In short and in plain language
Are most of your customers older? This article shows what your website should focus on.
Many older people search online for products and services. But only a few of them use social media.
Put your phone number at the top of the home page. If people cannot find it, they call someone else.
Text should be large enough and easy to zoom. Pay attention to good contrast.
Keep forms short. For a call-back, a name, a number and a good time are enough. Write your address and directions as text on the page. Our starter website has few pages.
A medical supply store, a hearing aid specialist, a foot care practice, a tax help association for pensioners, a trade business working mostly on existing buildings: in all of these, the average customer is considerably older than the population average. For the website this does not mean it has to look old-fashioned. It means a different order of priorities. Official statistics give you a solid basis for that decision: according to the Federal Statistical Office, around 65 percent of people aged 65 to 74 searched online for information about goods and services in 2025, while only 25 percent of the same age group were active on social media (Destatis, ICT usage survey 2025). Those two figures together add up to a calculation that can carry every single decision about your site, from the order of elements on the home page to the length of your form.
Key takeaways
- The audience is reachable: in 2025 only 10 percent of people aged 65 to 74 had never used the internet (Destatis, Number of the Week No. 09 of 24 February 2026). Roughly nine out of ten can be reached through a website.
- Through platforms they hardly are: 25 percent of that age group were active on social media in 2025, compared with 59 percent of everyone aged 16 to 74 (Destatis, press release No. N014 of 2 March 2026).
- The phone number belongs in the first screen of the home page, not in the footer. Someone looking for a number who cannot find it does not call – they call somewhere else.
- Type size, line length and contrast are not a matter of taste. The W3C guidelines name concrete values: text must be resizable up to 200 percent, and pointer targets should measure at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels (W3C, WCAG 2.2).
- Every additional mandatory field costs you enquiries. A callback needs a name, a phone number and a time slot – everything else is settled faster on the phone than in an input field.
Online yes, platforms no
The most common wrong assumption in businesses with older customers goes like this: these people are not on the internet, so a website is not worth it. The ICT usage survey of the Federal Statistical Office says otherwise. In 2025 only 10 percent of people aged 65 to 74 had never used the internet; across all age groups from 16 to 74 it was a good 3 percent (Destatis, Number of the Week No. 09 of 24 February 2026). So a business serving this group does not lose it to the internet. It loses it to the competitor whose site answers the questions that come before the call. That is a different finding from the general case made in Your own website instead of social media alone: here it is quantified for one specific customer group.
What the figures show
The gap is closing, but slowly. Among people aged 65 to 74, the share using social media rose from 15 percent in 2021 to 25 percent in 2025, and among those aged 55 to 64 from 29 to 42 percent (Destatis, press release No. N014 of 2 March 2026). Even in the group immediately before retirement age, the majority therefore stays off the platforms. And in the 45 to 64 age group – often the children of your customers, who do the research alongside them – participation in social networks stood at 49 percent, while 80 percent searched online for goods and services (Destatis, table on internet activities by age). A platform profile is not wrong, but it cannot carry demand on its own.
The share of people who have never been online is falling year by year as well. In 2024 it was still around one eighth in the 65 to 74 age group, namely 12 percent (Destatis, press release No. N017 of 10 April 2025); one year later it was 10 percent. Across all age groups the share of offliners fell from 6 percent in 2021 to a good 3 percent (Destatis, Number of the Week No. 09 of 24 February 2026). For your planning this means the website is long past being a side channel for these customers; in many cases it is the first point of contact. The call comes afterwards – if the site makes it possible.
The phone number belongs at the top
On most small business websites the phone number appears in three places: the footer, the contact page and the legal notice. With younger customers this goes unnoticed because they reach for the form. With older customers it is noticed immediately, because here a call is the normal case and not the exception. Anyone working in the trades knows this effect from daily business – the page Websites for trades and crafts shows what a home page looks like when its first element is a way to get in touch rather than a mood picture.
- The phone number sits in the first screen of the home page, at heading size, and as text rather than as a graphic.
- It is a tel link, so one tap is enough on a smartphone and nobody has to copy a string of digits by hand.
- Right next to it are the hours when somebody actually picks up. A number without hours produces one failed attempt and no second one.
- If nobody is available, the page says what applies instead: answering machine, callback form or a second number for urgent cases.
- On every subpage the number is repeated at the end of the content – not only in the footer below the legal texts.
These five points cost no extra development work, only a decision about order. Nor are they a special rule for older audiences: the same applies in medical practices, as described in Medical practice websites. The difference is that with a predominantly older clientele there is no second group taking the detour via the form and quietly making up the shortfall.
The outstretched arm test
Readable without zoom: type, line, contrast
Readability is measurable, and has been assessed by the same criteria for years. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the W3C require, among other things, that text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality, and that the contrast ratio between text and background is at least 4.5:1 (W3C, WCAG 2.2). Whether a legal obligation applies to you on top of that is a separate question – Accessible websites: does the BFSG apply to small businesses? sets out the scope. For customers over 65 these values are the lower bound anyway, not the target.
Body text from 18 pixels
What looks elegant on a large screen is too small on a five-year-old tablet. 18 to 20 pixels of body text is a starting value here, not an exception.
Lines under 80 characters
A column of text spanning the full screen width loses the reader at the end of the line. Limiting the column width costs nothing and keeps the eye on track.
Contrast above the threshold
Grey type on a light grey background rarely reaches 4.5:1. Dark text on a light background looks unfashionable and works – including in sunlight on the balcony.
