Free Your Practice from the Cookie-Cutter Website
If you paid for a website template that’s pre-loaded with text, I recommend changing every word of it. Here's why.
You’re Not Generic, but your website might be.
On a limited budget, and with very little energy to spend on creating a website from scratch, it seems obvious… you should get yourself a ready-to-publish therapy website template, put in your photo and contact info, go live ASAP so the search engines can find you, and worry about updating it later.
But here’s the thing.
If your website looks and sounds like every other therapist’s website, it will not bring in the clients you want. (That’s from an SEO standpoint, too, because search engines like unique content and specific expertise, so your ideal client may not even see your site in search results. But at the moment we’re focused on conversion, a.k.a. whether or not your marketing approach leads to actual new referrals.)
Your therapy website needs to be tailored specifically to your practice, in order to accomplish these goals:
Convey your unique therapeutic voice, so that prospective clients quickly feel comfortable with you. This requires your own words, not a pre-written text about “how therapy works.”
Speak the language of your clients. Instead of long lists of modalities and credentials, your site must address the specific needs of your clients in the language they use.
Be memorable by making your clients feel something — relaxed, reassured, or hopeful. It’s likely that they looked at the websites of a dozen other therapists that day. If those sites all had similar words and generic designs, your website has to stand out, both visually and emotionally.
If you spend 45 minutes selecting a prefab template with auto-fill therapy text and making a couple of quick changes to personalize the homepage, your ideal client will not be able to find you. You’ll be lost in the swamp of so many other therapists who have fallen into the convenience trap.
You’d be better off getting listed on a therapist directory site and spending a few minutes completing a profile there, which you can eventually use as a way to redirect traffic to your own fully developed website. (P.S. Some therapists find this task just as daunting. If you need help with it, I can write your Psychology Today profile for you.)
Oops, you’ve already set up a prefab therapy website… Now what?
What’s done is done, but there’s a workaround — you’ll need to invest time into fully customizing the text on that site. Speak directly to your ideal client about the pain they’re facing right now, without hype or fear-based manipulation, and how you can help. Say the things to that prospective client that you would say in person.
Every hour you spend in thoughtfully crafting your website text will lead hopeful clients to spend more time looking at your site. When they linger, that’s rapport-building, which makes it easier for them to reach out and schedule.
You don’t have to go it alone.
I offer customized, affordable writing packages for your therapy website, as well as a Congruence Critique option for those who prefer to do their own writing.