Your website may have served you well for years, but is it as effective as it could be? If your site isn't coming up in search engine listings or your phone isn't ringing with inquiries from potential new clients as much as you'd like, it might be time for a digital makeover, says Jaswant Pujari, co-founder and chief executive officer of Therasoft, which provides marketing, website and practice management software solutions for mental health professionals.
"These days, just having a website isn't good enough," Pujari says. "You need a digital marketing strategy that includes a blog, a social media platform and a call to action."
Your digital plan is more essential than ever because now more than 70 percent of consumers search for health information online, according to the Pew Research Center. In addition, 77 percent of people surveyed use online reviews as the first step in finding a new health-care provider, according to a 2015 survey of 1,500 patients led by the research firm Software Advice.
This year, refreshing your website is particularly important for psychologists in light of new requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act (see sidebar).
Where do you start? Pujari and other IT experts, as well as tech-savvy clinicians, share their tips for revamping your website to boost your practice.
Focus on your ideal client
Too many practitioners make the mistake of trying to create a website—and a practice, for that matter—that tries to speak to and serve everyone, says Perry Rosenbloom, of Brighter Vision, a technology company that builds and hosts websites for mental health professionals. Instead, it's best to concentrate on whom you want to work with, the issues they're struggling with and why they should come to you. That way, you are maximizing how search engines can find you. Brighter Vision offers an Ideal Client Worksheetopens in new window that therapists can use to help them identify their ideal client, Rosenbloom notes.
"Having a specific page for each specialty and discussing how you help clients in each of these areas is more effective at driving traffic to your page," he says.
Help clients find you with great content
To further improve how high your website shows up on Google or other search engines when potential patients search for help, concentrate on search engine optimization (SEO) by including three to six keywords in the content of every page, including information on your location, the services you provide, symptoms, causes and therapy treatments, Pujari says. So, for example, if you specialize in treating anxiety and depression among children, include sections on your website with keywords that inform visitors about how you work with the family on behavioral techniques to help a child change negative thoughts into more positive, effective ways of thinking.
Blogging about topics related to your specialty area can also help boost your SEO, he adds, but it's crucial to blog regularly if you're going to start.
"Stale content leads nowhere, so it is important to blog frequently and appropriately," Pujari says. If you don't have the time to blog regularly, hire someone to do it. Several of the therapist website design companies (see list below) offer packages that include blogging assistance.
Experts also recommend that practitioners focus on writing their website's meta description. This refers to the 160-character description that pops up under your website link in a Google listing. In it, psychologists should tell the reader about their specialties and the populations with whom they typically work.
Clean design is essential
Perhaps the most essential rule of web design is to keep it simple and uncluttered, says Pujari. Busy art or too many choices on your navigation bar, for example, can confuse users and lead them to look elsewhere.
You should also consider how visitors actually view your page. Eye-tracking studies, including one conducted in 2006 by the Nielsen Norman Groupopens in new window, have found that when we look at online content, our eyes often move in an F-shaped pattern. That's why IT experts recommend that your most important content be at the top of the page.
Also, make your pages or blog more readable by having well-formulated headings that describe what the content below discusses, and paragraphs that divide your writing into smaller bits, Pujari says.
Finally, include images on as many of your webpages as possible, says Ryan Beale, CEO and founder of Therapy.Live, which provides a web hosting, practice management and telehealth platform for mental health professionals.
"Some research has shown a dramatic improvement in search engine optimization, article reading and article sharing on a site simply by adding a single image," Beale says.
You can add a pertinent image of your own that fits the topic, or purchase an image from a stock image library, which can also help drive traffic to your site when you tag it with your keywords. Be sure to scale the image size correctly to reduce page-loading time, a task WordPress and other templated website design platforms can help you do, Pujari says.
Engage your audience
Adding video is another way to drive traffic to your site, says psychologist and entrepreneur Russ Riendeau, PhD.
"Video is the one thing that the Google search engines will always look for before they look for anything else," Riendeau says.
"These days, making an introductory video of yourself briefly explaining who you are and what your practice is about is very simple to do, and it gives people an immediate sense as to whether they like you or not."
Social media is also critical to helping potential clients get to know you, IT experts say. For one, it's another place to share your blog posts and promote your website address—and these links will also help increase SEO, Pujari says. In addition, you can also use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to share articles your clients might find helpful—a practice that is most effective when you quickly describe why you found an article or social media post intriguing.
To stay in compliance with APA's Ethics Code, however, it's important that you never put client information out on social media in any way.
Make your website mobile friendly
Smartphones and tablets are now used more than traditional desktop computers for web browsing, according to a 2016 study by the web analytics firm StatCounter. That's why it's important to be sure your website uses responsive design software, which detects a visitor's screen size and orientation and automatically changes the content layout to be reader friendly.
Responsive design requires the practitioner—or the website company he or she is using—to modify the underlying CSS, a language that describes the style of an HTML document.
Hire an expert
If you feel overwhelmed by the technology, or just don't have the time to update and manage your website, seek outside help. There are outsourcing options for every budget (see list).
"We can't expect clinicians to be digital marketing experts or webmasters," Pujari says. "It's relatively inexpensive and worth saving your time and sanity to hire someone who does this type of work every day."
Need more insights before you start? Therasoft and other companies that specialize in designing psychologists' websites host user forums, where you can post questions to get ideas on how fellow therapists have worked through their digital strategies.
"This really allows us to provide our users with more of a community feel, and allows them to learn from others who have been in their shoes,"
Pujari says.
