Abbeyfield has been providing housing and care for older people since 1956, with almost 100 independent Member Societies operating across the UK. For a charitable organisation of that scale, serving future residents, families, staff and wider stakeholders through a consistent, trustworthy digital presence is not just a marketing priority — it is part of the mission. Growcreate partnered with Abbeyfield to consolidate two separate web properties onto a single Umbraco platform, integrate Yext for centralised location management, and deliver a future-ready digital estate that makes it easier for the people who matter most to find the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
Bottom line up front
Abbeyfield operates a nationwide charitable care network with almost 100 Member Societies across the UK, serving vulnerable older people and their families at a moment when accurate, accessible digital information directly affects the decisions they make.
Growcreate unified two separate web properties (Abbeyfield and Abbeyfield Living) onto a single Umbraco CMS instance, eliminating the overhead of managing two platforms and building a scalable architecture ready to absorb future microsite migrations.
A Yext integration created a single source of truth for all care home location data, automating synchronisation across directories and significantly improving local search visibility for individual facilities.
The new platform supports, enhances and evolves Abbeyfield's digital presence by giving their team the tools to manage content confidently without developer support, while ensuring every audience finds a consistent, accessible experience.
The challenge
Abbeyfield's digital presence had grown in a way that reflected the organisation's federated structure rather than its mission. Two separate web properties — the main Abbeyfield site and Abbeyfield Living — were each requiring independent modernisation, content management effort and ongoing maintenance, and the burden of keeping them aligned was becoming unsustainable. With almost 100 Member Societies operating nationwide, maintaining consistent brand standards and accurate location information across both platforms was time-consuming, error-prone and increasingly difficult to resource.
The stakes were high. Abbeyfield's website serves people navigating some of the most significant decisions of their lives: older people and their families searching for the right care home, in the right location, at the right time. Outdated information, inconsistent listings or poor local search visibility did not just create operational friction — they risked real harm to occupancy, to trust and to the people the organisation exists to serve. Abbeyfield needed a consolidated, well-maintained platform that could serve multiple audiences clearly, scale as the network grew, and give their internal team genuine control over content without depending on developers for routine updates.
Our approach
Platform consolidation and Umbraco development
Growcreate began with a thorough discovery process to understand how different audiences — future residents, families, staff and partner organisations — actually navigated the existing sites and what they needed to find. That insight shaped the information architecture and content design for the consolidated platform, ensuring each audience had a clear, relevant journey from the moment they arrived.
Both the Abbeyfield and Abbeyfield Living sites were brought together within a single Umbraco instance, with a shared content architecture that eliminated the duplication and inconsistency of running two platforms separately. Robust CMS workflows were built specifically around property listing management, giving non-technical staff the ability to update facility information, manage content and maintain listings across the platform without developer intervention. Consistent brand guidelines were applied across all properties, and schema.org structured data was implemented to improve search engine discoverability across the estate. The architecture was designed from the outset to be scalable, ready to absorb the planned migration of additional microsites as the organisation continues to evolve.
Yext integration and local SEO
A pivotal part of the solution was the integration of Yext as a centralised location management system. For a network of care homes operating across the UK, accurate and consistent location data is critical: families searching for care in their area need to find the right facility quickly and trust that the information they find is current. Before the Yext integration, maintaining that accuracy across dozens of directories and platforms required hours of manual effort. After it, a single interface became the source of truth for all care home and housing facility data, with changes automatically synchronised across multiple platforms and directories.
The Yext integration also functioned as a local SEO engine. Accurate, structured data across all directories made individual care homes significantly more visible in local search results, ensuring Abbeyfield's facilities appeared when and where families were actively looking. Combined with the schema.org structured data implemented across the site, the result was a meaningful improvement in discoverability at exactly the moments that matter most to prospective residents and their families.
Results and impact
For families and older people searching for care, the new platform makes the process clearer and more trustworthy. Each facility is accurately represented across search directories, the site presents a consistent brand experience regardless of which property a user arrives at, and the information they need to make an informed decision is easy to find and up to date. In a sector where trust is everything and the consequences of poor information are real, that consistency is genuinely valuable.
For Abbeyfield's internal team, the shift has removed significant operational burden. Content updates that previously required co-ordination across two platforms and regular developer involvement can now be managed directly by non-technical staff from a single, well-structured CMS. Yext's automated synchronisation has eliminated the manual overhead of maintaining location listings, freeing the team to focus on the work that matters. The platform is built to grow with the organisation, with a scalable architecture that can accommodate future microsite migrations without requiring a rebuild. Growcreate continues to support, enhance and evolve the estate alongside Abbeyfield's teams, ensuring the digital presence keeps pace with the organisation's mission and the communities it serves.
