web hosting, HOA website templates, the HOA website builder, and a responsive support team. We offer you an extensive set of learning resources that match up well with any learning style. And we’re here to help you succeed in communicating the full message of your community’s unique neighborhood spirit.
Many communities now use our website services, and give us rave reviews for our product as well as our support. Our websites have helped homeowner associations become more successful and streamline community organization so they can speed up response times without making their HOA administrators work harder.
HOA websites offer an amazing opportunity to enhance your neighborhood, interact with your community, and stay up to date with current member news. You will truly enjoy total community connectivity, and these websites will help you make it happen.
