How Modern Web Design Helps Mental Health Practices Earn Client Trust

For website visitors, your site is the virtual reception area for your practice. Therapy websites need to clearly explain vital information, be easy to navigate, and convey a sense of your practice’s values and style.

This is a lot to accomplish, and chances are you’d much rather have a face-to-face conversation with your potential clients than spend all your time designing a website! Since many people now go online to find a therapist or counselor, though, your website design is the first impression for your practice. 

We’ll cover all the elements that need to work together to create a smooth, cohesive therapist website design that guides potential clients toward choosing your therapy practice. 

WordPress Development and Mental Health Practices

WordPress is the industry standard among customized website builders. When creating a website that uses WordPress for therapists, social workers, or clinics, we recommend focusing on a few factors:

• Security: Your patients’ electronic health records (EHR) and any payment information need to be securely stored
• User experience (UX): Reaching out for help is hard. Your website shouldn’t make it harder. 
• Discoverability: If people don’t know that your services exist, they can’t use them. Search engine optimization (SEO) boosts your brand presence online and helps patients find you.

Not sure how your current website measures up against these metrics? Check now with a free comprehensive website audit from SEO Design Chicago. 

Joomla Development and Design for Telehealth Mental Health Companies

A therapeutic or mental health website based on Joomla can be a great choice for telehealth companies. The number of people accessing mental health care online has skyrocketed in recent years, thanks to a combination of normalization due to the pandemic, better technology with Zoom and similar platforms, and better patient booking systems. 

Joomla can be a great choice for telehealth mental health companies because it has top-notch security, protecting your patient and practitioner data. Our programmers also like that it has a number of built-in SEO tools that make it easy to get your site quickly indexed on search engines, which is where most of your referrals will come from if you’re running a telehealth mental health service.

Get in touch for a free audit to see how a customized Joomla site might be the right choice for you.

Squarespace Development and Design for Psychologists

Squarespace is another popular choice for psychologists and counselors. You can use its drag-and-drop interface to design a homepage and some basic service pages, without the need to learn HTML or CSS. 

It also includes a useful built-in email integration that lets you design and send newsletters, email marketing, and important updates directly from your website’s CMS. 

Squarespace does not have as many SEO capabilities as other CMS platforms, however, so we do recommend having a professional optimize your pages to ensure that your brand-new website is getting indexed by search engines and properly displayed to people searching for psychologists in their area. 

HTML5 Development and Design for Specialized Programs 

Specialized programs face additional challenges communicating their mission, treatments, and accessibility to patients and caregivers who might be undergoing a crisis. Addiction-treatment centers and programs, in-patient care facilities, trauma recovery, PTSD, and veteran care programs — each of these needs tailor-made communications designed to reach their particular patient groups. 

Regardless of which CMS your website currently uses, it is most likely built on a programming language called HTML5. Our HTML5 coding and design team has over a decade of design expertise and intimate knowledge of how to structure and update websites to ensure a smooth visitor experience. This ultimately builds trust with your prospective patients, who will see that you put the same level of care into every aspect of their experience with your practice.

Shopify Development and Design for Private Practice Psychologists

An unprofessional-looking website can quickly drive away potential patients from your private practice. While most CMS platforms now offer attractive templates to get you started, people will notice if your site takes too long to load or doesn’t have updated, accurate information. Worst of all, a website that lacks rigorous security and updates could be vulnerable to data loss or theft.

If you host your practice’s website on Shopify, you need added security and maintenance to make the most of its powerful financial and data protection capabilities. 

Check how your website is performing with a complimentary e-commerce analysis. 

Geo Landing Pages for Large Mental Wellness Organizations

If your organization has offices or practitioners spread out across a large geographic area, then geotargeted landing pages can be a useful tool to bridge the gap between general and specific information for your practice. 

For example, a large mental wellness practice network spread across the Midwest might have centers in Cincinnati, Louisville, and Indianapolis, as well as smaller cities. When people search for services, a geotargeted landing page will automatically update based on the searcher’s current location to display information relevant to their nearest practice.

This makes it much easier for people to take the next step in pursuing services, because they don’t have to waste time clicking around your main website or fiddling with search filters to try to find contact or practitioner information that’s actually relevant to them.

Dynamic Landing Pages for Holistic Therapy Centers

Dynamic landing pages are a surprisingly powerful tool for connecting your therapy center with the right patients. When a potential client searches for a particular term, like “holistic therapy near me” or “alternative therapists,” a landing page is the page they “land” on when they click on your link or practice name.

These landing pages can be coded so that they display a different call to action (CTA) based on the particular search query or geographic location of the searcher. For example, a search for “alternative therapy for women” could display content that focuses on services meeting women’s needs. A search for “holistic therapy for teens” could focus on flexible scheduling to make therapy work around real-world teens’ busy school and sports schedules. 

