Your Website Isn’t About You
Many therapists make the mistake of treating their private practice website like a resume. Here’s what you should do instead.
If it’s hard to write about yourself… Well, here’s some good news.
Chances are, you’ll get more new referrals from your website when you write less about yourself.
Building a therapy website from the ground up is quite an accomplishment. It takes a lot of decision-making and sheer hard work to get there. And it feels personal, because it’s a website about you — your training and background, your therapeutic interests, your personality and counseling style.
But your website isn’t actually about you at all. It’s about your clients.
Your private practice website doesn’t exist to showcase your accomplishments, or even to sell your services to prospective clients.
The purpose of your website is to clarify two things:
who you treat, and
what they can expect from you.
Everything else is supplemental.
Pro tip: It’s not a resume.
Many therapists make the mistake of treating their websites like a resume.
On one level, that makes sense. Your site might contain a lot of the same kinds of information as your resume. And a resume is designed to get you hired (by an employer), just as the website for your therapy practice is designed to get you hired (by new clients).
But the similarity ends there.
Why? Because employers, when they hire you, are operating from a place of power. They might ultimately make a hiring decision based on fit or personality, but that happens after logically weighing all the relevant factors. Information about your background, credentials, and career highlights is extremely relevant to an employer’s decision to hire you.
In contrast, when potential clients come to your website, they are in pain. Clients in pain may make an effort at logic-based comparison shopping, but if things don’t “feel right,” they leave and look elsewhere.
Clients shop intuitively, not logically.
Think about the decisions you made when you were setting up your office space and waiting area.
Sure, you chose furniture and artwork that you enjoy — this is your workspace, after all — but there’s a good chance that you were also thinking about how each element would make your clients feel. Even for telehealth, you would make some deliberate choices about your background or what clients would be able to see in your surroundings. In setting up your office, whether physical or virtual, you tried proactively to put clients at ease.
Your website needs to be thoughtfully curated in the same way.
Yes, it offers information about you and your services, so that potential clients can discern whether you’re the right therapist for them. But ultimately, clients don’t choose a therapist based on logical information.
Clients choose a therapist based on how that person makes them feel.
Potential therapy clients are looking for the person who will make them feel better as soon as possible. Here’s how they know they’ve found that person:
They feel hopeful.
They feel witnessed and acknowledged.
They feel affirmed as an individual with unique needs, but also relieved that they’re not the only one going through this.
As a therapist, you know that therapeutic interventions within a client session are designed to meet the client’s needs, not yours. The same holds true for your website.
Your blog isn’t about you, and neither is your website’s homepage. Even your “About” page isn’t truly about you — it’s about what your ideal clients need to hear so that they know you're the one.
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