It’s Time To Build A Website
You’re looking to set up a website for your practice. You read, study, compare all the services out there vying for your dollar, but your expertise is in diagnosing and treating troubled clients. You have poured all of your effort into making yourself the best therapist you can be, but now you’re faced with this confusing task of untangling tech jargon. Who is a webhost? Why is that different from an email provider. Who should I register my domain with? Javascript, PHP, MySQL, HTTP, HTTPS, Flash, HTML, and what the heck is SEO? If you’re like a lot of therapists I know you decide to stay focused on your specialty and pay some other company a premium to deliver a site with which you’ve never frankly been very happy. Or maybe it’s all so confusing you’ve put it off.
Most therapists are not computer technicians. You’re not a programmer or a designer. And you don’t want to be! Well, the companies I’ve seen out there seem to take advantage of that fact. Despite saying otherwise and maybe starting you out with a free trial, these companies severely overcharge you despite luring you in with promises to the contrary. Most of the common turn-key sites charge a monthly fee for a less than stellar product. I’ve also heard therapists complain that they feel locked into a design,they don’t know how to optimize their site, they don’t have much control, or the control they do have is confusing and they’re never quite able to do what they want with their site. Is this you?
Who am I?
Well, I’m a fellow therapist who is just starting out. Prior to my career as a counselor I was programmer for 14 years. For the last seven years of my career as a programmer I lead a team of programmers located around the globe for a fortune 100 company that you’ve heard of. It’s likely you’re carrying one of their cards in your wallet right now. My job was to build and modify a program that the company considered one of its “Tier 1” applications. There were only about four of these types of applications in a company that built and maintained literally thousands of programs. My program was considered “Tier 1” because if it stopped working for any reason, this company would cease to make money. It was a what is considered a mission critical system. Depending on what portion of my seven years in this position you’re asking about I was one of 2-5 lead programmers on this platform.
Why the heck are you a therapist?
I’ve had this question asked a lot when people discover my background. I made good money. I had job security. I had good health benefits etc etc. I began to feel that I needed a different type of career when my daughter was diagnosed with a life threatening illness in 2002. Although the money was great, I kept looking ahead to retirement and thinking “What am I going to say about my life? I worked at a credit card company?” It didn’t feel like that would be a satisfying thought late in life. It took a very long time to figure out what I wanted to do and an even longer time to ignore the fear and go for it. Finally in 2009 I went back to school to get a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. I graduated in 2013, got my license from the state in late 2013, was hired at my current employer in 2014 and have been counseling since.
So why are you building websites if you’re not a programmer anymore?
Well, it’s simple. I built what I considered to be a “simple” website for my practice. Something useful to me that would support building a client base. I showed it to other therapists and the reactions I got were confusing to me. They thought it was amazing. Not just nice but “how the heck did you do that?” kind of thing. I couldn’t understand it because most of it was built with very little cash outlay on my part. It was easy for me. They described monthly fees and showed me their sites which struck me as a complete rip-off for the price they were paying.
I’m doing this because I think there’s a mutual advantage here. I understand your business. At the very least I’m familiar with the types of things that therapists want and need. It’s likely that I understand parts of development that you may not know to ask about. A great deal of my previous career was explaining functionality to business partners who did not understand technology. I like doing that. I know how you can be taken advantage of for your lack of expertise in this area. I really do not like that. Therapists are some of the nicest and most caring people I know. It really bugs me to see them ripped off. I also need to supplement my income as I build my career.
If you’re here, it likely means someone gave you a link to this page. It isn’t linked from my home page. I’m not paying money to advertise this service. I hope you will take that as a sign of my integrity and ability to help you.
What can I offer you?
I want to be clear on what I’m offering. What I am selling you is a package, and your independence. I don’t like the idea of a company locking me into a monthly fee that seems “affordable” month-to-month but over years adds up to a tremendous amount. I doubt you like that either. Instead, I’m offering to build you a website for a one-time fee. It’s more money upfront, but it costs less over the long-term. Also, I am not charging anywhere near premium rates. Based on the information I’ve gathered I’m charging for the cost (ie. web hosting, email hosting, themes, etc) plus some for my time and expertise. At the end of our project together you should have a website over which you will have total control that has either no monthly cost or a very small monthly cost depending on the choices you make. I do not gather any monthly income from your site. Any monthly costs would be for a service you choose (i.e. online scheduling) . So with all that said, what is it that I can offer you?
Your website will look modern, attractive, and professional because it will be!
Many clients no longer sit in front of their computers when browsing for a therapist. They browse via phones, tablets, even gaming consoles have browsers now! In order for your website to reach the greatest number of users it must be consistently useable across all of these platforms. If your site loads slowly via a mobile device, it can harm your SEO efforts and negatively impact your Google ranking. Your site will be mobile friendly and automatically optimized to any platform or browser that your potential clients may use.
Tired of www.yourdomain.wordpress.com? Or, insert any other hosting company that inserts you as part of their domain. It’s great to own your own domain and typically is very, very cheap. I think mine costs about $10.00 a year, with discounts if you pay for several years. The trick is knowing how to configure everything so it works. I will configure your domain such that it points to your website so that when potential clients type www.yourdomain.com, your website appears in their browsers. Once done, you’re independent from companies that sell website services on a monthly basis for a fee.
