How to Know if Your Therapy Website Is Actually Working
Your site can look fine and still be failing you. Here's how to actually tell the difference.
If you've spent any time in grad school for this field, you already know the answer to almost everything is "it depends." That holds up outside the therapy room too.
"My website isn't working" is one of the most common things I hear, and ‘it depends’ is genuinely the honest first answer. But that doesn't mean you have to guess. There are real, concrete ways to check.
When your site looks fine but isn't working
Here's where it gets more complicated. If you actually look at your analytics and your time on site is healthy, your bounce rate is low, and people are making it to pages like your services page, that all looks like success.
But if they're still not reaching out, that's your real answer. The website looks like it's doing its job. It isn't.
And here's the nuance worth sitting with: sometimes the problem isn't your website at all. It's your marketing. Your website supports your marketing. It isn't a replacement for it. So before assuming the site itself is broken, it's worth stepping back and asking whether the real gap is visibility: your Instagram, your referral sources, wherever people are actually finding you in the first place.
A quick way to check it yourself
Before you hire anyone, there's a simple test you can run on your own.
Send your homepage URL to someone who doesn't know you well, someone who doesn't talk to you often or has no real idea what you do for a living. Give them six to ten seconds on the page. Then ask them one question: what did you understand from that?
What you're actually listening for is accuracy. Whatever they say back to you needs to match what you intended to communicate. If it's off, or if it's genuinely unclear, that's your note. That's your sign to go back and revisit the page.
If you're building out your services page and not sure what else it should include: Your Therapy Services Page Is Probably Just a List. Here's Why That's Not Enough. And if you want to make sure the right people are finding your site in the first place: Why Your Therapist Website Isn't Showing Up on Google.
Ashley Rhoden is a former corporate marketing leader turned strategist and website designer who works with therapists and private practice owners ready to stop being invisible online. She's also a grad student in a counseling program — not a therapist, not pre-licensed, just someone who understands this world from both the marketing side and the inside of a counseling program, and brings both to every website she builds.
Work with her to build a website that’s as unique as your sessions are. →
