Website Grader

Make sure your URL describes your business in a few short words. You want a URL that your clients will remember and resonate with who you are and what you do. Check out this article for advice on picking the best domain name for your private practice.

Not sure? Visit this site to check if your website is mobile optimized

Your logo should be placed on the home page where a visitor can see it upon arrival. When your logo is prominently placed on your site, visitors can start to begin connecting your business with what you do. Your logo will help tell your clients who you are and what you do.

You’ve already identified your business with your logo, now you need to get across what you do to your audience. Without going into much detail, you should clearly and concisely tell your audience what your purpose is. Or convey an emotion.

A great way of doing this is with quote overlays on images.

Jen Rives and Jessi Leader do a great job portraying their services and what they do with their words and photos.

If the average visitor isn’t impressed with your site when they first arrive, they aren’t likely to look around the rest of the site and get to know the amazing person that you are! In fact, studies show that humans have an average attention span of 8 seconds – less than a goldfish! This means you need to captivate them with what they want to read and see when they first arrive on your site.

It’s time for your audience to get familiarized with you! Give them a little information about yourself right on your home page, or have a call to action button enticing them to learn more about you.

It is important that you make it easy and clear for your visitors to contact you. Make sure you have your phone number, email address, or a 'Contact Me' button at the top of every page.

Is it clear where you are located? Potential clients want to make sure you are located near to them, make sure you are providing your current location somewhere that is easily accessible to your visitors. (p.s. this helps with SEO!)

Your visitors want to make a connection with you. They want to be able to trust you before they call you to schedule an appointment. When you refer to yourself in the third person, you’re distancing yourself from the content, website and most importantly the situation. Use the first person to create a connection with your reader.

Having an old, blurry or irrelevant photo of yourself on your site is an easy way to turn off a potential client that wants to make a genuine connection with you.

A call to action is meant to instruct your visitor to take immediate action. You can have CTA buttons throughout your site for things like; ‘call me now!’ or ‘click to learn more about me’. However, don’t go overboard with too many CTAs as they can overwhelm your audience!

Giving away free marketing materials to your audience such as a blog post, a checklist, an e-book or anything you can think of, will help your visitors get to know you better and in turn begin to trust you and your expertise.

Don’t go overboard with different color schemes, photos and fonts throughout your site. Keep it clean, professional and consistent. Check out Design Seeds for photo and color palette inspiration. Ashley Brown uses a few fantastic colors and photos throughout her site that help showcase her personality.

If you have a pop-up, make sure that you aren’t using more than one or your visitor may get irritated and leave. If you would rather not use pop-ups but want to promote your marketing items, think about adding in a call to action that links to what you want to promote.

Keywords can be descriptive words or phrases that you want Google to rank you for when searched. For example, if you are an LMFT, you want to use keywords throughout your site that you think a potential client will use when they search for an LMFT in their area.

You want to follow the same guidelines as #15 here. Make sure you are stating where you are located throughout the content on your site.