Your website is one of the most valuable marketing assets you have in your private practice! It should be doing the work for you by converting visitors into clients. 

A well-designed website assures your potential clients that you're a credible private practice. It's the first impression you're giving a potential client, so you want it to be a good one. 

Recent research suggests that customer experience has surpassed both price and product as the most important differentiating factor for a brand. 

User experience is not only about making your website user-friendly but also aesthetically pleasing. 

The more user-friendly your website is, the more likely it is that potential clients will connect with your website copy and take the next step to contact you. 

So, how can you ensure that you have a well-designed website?

01. Professional & Modern Design

The design of your website should grab the attention of your site visitors without distracting them from your message. 94% of clients' first impressions are design-related!

Your use of colors and lack thereof should feel intentional. White space is not only on-trend, but it gives the content on your site room to breathe. It creates flow in your design, guiding the eye through your content. It allows your images, brand colors, and copy to stand out.

02. Structured & Organized Design

Not only do you want your design to be professional and modern, but you want it to make sense. 

Your website should be designed in a way that meets the potential client's needs before they even realize they have them. 

You want your site to feel like a reflection of you as a therapist. Having a chaotic and unorganized site can give a potential client the wrong opinion of you professionally. 

It can be helpful to ask a friend or family member to take a look at your site before you go live. They may have some useful feedback that will increase the user experience of your site. 

03. Good Copy

What is good copy?

Good copy is clear and candid. It’s authentic. It speaks directly to your ideal client and uses their terminology rather than professional jargon.  

It bridges the connection between you and your ideal client by demonstrating empathy for their pain points and sharing how you can serve to alleviate those pain points. 

Good copy is key in making your client feel seen, key in sharing your unique value, and key in converting site visitors into clients. 

04. Simple Navigation

Cluttered or complicated menu navigation can be confusing for visitors to your site.

You should aim to have a maximum of 5 items in your menu navigation, and they should all provide value to your site.

The titles of your navigation should be simple and clear. Use the title "Blog" rather than something like "Session Notes." A potential client should be able to easily navigate your site to find exactly what they're looking for.

Your website should take your clients through a journey of who you are, who you help, how you show up for your clients, and how they can reach you.

05. Easy to Find Contact Info

The goal of your website is to connect with people who need your services and convert them into clients, so it needs to be easy for these potential clients to contact you.

A great option is to include a contact form on your website. This allows potential clients to take that first step of reaching out to you without even having to leave your website. It’s a big step to reach out for help. By removing those extra steps of opening their mail program, composing a new email, and typing in your contact info, you're alleviating the pressure this potential client may be feeling.

Your contact form is a great place to link your potential clients to a resource page. To learn more about how you can create your own resource page, check out our post here.

06. Responsive Design

Responsive web design means your layout will adapt to any device or display, offering a streamlined experience. 

Let's be real, people are on their phones all the time, which means there is a high possibility that potential clients will be accessing your site from their phones. In fact, recent research has shown that more than half of the digital traffic online is coming from mobile devices and through mobile apps. 

Squarespace lets you toggle between mobile view and desktop view. This allows you to see how your web design will look on different screen sizes. 

If your website builder doesn't offer a mobile view, Experte has a mobile-friendly tool for you to test your site out to see if it's mobile-friendly. Experte will scan every page on your site and tell you whether each page is mobile-friendly or not. You’ll also see a screenshot of how each page of your site looks on mobile. You can find that tool here.

07. High-Quality Photos

Professional, high-quality photos help to elevate the look of your site and increase your level of credibility.

Having a professional photoshoot is not always in the budget, but there are ways that you can elevate an at-home photo session.

Shoot in natural light with a blank canvas behind you. Using the focus feature on your phone or camera, make sure the lens is focusing on you, not on items in the background.

08. Logo

A logo is so much more than an image that sits at the top of your website. It's a point of recognition for your brand and your practice for clients and potential clients.

It grabs the attention of visitors to your site and it distinguishes you from other private practices.

A good logo is simple. It’s easy for site visitors to know what your business is just by looking at your logo. It should be easily recognizable and versatile.

Your logo should be timeless. When you envision your practice 10, 20, 30 years down the road, will your logo still feel effective?

Your logo should also be appropriate for your intended audience. Use font, graphics, and colors that suit your niche population.

09. SEO

To convert site visitors to clients, the first step is actually getting them on your site.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization; it's the process of getting free, organic traffic to your site by increasing your site's visibility in search engines.

When someone searches "therapist in (your city)" or "(your specialty) therapist," you want your website showing up on the first page of results.

There are tweaks you can make to your website to optimize your site's visibility.

An easy first step is to use keywords that describe your business, the same keywords someone would Google when searching for you, in your URL.

Another quick tip is to re-name the images on your website with your keywords. While Google can read the copy on your site, it can't read images. Rather than having Google read "IMG_3912," you want to provide Google with the image's context, for example, "(Your Location) (Your Specialty) Therapist (Your Name)." Now Google can connect a location, a niche, an occupation, and your name to the image.

For more SEO tips, we've created a free SEO checklist that you can access here.