New Year, New Website!
Are you ready to jump into the new year enthusiastically? To kick off 2023 in style and tick off the goals you still need to achieve? To set the bar high and aim for (and reach) the stars?
Would you like to embrace the cyber world, reach potential clients through the Internet, and integrate the digital landscape to expand, be bulletproof, and enhance your practice and care?
We’re glad you’re here!
Therapy is vital, and people need your expertise. In our modern, ever-interconnected, and challenging world, this will not change. Demand and digital evolution make this year the perfect time to focus on — even expand — your practice and its growth. A specialized therapist website will form an integral part of your success.
The right site allows you to connect with your potential ideal clients inside and outside your local neighborhood. It oozes trustworthiness and expert information, builds rapport and relationships, and ethically attracts and woos its visitors. This leads to new client bookings, reconnection with lost clients, and other practice growth benefits; for example, media attention.
Now is the best time to design (or revamp) your private practice website!
So, how do you make your site matter? How do you know if your current website is up to par? What questions should you ask if you’re considering a new site? What do you need to ensure your website works for you? Grows your business? Helps to secure a stable future?
These six steps are vital to answering these questions:
1. A fully built-out website
A fully built-out website makes the most of a visitor’s moment with you. It can be the difference between a brief moment and building a connection that deepens into a therapeutic relationship.
We are well past the days of a website working only as a digital brochure. You desperately need to update if you only have an “about us,” “contact us,” pricing, and location.
A fully built-out website, however, enables a visitor to learn more. It acts as an ethical persuasion tool. It will become apparent if you are the right therapist to guide their recovery. Your website can knock off any competition or lingering questions when done well.
A visitor wants to learn about your practice, qualifications, experience, and expertise. To discover the conditions you are best at treating and to see your location, opening hours, and days. They want to connect virtually with you through your blog posts and consume content that provides answers and builds trust (more on this in a moment). And most importantly, they should be able to contact your practice with questions.
A great website also allows clients to complete forms, saving time and money.
Need help writing your About Me page?
Sign up for our How to Write an About Me Page E-Course!
2. A Responsive Design
We still see many unresponsive sites. A responsive design is crucial as mobile devices often access the Internet.
According to the report, Desktop vs Mobile Market Share Worldwide – November 2022, more than half of the visits conducted in the USA — that’s 50.3% — take place on a mobile device. It’s a trajectory that’s set to continue.
That means current and potential clients will likely view your site from their mobile phones. A desktop, a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone are very different sizes. The structure and design of your website must have the flexibility to suit each device. It must be “responsive.”
What does it mean for a site to have a responsive design?
The site displays according to the visitor’s device. A responsive design considers what the viewer can read and how easily a site can be consumed and navigated. The appearance of the site alters to enable ease of use.
For example, when you visit a responsive site from a mobile device, you may see the hamburger menu. A full menu won’t fit on a smartphone’s screen, so the menu items display vertically after clicking the three horizontal lines.
A non-responsive design doesn’t adapt to suit the device. It is what it is regardless of the visitor’s needs and experience. If you have a non-responsive design, your website can appear as a jumbled mess or leave critical information hidden from view when visited from a phone.
If you use a non-responsive design, it will increase your bounce rate. Visitors will land on your site and “bounce” away because of the clunky experience. And, once they bounce, there is a high chance they will not be back.
In this day and age, people not only like a responsive design, they expect it. Fail this expectation, and your business will take the hit.
3. Content that speaks to your ideal client
Your ideal client is the person to whom your website should speak. Let’s think about this in terms of sports for a moment.
Imagine the team you passionately follow — “your team” — is the Chicago Bulls. You adore and breathe their history, players, and legends; have a language, songs, nicknames, fears, and frustrations other Bulls fans know; feel like you belong around others who share your passion. Trust soars. Relationships form. You stick around. But imagine being thrown in with LA Lakers fans. Different passions, language, and history. You don’t feel like you belong; these people are not your people, so leave as quickly as you can and don’t return.
Now, for someone who doesn’t follow basketball, there’s no difference. A team is a team. But this couldn’t be further from the truth for someone on the inside. The difference is like light and day.
This is similar to when someone is seeking a therapist. They are searching for “their” therapist. For someone who knows their struggles, speaks their language, is an expert in their condition or challenge, and whom they can trust. Your job, then, is to become intimately acquainted with your following. To understand the language, know and speak to the fears and frustrations, authentically build trust and let the “right” visitors know they belong. To do this, you must know who your ideal client is.
Who is your ideal client?
You must answer this critical question with precision. Ask and answer questions like:
- What age are they?
- What is their gender?
- What challenges do they face?
- How do they talk; what exact phrases do they use?
- What frustrations do they have?
- How much do they earn?
- Where do they hang out?
- What techniques and care do they need and prefer?
Answer these questions; in great detail! Then put the learning into action.