Touch targets with room
At least 24 by 24 CSS pixels per button, and enough space between two targets. Two links stacked directly on top of each other are a guessing game on a touchscreen.
Short sentences, no jargon
Comprehensibility is copywriting, not technology. One thought per sentence, no abbreviation without explanation and no English heading above a German paragraph.
Pictures that say something
A photo of your shop door helps with recognition, a stock mood picture does not. Someone who knows the entrance will find it on the first visit.
Loading time is part of readability, even if that does not look connected at first glance. Older customers are more often on older devices and in areas with weaker mobile coverage. A page that shows text only after several seconds is not judged, it is abandoned. What helps is set out in the article on website loading speed; how the layout behaves on small screens is covered by the article on mobile optimisation.
| Element | Usual implementation | For customers over 65 |
|---|---|---|
| Phone number | In the footer, set small, as part of the address line | In the first screen, at heading size, as a tel link |
| Opening hours | On the contact page, as a table with every special case | Right beside the phone number, in full sentences, with a note about the lunch break |
| Directions | An embedded map image with no accompanying text | Street, house number and town in plain text, plus stop, parking and the route to the door |
| Contact form | Eight fields including salutation, company and subject | Three fields: name, phone number and a time slot for the callback |
| Navigation | Drop-down menu across three levels, icons without labels | Five labelled items on one level, permanently visible |
Forms: every mandatory field costs an enquiry
A contact form is the most convenient route for many businesses, because enquiries arrive already sorted. For older customers it is the highest hurdle on the entire site. Mandatory fields with red asterisks, a drop-down for the salutation, a subject field with no default, plus a privacy consent box you only find once submission has failed: each of these is a place where somebody gives up and does nothing instead. How far a form can be shortened without making the enquiry useless is shown in Contact forms with fewer fields.
- Three fields as the rule: name, phone number, preferred time slot. Everything else is settled in a two-minute callback.
- No drop-down for the salutation. It gives the business nothing and costs the first click at the most sensitive point.
- Error messages in words rather than red outlines: “Please add a phone number” helps, a coloured field without text does not.
- The privacy consent sits visibly above the submit button, not below it and not inside a collapsed line.
- After submission comes a sentence saying what happens next and by when – on the same page, not only in an email.
Where a form reaches its limit is appointment booking. Online booking takes calls off your desk, but with this audience it does not replace the telephone; it sits alongside it. When the effort pays off is described in the article on online appointment booking. For a site with predominantly older customers one extra rule applies: next to every booking step stands the phone number for arranging the same appointment by voice.
What a website cannot do
Address, directions and hours in plain text
An embedded map looks modern and is an empty area for part of your customer base. Someone not used to operating a map sees a section without context; if the map only loads after a click for data protection reasons, they see nothing at all at first. The answer is not to drop the map but to put a block of text above it: street and house number, town, the nearest stop with line numbers, the parking situation and one sentence about the route from there to the door. The same details belong in your Google Business Profile so that they are right outside your site as well.
Address as text
Street, house number, postcode and town on a line of their own, not only as a label inside the map image. Anyone copying it down or reading it out on the phone has to be able to see it.
Hours without special cases
Four lines for the week are enough. Deviations on public holidays go underneath in one sentence, not into a second table with footnotes.
The route to the door
Ground floor or first floor, steps or ramp, doorbell or open door. For someone with limited mobility these three details decide whether the visit happens.
The way back to a call
Below every section of detail stands the number, in case a question remains open. That is not an admission of failure but the shortest route to the job.
These details also matter to the relatives who often do the research and make the appointment. That is particularly visible in care topics, as the article on the website for a home care service shows: the page is read by the daughter and the call is made by the father. So write in a way that works for both – and skip the subheading “For relatives”, which nobody is looking for.
The question on the phone is almost never “What does it cost?”. It is “Can I just drop by?” – and it gets asked because the website failed to answer it.
What this means for the scope of your site
None of this adds up to a bigger project; it adds up to a smaller one. A site for predominantly older customers needs fewer subpages, fewer effects and less text per page – but more care in the order. Which pages are indispensable is listed in the article on the five most important pages of a website; for this audience only the weighting shifts.
- Home page with phone number, hours, one sentence about the offer and the address – in exactly that order.
- Services page in ordinary language, with the two or three points people actually ask about.
- Contact page with directions in plain text, a short form and a second mention of the phone number.
- One page about the business with a photo of the team and the shop door, because recognition counts for more here than any search engine tuning.
- Legal notice and privacy information, set in readable type and not hidden at eight point at the bottom of the page.
The effort does not sit in the technology, it sits in the text. A sentence you can read aloud once without stumbling is finished; one that makes you pause is not. That is precisely where enquiries from this audience are won or lost. If you would rather hand that part over, our website copywriting is made for it.
How to approach it
Do not start with the appearance. Start with a list of the five questions that come up most often on the phone. Those five questions are your home page; everything else arranges itself below them. If you are only just starting out, the order of the first weeks is set out in Getting online after registering a new business; if you are rebuilding an existing site, the same five questions will tell you what may stay on the home page and what belongs one level down.
After that comes the decision about scope. A site with four to six subpages, a clear structure and few elements is not the budget version for this audience, it is the right size. Which combination fits is shown in the overview of packages. Scope determines the price – and here it gets smaller rather than larger, because every additional page is one more fork in the road.
The next step
Sources and studies
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