Dear BV: What Does My Website Need to Get Visitors to Schedule an Appointment?
“Dear BV” is a marketing advice series that answers the most popular questions from real Brighter Vision customers. Want to see your question answered in an article of “Dear BV”? Reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook!
DEAR BV:
DEAR ANDREA:
In order for a therapist website to really grab visitors and turn them into customers, two parts, in particular, have to be carefully crafted: the mechanics and the message.
When I talk about the “mechanics” of your website, I’m talking about the functionality and form of your website. For example, it’s important that your contact information is easily accessible, and that you’re including calls to action (CTAs) on each page of your site. Using appropriate website mechanics helps ensure that your visitor can glide through your website easily and greatly lessens the chance of a client not contacting you because of an avoidable technical reason, like not being able to find your phone number.
The good news is that as a Brighter Vision customer, your team of website designers already works with you during the design process to make sure website mechanics like this are top-notch.
That leaves us with the “message” of your website or the way you write and present your content throughout the site. So how do we craft a message that persuades your ideal potential clients?
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Here’s my best advice: clearly define your specialty, and then position yourself as the expert.
Recent studies have shown that one of the best indicators of whether or not a client will consider their therapy successful is how much they believe ahead of time that their clinician is qualified enough to help them.1
Get this: how much of an expert your potential clients believe you are before they even meet you has even more of an influence on therapy’s success than the model of therapy that you’re using!2
In other words, putting your therapy niche upfront and speaking on it with confidence and expertise is key to drawing in new, lasting clients through your website.
Make sure you have all your specialties listed on your website on separate webpages, but keep it to just your specialties. Spending time talking about all the generalities that you are open to treating – but that aren’t your particular area of focus – only muddies the waters of your website content.
You’ll end up seeming novice to your potential clients (believe it or not), and potentially damaging your search engine optimization (SEO) and lowering your Google ranking.
It’s a much better idea to maintain focus on the specific niche you’ve chosen when writing copy for your homepage, About Me page, specialties & services pages, and all else. Use your personal experience and speak from a place of confidence (whether or not you feel like you’re faking it) in order to build your reputation as an authority on your particular subject.
It’s important to keep in mind that when your customers are looking to see whether or not you’re enough of an “expert,” they’re not going to be looking to see how technically qualified and professional you seem. They’re looking for how much you seem to understand them and their experiences.
Show them you understand by asking rhetorical questions about problems they may be experiencing (“Is it hard to get yourself out of bed in the morning?”), or tell them you’ve seen many people get through these sorts of struggles before. Connect on a personal level and don’t be afraid of writing in second-person!
Follow these tips and focus on your area of specialization, and your website will be pulling in new clients before you know it.
Best wishes,
Brighter Vision
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Sources
1. Patterson, C. L., Anderson, T., & Wei, C. (2014). Clients’ pretreatment role expectations, the therapeutic alliance, and clinical outcomes in outpatient therapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 70(7), 673-680. doi:10.1002/jclp.22054
2. Wampold, B and Imel, Z. (2015). The Great Psychotherapy Debate: The Evidence for What Makes Psychotherapy Work. Routledge, New York