I’ve looked at a few hundred therapist websites by now, the ones I built and the ones people send me asking what’s wrong. The ones that bring in clients have five things in common. The rest is decoration, and some of the decoration is actively hurting.
The five that matter
1. The first sentence says who you help
Not “Welcome to my practice.” Not “A safe space to heal.” Something like: “Therapy for anxious high achievers in Denver who are tired of being fine.” A person who lands on your site gives you about four seconds to confirm they’re in the right place. Spend them on who, not on welcome.
If you serve more than one kind of person, pick the one you most want more of. The others will still find you through the service pages.
2. One obvious next step, repeated
Every page should answer “what do I do now” without making anyone think. One button, same words every time, usually “Book a free consult” or “Send a message.” It shows up in the header, after the first section, and at the bottom. On a phone it stays within thumb reach.
What kills this is choice. Five buttons that say Contact, Schedule, Inquire, Get Started and Learn More are one button too many, four times over.
3. A real photo of you, looking like you
Clients are choosing a person. The single highest-value image on a therapy site is a current, well-lit photo of the therapist, ideally in the room where sessions happen. It outperforms every stock image of a plant, a couch, or a woman gazing out a rain-streaked window.
You don’t need a photographer. You need a window, a friend with a phone, and twenty minutes.
4. A page for each thing you treat
Nobody searches “therapist.” They search “EMDR therapist Fort Collins” or “postpartum counseling near me.” One page per specialty, with its own title and a few hundred honest words, is how those searches find you. One services page with a bulleted list of twelve specialties finds nobody.
5. It loads fast on a phone on cellular
Most people looking for a therapist are doing it on a phone, often late at night, often with one bar. A site that takes six seconds to show its first words loses a third of them before they read anything. This is a build quality issue, not a design taste issue, and it’s the one you can’t see from your desk on fiber.
If your site does those five things, it’s a good therapist website. Everything below is optional, and some of it is a mistake.
The ten that don’t
- A video in the hero. Slow, distracting, and it autoplays over your first sentence.
- Animations that fade everything in as you scroll. It reads as a template, because it is one.
- A blog you won’t write. Three posts from 2023 tell visitors the practice may be closed. No blog is better than a dead one.
- A chatbot. A person in distress does not want to talk to a widget. It also raises privacy questions you don’t need.
- An Instagram feed on the homepage. It sends people away from the page where they could book.
- A color psychology section. Sage green does not calm anyone. Being clear does.
- Six paragraphs about your theoretical orientation on the homepage. Put it on the about page. The homepage is for them, not you.
- Pop-ups. Newsletter, cookie, “Still there?” All of them.
- A “Resources” page of links to other sites. You spent money getting them here. Don’t hand them a list of exits.
- Stock photos of a diverse group laughing in an office. Your clients know what therapy looks like. That isn’t it.
What this means if you’re shopping
When you look at a designer’s work, ignore how pretty it is for a second and check the five. First sentence, one button, real photo, specialty pages, fast on a phone. A plain site that does all five will out-earn a beautiful one that does two.
That’s what I build. Each site is written for one practice, built by hand so it’s fast, and it ships with the specialty pages and the search setup included rather than sold back to you later. The prices are on the sheet. If you’d like the five-point check run on the site you have now, send me the link; it’s free and takes me twenty minutes.