Create website content — blog posts, information pages, and frequently asked questions, for example — that solves or eases your ideal client’s frustrations. That uses your following’s common phrases. That builds trust and rapport.
Need help marketing to your Ideal Client?
Take our Ideal Client Quiz now to receive your custom marketing tips!
In the basketball example, you can’t be both a Bulls and a Lakers super-fan. You must get off the fence and choose your side! Otherwise, you’ll be an uncommitted, unconvincing fan. To put it mildly, uncommitted and unconvincing in a website — as with a fan — is unappealing.
By deeply understanding your ideal client, you can speak to them, so they understand, connect, and gain benefit. They will know that you know them and understand their lived experience. You, not your competition, will feel like the right — maybe even the only — therapist that can help.
Tip one: How can you determine who your ideal client is? How can you connect with them? And how can you use language that ethically persuades them to contact you? Listen as therapist Kelsey Torgerson shares how she used her website to target her ideal clients with laser focus and how her practice flourished as a result.
Tip two: Read our article: Tips on Writing Copy That Attracts Your Ideal Client.
4. An active, high-quality blog
Blogging has many benefits for practice growth. There are four that can change the game. Blogging …
- provides search engines with new and valuable information, enabling your website to rank. This helps you “get found” organically and free of charge. It brings more eyeballs to your site, which, in turn, can increase client numbers.
- develops the perception that you are a leader in your field, supercharging your appeal. This attracts clientele and gets tongues wagging. It switches you from commodity to expert, lowering or eliminating price from a client’s decision-making equation. It magnetizes your attraction because people want to consult with the best.
- allows people to learn from your expertise and benefit from your advice. What an excellent way to nurture a relationship before a client ever sets foot in your practice — in real life or virtually. This boosts bookings and can smooth new client interactions.
- engages current clients and increases re-bookings.
Plus, you can speak to many when you write an awesome blog. 24/7/365. Blogging is more efficient than speaking one-to-one. Great content also increases shareability. Shares mean you can reach unexpected people through unanticipated channels.
Tip: While helpful content is imperative, so is consistency. Search engines and visitors want up-to-date content. To rank and appeal, you need to post high-quality content regularly.
5. Multiple specialty service pages
As we say in our article, Specialty Pages: How To Write Pages That Convert For Your Practice, “Any page that describes concentrations or procedures specific to you and your practice could be considered a specialty page.”
Make a list of all the concentrations or specialty services you offer clients.
Now think about each of these from your ideal client’s point of view. Keep in mind; they are looking for answers and relief. Be specific and honest about benefits and your ability to help. Remember, don’t sell the service; sell the solution.
If you have a proven therapy for treating alcohol addiction recovery, this will make an excellent specialty page. What about an evidence-based technique for navigating divorce? Absolutely!
While one person may experience alcohol addiction and divorce, they are separate challenges. Someone who requires addiction treatment needs an expert in this field, as does someone experiencing a divorce.
Creating a specific page for each specialty enables you to speak about an individual issue and talk directly to that ideal client. It also allows you to embed keywords naturally that draw attention and approval from the search engine to maximize your ranking.
Tip: Listing a single services page may be faster, but it will hinder your success in the long run. Put effort into separate pages to reap the rewards.
Not sure if your website has everything it needs?
Test it yourself with our FREE Website Grader quiz!
6. Written and designed with SEO in mind
Search engine optimization (SEO) increases your site’s visibility and rankings on search engines, allowing people to find your site.
Research published on the famed site, Backlinko, found that ranking first comes with an average click-through rate of 27.6%. That is, 27.6% of people click on the number one listed search result. The top organic result, when compared to the last result on the page, will receive the click 10x more often. If you’re not on page number one, your chances of receiving a click are almost nonexistent.
Writing and designing a site that encourages search engine love — in other words, optimizing for SEO — is essential. Your site must focus on attracting search engines’ attention — for the right reasons — to boost your website’s ranking. However, you can get struck from the rankings or become invisible if you get this wrong.
There are various ways to incorporate what is called White-Hat SEO (“good SEO”) into your site. At Brighter Vision, we use only white-hat approaches for all our client’s websites. We include quality SEO with every website package.
The result?
We enhance your findability, lessen work and financial outlay on your part, and provide expert and error-free implementation and better results.
Your next step
It’s time to get started. Your services are desperately needed, and there has never been a better time!
Brighter Vision is the ultimate marketing package for therapists, centered on the best therapist website you’ve ever had.
Please fill out the form below to learn more about our team of professionals who can help your
practice flourish like never before.
Want the beautiful therapist website you deserve? Then you’re in the perfect place.
Brighter Vision is the ultimate marketing package for therapists, centered around the best therapist website you’ve ever had. Fill out the form below to learn more about our team of professionals who can’t wait to help your practice grow like never before 🙂