Take Your Therapist Website to the Next Level with an Embedded Secure Web Form
So you’ve got your website up, and you’ve filled the homepage with genuine, personable content that lets potential clients know who you are as a therapist. You’ve illustrated your site with professional photos, and you’ve been regularly posting helpful content on your blog. Your website is looking pretty good if you do say so yourself.
What more can you do to fully make use of your online office space?
How convenient would it be for an ideal client to visit your website, learn all about you and your specialties as a therapists, and right when they realize you’re the therapist for them, all they have to do is drop their name and a few pieces of information into the web form that’s embedded right on your home page?
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It might be time to think about embedding a secure web form directly into your site.
Full disclosure, I’m the Marketing Manager for Hushmail and right now, we’re so excited to tell our customers about a new product – Hush Secure Forms. Hushmail has been providing encrypted email services since 1999. Now we also offer the ability to easily create secure web forms to take the place of commonly used paper forms. They’re simple to build and customize, requiring no knowledge of code, and embedding a form directly into your website involves only a few steps.
Why use secure web forms?
In today’s post I’m going to walk you through the steps to embed a form into your website, but first, let’s consider why you should consider using secure web forms in your practice.
Sometimes it’s hard to get away from paper. We’ve all been there. Paper is tangible, and it often gives us a feeling of greater security. However, paper forms are also more challenging to organize, and they aren’t as efficient as web forms, or even as reliable when you consider how subject they are to human error. If you use a secure web form service that is HIPAA compliant, web forms are every bit as secure as paper forms – even more so. Web forms also give you the benefit of being able to access client information anywhere and anytime. Not to mention how much easier it is to decipher web forms than handwritten ones.
If you still find the idea of web forms intimidating (what about all the code you need to know?), read on.
Hush Secure Forms does all the work for you. You don’t have to know a thing about code. Our drag-and-drop form builder allows you to build a form in minutes. If you want an even simpler process, you can choose a template from the template directory we’re growing to include the most commonly used forms in the behavioral health field. We’re even adding calculated forms such as the PHQ-9, which screens for depression. Clients fill the form out with numeric values, and, once submitted, the form automatically calculates the client’s score.
When you build a form and publish it, we host it on our secure website, and you can link to it from your social media pages, website, or email signature. Or, you can embed your form directly into your website, allowing new clients to enter their information immediately after reading about your practice.
The process to embed a form is simple, involving just a few steps. If you’re using a form service other than Hush Secure Forms, the steps should be similar. We note that some non-Brighter Vision website builders are not compatible with embedding our forms. If you have questions along the way, feel free to reach out to our Customer Care Team for assistance.
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4 simple steps to embed a secure web form into your website
1. Make sure your website uses SSL security
If you have a Brighter Vision website, then you don’t have to worry! Your Brighter Vision site is already secured with an SSL certificate, free of charge.
If you’re not a Brighter Vision customer and you’re not sure if you have an SSL certificate, look in the URL and make sure it starts with https:// rather than http:// or something else. You’ll also see a lock icon to the left of your URL. Click on the icon, and you’ll find all of the certificate information.
There are many reasons to have an SSL certificate – two being HIPAA compliance and better Google ranking. So if you don’t seem to have an SSL certificate, check with your web hosting service to find out how you can get one.
2. Get a Hushmail account
First things first, if you don’t already have an account, you’ll need one to access Hush Secure Forms. Our Hushmail for Healthcare account allows you to scale up or down depending on how many forms you need. The account comes with much more than just web forms so take a good look at the benefits before you subscribe. You can try out Hushmail for Healthcare risk-free for 60 days.
3. Build a secure web form
Next, build your form. As we mentioned, you can do this yourself or customize one of our templates with your photo, bio, and contact information. Here are a couple of links that will help you get started:
Build a customized, secure web form from a template
A quickstart guide to Hush Secure Forms
The first form you’ll probably want to use is a Request an Appointment Form , and we have one that can get you started in the template directory. Embellish it with extra fields or leave it as it is. How creative you get with your forms is entirely up to you. (We love it when our customers tell us about unique web forms they build.)
4. Embed the form directly into your website
Once you’ve published the form, return to the main forms list. You’ll find three dots next to the form you just created. Click on those dots to get the Embed secure form option.
Then copy and paste the snippet of code into the HTML code for your website wherever you’d like the form to appear.
It’s easier than you might think. In the admin dashboard for your website, choose the page and the view that reveals that page’s code. If you want the form to appear at the bottom of your homepage, then paste the HTML snippet directly after the homepage content.
That’s it! You now have a secure web form embedded directly into your website that your clients can start using immediately to get in touch with you. All of their communications will be encrypted and HIPAA compliant just like Hushmail email, and you’ll receive their responses directly in your inbox.
Want to try out Hush Secure Forms risk-free for 60 days?
Sign up for Hushmail for Healthcare today. Anabeli and her team at Hushmail are always our go-to recommendation for secure electronic communications.
And if you’re looking for help building a beautiful website for your therapeutic practice, there’s no one better than Brighter Vision.
If you’d like to learn more about why we’re the best, fill out the form below and a member of our Customer Happiness team will reach out to you. 🙂