Does your therapy website actually help you get clients? Here's how to tell

Here's a question worth sitting with for a second: when did you last actually look at your website through your client's eyes?

Not to update it. Not to cringe at the photo from three years ago. Just to sit with the question of whether someone landing on it for the first time would stay, or quietly click away.

Most therapists I work with haven't done this in a while. And when we do it together, the same things tend to come up. Not because they've done something wrong, but because no one ever told them what a client-facing therapy website actually needs to do.

So let's fix that. Here are five quick checks you can run on your own site right now. They're the same things I look at every time I review a therapy website, and most sites have gaps in at least three of them.

Check 1: The 30-second test
Open your homepage and set a timer for 30 seconds. Read it the way a stranger would, someone who just Googled 'trauma therapist in [your city]' and clicked on your link.

By the end of those 30 seconds, can they answer three questions?

• Who do you help?
• What do you help them with?
• How do they take the next step?

If the answer to any of those is "not really," that's your biggest gap. A prospective client is making a decision about whether to stay or leave within seconds of landing on your site. If your homepage is leading with your credentials or your approach before it speaks to how they're feeling, you've lost them.

Check 2: Word count
Go to your homepage and copy all the text into a Word doc. How many words is it?
The average therapy homepage I review has somewhere between 150 and 300 words. That's not enough, not for your clients, and definitely not for Google.

A homepage that's doing its job usually has around 1,000 words, sometimes more. Not because more is always better, but because your clients need to read enough to feel something. A name, a photo, and a contact form aren't a website; it's a business card.

Check 3: Is there a call to action above the fold?
"Above the fold" just means what someone sees before they scroll. On your homepage, before a visitor moves their mouse even once, is there a clear next step? A button that says "Book a free consultation" or "Get in touch" or something that invites them to act?

If they have to scroll to find out how to contact you, some of them won't.

Check 4: Does your About page sound like you?
Read your About page out loud. Seriously, try it.

Does it sound like something you'd actually say? Or does it sound like a LinkedIn bio: credentials, training, areas of focus, professional memberships?

Your About page is doing a very specific job. It's the moment a prospective client is deciding whether they trust you enough to reach out. And trust doesn't come from a list of modalities. It comes from feeling like the person on the other side of that page is real and gets it.

You don't have to share your whole life story. But something human, why you do this work, what you care about, who you're drawn to help, goes a long way.

Check 5: Is your site mobile-friendly?
Pull up your website on your phone right now. Not the editor view, the actual live site, the way a client would see it.

Does the text fit on the screen? Are the buttons easy to tap? Does it look like a real website, or like a desktop site that got squeezed into a smaller screen?

More than half of therapy-related Google searches happen on mobile. If your site is hard to navigate on a phone, you're losing people before they've even read a word.

So, how did you do?
If you spotted two or three things on this list, that's actually pretty normal. These gaps show up on almost every therapy website I look at, and none of them means you've failed at marketing or that you're behind. They just mean there's room to make your site work harder for you than it currently is.

If you found all five, it's worth taking a closer look, not to overhaul everything at once, but to prioritize the things that are most likely costing you clients right now.

I built a free, nine-point website audit tool specifically for therapists; it's the same checklist I just walked you through, but interactive. You'll get an instant score and a plain-English read on where your site stands and what to fix first.

​Run the audit