This kind of personalization makes it more likely that potential patients will click on the link and book services with your center.

Application Development for Large Wellness Practices

Once your online booking systems are running smoothly, a customized application is usually the next step for a large wellness practice. Your own app empowers you to include as many features as you want, and a way to deliver personalized content directly to your patients.

Having an app on their phone that regularly sends them reminders is also a good way to ensure that patients continue to make it to their sessions. If you offer telehealth appointments, a customized app is a great way to make sure that the technology actually works when it’s time to speak with your patients, rather than relying on third-party platforms that can change their prices or experience downtime at any time. 

Our team has experience working with companies and health practitioners of all sizes on customized application design. Schedule a free call with our team today to discuss your goals for growing your wellness practice! 

FAQs: How to Build a Website to Grow Your Practice

Web design for therapists is more complicated than for most other businesses. Not only do you have all the standard considerations to worry about — like UX and SEO — but you also need to address privacy concerns and reassure potential clients that your website is a safe, welcoming space to reach out. 

Take a look at some of the best practices in web design that make it easier for potential clients to have a positive experience with your practice — before they even meet you! 

What makes a good therapy website design?

Graphic design communicates even more than the text on your website. Everything from the fonts to the images on your website should be appropriate for your prospective clients. For example, if you specialize in play therapy, a bright color palette will help clients who might be feeling overwhelmed at booking services for their children. 

Accessibility and clear navigability are central. If you serve older clients, consider a large font. For younger patients, a mobile-first design is crucial, as most people are comfortable booking appointments on their phones. A conversion-focused design keeps important information like “request a consultation” front and center. 

Finally, HIPAA considerations are crucial on a website. You should never post past clients’ names along with positive reviews, and your website should protect all patient data with frequent secure backups and SSL certificates.

Which website platform is best for therapists — WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix?

When choosing a platform, it’s important to consider future goals and scalability. You don’t want to redesign a new website from scratch each time you need to add additional functionality to your site. 

All three platforms have plugins that will enable clients to schedule online and accept secure payments. Wix has some superior email integration and SEO tools, while WordPress offers the best in scalability, since it’s essentially a sandbox that can be customized to do whatever you need.

Squarespace is favored for its plug-and-play templates that get you up and running quickly, including a number of therapist website examples. 

Ultimately, the CMS you choose will depend on the size of your practice and your future goals. Our team can help therapists, LCSWs, clinics, and counselors find the right fit for their needs. 

How can my therapy website help me attract more clients?

The design of your website can help potential clients find you more quickly and easily. Pages detailing the services you offer should be optimized for relevant keywords, tags, images, and code so that potential clients are directed straight to the relevant service page matching their concerns. 

Once on your site, the layout and design should turn visitors into clients. Make sure leads can easily find the information they’re looking for through clear navigation menus. At SEO Design Chicago, we specialize in conversion-focused design. This means embedding an attention-grabbing CTA on all your relevant pages that will make the next step clear for prospective patients, without seeming pushy. 

All the small details work together to expertly encourage people to respond to your CTAs. Everything from online booking forms to your contact page and email list signup opt-in should be clear, but non-coercive. This makes it easy for future clients to engage with you without feeling pressured.

Do mental health practices need custom landing pages for different services or locations?

Customized landing pages make it simple for people to find exactly what they’re looking for without extensive searching. People are now accustomed to zero-click searching, which means that they don’t want to spend time clicking around your menu to find what specific services different practitioners offer at different locations.

Dynamic landing pages can cut through this problem. Each variation of the page can be tied to a specific service or specialization. So, for example, you might have a parent landing page that links to your services as a pediatric psychiatrist. Then, the header and content can shift to match searches for each specific approach to therapy, like “art therapist,” “talk therapy,” or “animal therapy.” 

Similarly, geotargeted landing pages update based on the location of the person who visits them. So, someone searching “best therapist in Raleigh” won’t get results for Charlotte. 

These types of landing pages can also give a significant boost to your local SEO rankings, too, because they align so precisely with what a specific group of searchers is looking for. 

How much does it cost to design and maintain a professional therapy website?

A professionally designed private practice website serves as the foundation of your business. While you can use a free drag-and-drop website builder, these platforms are generally less customizable and offer limited functionality.

Custom-designed websites often cost a few thousand dollars. That said, they provide a solid basis for adding on any future digital marketing efforts — if you don’t have an appealing, easily navigable, conversion-focused website, there’s really no point in creating ads or social media content to point back to it. 

Creating websites that reflect your value and services, that are optimized for search, and that turn visitors into clients is what we do. All of our services are scalable, so if you want to start out working with a web designer and eventually expand into more digital advertising, you can do that as your marketing budget allows. 

 

Get in touch with our experienced web design and maintenance team today to get a customized quote for a therapy website that speaks directly to the right clients!