How to make a therapist website

If you are looking to DIY your website in this guide we will show you how to get started.

Step 1: Obtain your domain name

Before you get started you will need to buy your domain name, you can do this through any domain register. Here are our recommendations

• IONOS
• 123 reg
• Hostgator

Each of these will charge different rates so pick the best one suited for you. You can get good deals for the first year of your domain so have a look around for the best deal.

Step 2: Target Audience

Your website is not for you, it is for your audience. Use the below infographic to create an ideal client avatar, fill out each section as much as possible this will help you throughout building your website.

Step 3: What is the goal of the website?

Figuring out the main goal of a website may seem simple but it is crucial to get right.

This will help you decide what template to use later and if that aligns with your goal.

Some goals might be:

• Generate more website leads
• Build brand awareness
• Make it easy for my current clients to access information
• Make it easy for my client to book again
• Provide my clients with more information about me and my practice

Once you have one goal in mind think about how you are going to achieve this.

How you might complete goals

• Get more leads - I will direct potential clients to the Contact Us page where there will be a simple form that collects their name, email and what kind of help they are looking for. Once I receive this form submission I will email them and set up a time for an initial phone call.
• Build brand awareness - I will educate my clients by creating a blog where I will share my insights as a mental health care professional. I will create help sheets for them to download that also capture their email. I will then market to them using the emails.
• Access to information - I will build a membership section where my clients will be able to access information about themselves such as previous session notes and links to resources I have mentioned to them. Later I can connect this up so that payments can be taken online for any outstanding invoices.
• Make it easy to book with me - I will add a booking integration that makes it easy for new and current clients to book with me without me having to tell them the dates I am free. I will also take payment when this booking happens to align with my boundaries.
• Provide more information about myself - I will add services and an about page that details what I am a specialist in and my credentials. I will upload my certificates and make it easy for people to get in touch with me through social media.

Now you might be thinking “But I want to do all of those” and that is great, however, focus on one goal at a time otherwise you will be confused and so will your potential clients. Websites need to be simple and easy to use.

Step 4 Select a website template.

There are many website templates out there ranging from free to thousands. At Pivotal-Flow we use WebFlow to create our websites so we will be using this as an example however you could also make your website on Wix, Squarespace or WordPress. All of these platforms will have templates but it depends on your budget. With that in mind here are 10 webflow templates for therapists.

We recommend selecting one that reflects you and your brand. If you want to read more about website design we have written a blog here.

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Step 5 Writing your content

Before starting to write your content ask yourself what is your tone of voice. Answer some of the questions below to help you create a tone of voice.

1. What emotions do you want your audience to feel?
2. How does your brand’s personality align with its purpose?
3. What differentiates you from competitors?
4. How formal or informal should your tone be?
5. What role does your website play in your overall brand strategy? (this comes back to your goal)

Write these answers down and then summarise them into 2 sentences or less.

Navbar links

You will need to write content that aligns with your goal. For example’s sake, we will go with “Generate more website leads”.

A navbar generally has these 3 things.

• A logo that links back to the home page
• A list of links
• A Call to action button

1. Update your logo by clicking on the image and uploading your logo from your computer.
2. Go through the list of links and remove any links that you either do not need or will build that page at a later stage. A template will come with the pages already pre-built but you can launch without linking all of these if you so wish to.
3. Edit your call to action button - For this goal, I would change the text to something like “Get in touch today” or “Let’s Talk”

Homepage content

Change your title to something that clearly states what you do. “Helping You Break Free from Negative Patterns with CBT”. This focuses on the client getting help and highlights that you specialise in CBT.

Straight after that, you will normally have some smaller text where you can talk about this in more detail. Then there will be a button and this should be linked to your goal. In this instance “Get in touch” - which then links to the contact page.

Depending on the template you selected you will then have different sections to fill out and it should guide you on what sort of content to add/change.

Remember to always refer back to your goal, ideal client and tone of voice.

You can use AI to help you if you get stuck but make sure to add your tone of voice sentence to your AI prompt.

AI prompt: Write me content for a services section on a home page for a therapist who specializes in individual and group therapy. The tone should be friendly, trustworthy and smart.

Footer content

Go through each of the links on your footer and add/remove the ones you need. For example, you might not have an X account so this should be removed from the footer. Each website should have 3 legal pages Privacy policy, Terms & Conditions and Cookie policy.

Your template should come with these pre-installed but if not add the links to them in the footer and create the content for each page.

Contact page

It can feel like a big step getting in touch with a therapist or counsellor so at the top of this page clearly state what will happen once they get in touch with you.

Example: “What happens next”

Once you have submitted the form below, I will be in touch with you via email to set up an initial call. The call lasts 20 minutes and is completely free, it is a chance for you and I to get to know each other a bit better and discuss if I am the right therapist for you.

Other pages

Once you have your homepage content written this should be your anchor for the other pages, normally sections on the homepage will link to the other pages and thus act as a launch pad into what you should write about.

7. Imagery

Imagery can be important on a website as it helps potential clients get a sense of who you are make sure you change any images that should be headshots of you or ones that do not align with you and your practice. You can use websites such as Unsplash to find free images (you should note the author in the caption or alt text). Do not copy images randomly from the web because you can get caught for copyright issues which will result in you having to take them down and potentially fined.

To be on the safe side use images you created yourself or pay for an image service.

8. SEO optimisation

Now this is a big section to go through, one we are going to make a blog on in the future. However, these are the top 5 crucial things to get right in our opinion.

1. Make sure each page meta title and description have been filled out in the page settings
2. Make sure each image has alt text added
3. Make sure your page is indexable
4. Go through all the links and make sure they go somewhere
5. Make sure your analytics has been set up

9. Launching

Phew, so far you have

• Brought a domain name
• Discovered who your ideal client is
• Figured out your goal for the website
• Found a website template you love
• Written great content to attract clients
• Selected images that reflect you and your brand
• Corrected crucial SEO tasks

And now you are ready to launch your website into the world. This is simple to do in Webflow. Under the publish tab on the top right you should be able to see a link “add a custom domain”

Click on this and it will open your site settings.

Then you want to click on the blue button that also says “Add a custom domain”

Select “Quick connect domain” which will open a popup and guide you through adding your domain. You will likely need to log in to the service where you brought the domain in step 1.

Once this is connected head to the SEO settings on the left-hand side and tick sitemap indexing to on.

This will make sure the site creates a sitemap.xml which can be accessed by going to your domain https://my-domain.com/sitemap.xml this allows robots to crawl and index your site.

This is also where you can add your Google Analytics tag into your site but bear in mind you will need a cookies banner if you plan to use this.

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Check your website

Go to your domain and make sure the website is loading how you would expect. Go through it one more time and make sure there are no spelling mistakes, no broken links or broken images. Ask your family and friends to also access it and highlight anything that might be wrong. Fix any outstanding issues and then you are ready to post about it on social media and with your contacts.

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Step 10 Congratulations

You have built your website, give yourself a pat on the back! Moving forward you could:

• Add more pages
• Learn how to test your site performance
• Learn how to add your website to Google Search Console & Bing places
• add your business to Google My Business and any other local directories
• Improve your SEO
• Create blogs to keep your website fresh

But for now, take a break you have something to launch yourself from and that is brilliant! Let us know how you got on, we will be happy to help if you get stuck or suggest what you should do next.

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Seems like a lot? Building your website can be time-consuming and frustrating.

Let us do the hard work for you. Book a call with us today!

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