Web hosting companies are the companies you pay in order to rent space on their servers so your website has a “home.” Web hosting companies have different ways of achieving similar results. Once you’ve paid the web hosting company, I’ll configure everything so that we can begin work on your site. I’ll help you understand what the configurations mean, and once my work is complete you will have complete control over your web hosting setup.
Do you have a situation where you have a website but prospective clients contact you via gmail? It’d be cool to have emails come from yourname@yourdomain.com right? It looks and feels more professional to your clients. It also allows you more freedom. You can configure different mailboxes and addresses etc (counseling@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com etc). If you have a growing practice and you have either hired on or are anticipating doing so, this can allow your communications to expand with, and compliment your brand. I will configure this for you and train you on how to configure future changes yourself!
Using a look and feel that you chose, I will go about building your website on a solid WordPress foundation. I will build and configure your website such that it has the features you choose. I’ll also show you how to administrate your own website so you can easily add, modify, or delete content.
As I mentioned before, your site will be built upon a solid, tested, reliable, and *free* technology called WordPress. As of January 2015, WordPress was used by 23.3% of the top 10mm websites on the Internet. If you’re not familiar with technology, you can think of WordPress somewhat like a menu on a television set. You change settings for your TV via an easily accessible menu and this changes how your TV functions. For example, you might increase or decrease the brightness or saturation on your TV and this modifies the TV so that it functions in a way that works best for you. You don’t go in and make programmatic changes to the television. You aren’t required to know the TV’s programming language. You just click a few buttons and it works. This is what WordPress is for your website. You will not be dependent on a programmer. Once you know how to use the “menu”, you’re able to make changes on your own. If you’d like to know more about WordPress, just click here.
Because WordPress is such a common tool, many developers have made great additions to it (most of them are also free) that extend it’s functionality. One of these tools allows you take a complete backup of your website in one single file. That file can then be used to upload to a different location. If you don’t understand what I mean, that’s okay! I will explain it further should you choose to utilize my services. The point is, that with a few clicks you can easily transfer your *complete* site to another webhost should you chose to do so. More freedom for you.
New clients show up on time but have to spend 10-15min filling out new client forms. With this simple addition you can allow the clients to download your new client forms, fill them out, and give them to you when they arrive.
In the early 2000s everyone and their dog had a blog. The word blog was used so much that for a while it fell out of fashion and began to take on a meaning somewhat akin to “amateur.” Well, that is no longer true. Several years ago Google changed their search algorithm (the complex function that determines who shows up on the google search pages and where) in favor of long-form, original content that was frequently updated. In other words, a blog. Now, if you want to rank on the first page of Google’s organically (meaning you don’t pay for ads) search you almost have to maintain a blog. WordPress started out as a blogging platform, so it naturally integrates the ability to blog and thereby increase your exposure!
When you write that awesome post on anxiety, or eating disorders, or when you record a video presentation on depression you want as many people to see it as possible. To support that, your website will allow you post to all of the major social media sites with a simple click. The instant your post goes up, links to that post will appear on your profiles on the social media sites you use! Additionally, your posts will allow users that land on your site to easily share the post back to their friends on their social media. This drastically increases your exposure to new potential clients.
How can you tell if your content is reaching people? How do you know if you’re taking the right steps? One way is via Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Although I don’t provide training on these resources, in order to use them they require some configuration on your site. I will set all of that up for you so you can focus on your site’s content!
Sometimes when you write a blog post, or go in-depth on a treatment type you may want to provide an example via a youtube video or an audio file. Your new website allows you to easily embed these types of content so that your potential clients don’t leave your site while still enjoying content from elsewhere.
This is a tool provided by a different company but that runs on top of your wordpress site. The company charges a monthly fee but I am willing to configure it for you. Please see cVita for more information
This services can be part of a larger strategy to build and maintain a client base. Typically a therapist might offer something like a “free report” on a topic of their choosing. In exchange for that free report, the client signs up for a newsletter which the therapist publishes every month or so. The more people that sign up, the more email addresses you have subscribed to your newsletter. The more folks signed up and receiving your newsletter, the more likely your content will be forwarded and shared to others that may otherwise have never heard of you. This is a great tool, and it’s free!
Working with your input I will design your site such that it is optimizes your SEO results. However, this only refers to the structure of the site (how many pages, what their topics will be etc). I typically do not provide canned content for your site because canned content (i.e. stuff you copy from other places on the web) will result in lower search rankings from Google. Instead, I prefer to allow you to create your own content. I can write content that is honest and ethical but designed to improve SEO and client engagement. This task is time consuming and frankly, a bit uncomfortable because it requires me to put myself in the emotional place that your potential client is in. Because of this, I charge an hourly rate of $75/hr to write content for your site. I honestly think you’re the best person to write content for your clients, but I am happy to do it for you if you’d rather.
The fee to build your site will include the domain purchase cost, web hosting cost, email hosting cost etc. If it’s a cost that you would incur if you were to do this all on your own, I don’t mark it up. The fee also includes my labor and *2 hours of training*. These two hours should be enough to make you comfortable with WordPress and how easy it is to use your new site. However, as with anything, there’s always more one could learn. I’m sure you understand that I cannot be continuously available for questions after I’ve delivered on my commitments to you. That doesn’t mean I want to leave you high and dry. My intent is to leave the project with you comfortable that you can add, modify, and delete content from your site however you wish. However, should more complex needs arise, I am available for consultation after the fact for a $75/hr rate