Is your counselling website still working for your practice?
When you first set up your counselling website, the main goal may simply have been to get something online. Perhaps you built it yourself when you started private practice, used a template to get up and running quickly, or created something that suited your practice perfectly well at the time.
Over time, your practice may change considerably. You might develop particular areas of interest, change the way you work, increase your fees, introduce new services or become much clearer about the clients you most want to support. If your website hasn't developed alongside your practice, it may no longer represent your work as well as it once did.
This doesn't necessarily mean you need a completely new website. Sometimes updating the content, reorganising a few pages or making the next steps clearer can make a significant difference. However, it is worth reviewing your website from time to time to make sure it still reflects your practice and gives potential clients the information they need.
Here are some areas to consider when reviewing whether your counselling website is still working well for your practice.
Does your website still reflect your practice?
Think about when you first created your website and compare your practice then with your practice now.
Are you working with the same types of clients? Do you offer the same services? Are there particular issues or areas of work you have become more experienced in? Has your therapeutic approach developed?
It is quite common for a counsellor's practice to become more focused over time, while their website continues to describe what they offer in very broad terms.
Take a look through each page and consider whether the content still feels relevant. Pay particular attention to your homepage and services pages, as these are often where potential clients will begin to decide whether your practice could be right for them.
Your website should give an accurate picture of the practice you have today, rather than the one you had when you first launched it.
Do you feel confident sharing your website?
If someone asks for your website address, are you happy to send it to them, or do you find yourself explaining that it's a little out of date or that you've been meaning to change it?
Perhaps the design no longer feels right for your practice, the wording feels awkward, your photographs are several years old or there are parts of the website you know aren't working particularly well.
Your website doesn't need to be perfect, but ideally you should feel confident that it represents you and your practice professionally. If you regularly feel the need to explain or apologise for it, it may be worth identifying the particular aspects you're unhappy with and deciding whether they can be improved.
Is it clear who you help and what you offer?
When someone arrives on your homepage, they should be able to understand fairly quickly who you are, what you offer and whether your practice might be relevant to them.
This can become less clear as a practice grows. You might start with a relatively simple counselling service and gradually add couples work, supervision, specialist areas of support or other services. Each addition may make sense individually, but over time the website can become harder for a new visitor to understand.
Try looking at your homepage as though you know nothing about your practice and consider whether someone can easily work out:
who you work with
what you can help with
whether you work online, in person or both
where you are based
what someone should do if they would like to work with you
If some of this information is difficult to find, think about whether it could be communicated more clearly or brought into a more prominent position.
Is your website still trying to speak to everyone?
When you first start private practice, it can make sense to keep your website fairly broad. You may not yet know which types of clients you will work with most often or which areas of counselling you will naturally become drawn towards.
As you gain experience, you may find that your practice develops in a particular direction. Perhaps much of your work is now with people experiencing anxiety, bereavement or relationship difficulties, or you have developed a particular interest in trauma, neurodivergence or working with parents.
Your website can develop with you by communicating these areas more clearly and speaking more directly to the people you particularly want to support.
This doesn't mean narrowing your website so much that everyone else feels excluded. It is more about helping potential clients understand your experience and recognise when your particular way of working may be relevant to them.
Is important information easy to find?
Websites often grow gradually. You add a paragraph here, a new service there, perhaps some FAQs or another item in the navigation. After a while, information can become repeated across several pages or end up somewhere a visitor wouldn't naturally think to look.
Rather than continuing to add more content, it can be useful to review the structure of the website as a whole.
Think about some of the questions a potential client is likely to have when they visit:
Can you help with what I'm experiencing?
What is it like to work with you?
Do you offer online or in-person sessions?
Where are you based?
How much does counselling cost?
Do you currently have availability?
What happens when I get in touch?
Then check how easily someone can find the answers.
A clear website isn't necessarily one with very little content. What matters is that the information is organised in a way that makes sense to the person using it.
How does your website work on a phone?
Potential clients won't necessarily be sitting at a computer when they find your website. They may be searching on their phone during a lunch break, on the train or at home in the evening.
It's worth checking your own website on a phone from time to time rather than relying on how it looks on your laptop.
Look at whether:
the text is comfortable to read
buttons and links are easy to use
images display properly
paragraphs feel manageable on a smaller screen
spacing looks consistent
the navigation is easy to understand
forms are straightforward to complete
You don't need to understand the technical side of responsive web design to notice when something feels awkward or difficult to use.
Is there a clear next step?
Potential clients may arrive at your website at different points in their decision-making process. Some may simply want to understand the type of counselling you offer, while others may already be looking for your fees, availability or contact details.
A well-structured website should help them move between this information without having to work out where to go next.
For example, after reading about how you work, you might direct someone towards practical information about sessions and fees. From there, they can move naturally to your contact page when they feel ready to make an enquiry.
It can help to look at your website as a journey rather than a collection of individual pages. Think about where someone might arrive, what they are likely to want to know next and how easy it is for them to contact you when they're ready.
Is your website easy for you to update?
Your website will inevitably need to change over time. You might need to update your fees, change your availability, add a qualification, update your photographs or introduce a new service.
If every small change requires technical help, or you're worried that changing something will affect the design, it becomes much easier for information to remain out of date.
For a private counselling practice, being able to make straightforward updates yourself can make maintaining your website much easier. This is one of the reasons I use Squarespace for the websites I design, as once the website has been set up properly, routine content changes can be relatively simple to manage.
Can potential clients find your website?
Having a website doesn't necessarily mean potential clients will be able to find it through Google.
If appearing in search results is important to your practice, your website needs to give search engines clear information about what you do, who you work with and, where relevant, where you're based.
The language counsellors naturally use on their websites can sometimes be quite general. Phrases about providing a safe, supportive or non-judgemental space may be important to prospective clients, but they don't necessarily tell a search engine much about the services you offer.
This doesn't mean filling your pages with repetitive or unnatural keywords. Your content should always be written primarily for the people reading it, while clearly describing your services, areas of work and location where appropriate.
There are also some basic SEO elements behind the scenes, such as page titles, meta descriptions, headings and image alt text, that can help search engines understand your website.
Do you need to redesign your counselling website?
If you've identified several things that could be improved, it doesn't automatically mean you need to start again.
If the underlying structure and design still work well, you may be able to make a noticeable improvement by updating your content, simplifying the navigation, reorganising individual pages or making the route to enquiry clearer.
A redesign may be worth considering if your practice has changed significantly, the website is difficult to use or update, the structure no longer works for the services you offer, or you no longer feel that it represents your practice professionally.
Before deciding, try to identify what isn't working and what you would like your website to do better. This will help you work out whether a few targeted improvements are enough or whether a more substantial redesign would be worthwhile.
Take a fresh look at your counselling website
It can be difficult to look objectively at a website you've seen hundreds of times, so try viewing it from the perspective of someone arriving for the first time.
A prospective client may already feel uncertain about starting counselling and may be looking at several therapists before deciding who to contact. Your website should make it as straightforward as possible for them to understand your practice, find the information that matters to them and decide whether they would like to take the next step.
If your website still does this well and accurately reflects the practice you have today, it is probably doing an important part of its job. If you've noticed several areas where it no longer does, you now have a useful starting point for deciding what to improve.
Give your website a quick check-up
If you'd like some help reviewing your website, I've created a free 10-Minute Counselling Website Check-Up.
It takes you through some of the key areas to look at, including your first impression, content, navigation, mobile experience and next steps, helping you identify where a few changes could make a difference.
