Easy Tips to Create a Well-Designed Therapy Website

Whether you’re just getting started on creating your therapy website or you have had your site for some time, making sure your private practice website is clean, clear, and simple will ensure that your site is most effective in attracting clients who are the right fit for your practice.

For design inspiration, check out some of the top 10 therapist websites.

Benefits of simplifying your therapy website

The key benefits of clean, clear, and accessible private practice therapy website design all revolve around one thing: making it easy for those who are viewing your website to understand who you are and what your expertise is so that they can determine whether you may be a good fit for their needs.

The goal is to make your website:

• Easier to read
• Easier to update
• Easier to build
• Easier to design
• Easier to navigate
• Easier to redesign
• Easier to convert
• Easier to load

With all of the ease comes what we all really want: less stress.

OK, so how do we get started?

5 ways to start simplifying your private practice website

Take a look at your website and consider each of these tips for a well-designed therapist website.

1. Allow space

A great way to simplify your website design is to increase the white space, also known as “negative space” between and around content and elements on a page.

This space needs to be empty to allow for feeling and breathing. Space allows visitors to easily read and scan text, creates space for prioritizing what’s most important, and can create a sense of harmony.

Without making any other changes, increasing the white space could dramatically simplify your website.

2. Eliminate extra decorative elements

When creating a simple website, ask yourself, “Is this element truly important to communicating my solution?” And if the answer is no, you may be able to simplify your website’s design by removing extraneous elements.

It’s not necessary to remove decorative elements that communicate effectively but in many, if not most, cases decoration is nothing more than distracting. Things like swirly borders on images, heavy use of patterns and textures, and extra images might be complicating your design and making it more difficult for your solution to shine through.

3. Find stillness

Removing or reducing animation and image sliders can help simplify your website.

Humans are wired to pay more attention to things that move than things that don’t. The problem with animated elements then is that your website visitor’s attention goes towards the animation effect more than your message.
Often animation is used incorrectly. You don’t need content to fly in from stage right when someone is scrolling down. There are a lot of simpler, more conversion friendly ways to bring attention to text and ways that use less code to accomplish it too (meaning a faster site).

Finding stillness can help keep your website design simple and direct your visitor’s attention to what really matters: getting the help they need.

4. Be consistent

Every website visitor has to learn a bit about how to get around on your website. Due to design conventions like links getting highlighted or buttons being contrasting rectangles, the hope is that figuring out how to use your website is pretty intuitive.

Here are a few things that, when they are consistent, can help your website design hold together visually in a way that is anticipatable for the website visitor:

• Using the same colors throughout the website
• Using the same amounts of vertical and horizontal spacing
• Using the same styling for headings
• Using the same color for links and buttons
• Using the same font combinations
• Using the same header and footer layouts on every page

Consistency simplifies by serving visitors what they expect from one page to another. This makes your website easier for them to understand and use.

5. Write clear, concise copy

Instead of having more complex paragraphs of copy, try have less copy that is more clear and purposeful.

Trimming or editing your website copy to only the essential sections will help keep pages shorter and more readable.

To evaluate your copy ask what the purpose of each paragraph or page is. You will want each line of copy on a page to support the purpose of that page.

For example, your “About Me” or bio page may be one of the most important in your therapy website. Here are tips on how to write a clear professional therapist bio.

Being clear about the purpose of a page will help website copy remain simple and therefore simplify your website too.

Keeping your website up-to-date is an ongoing process

No matter where you are in your website journey, it’s good to stay mindful that keeping your website simple is not a one-time project.

Your website needs ongoing care and assessment to ensure it’s as awesome as possible for our website visitors and also working for our practices. 

How can your website be more simple?

Most of the tips recommended on the list above will help to make things easier and clearly focused on the purpose of your website: helping clients to determine if you may be the right fit for their needs.

Taking on one small task at a time can make the process more achievable and less overwhelming. Try using this therapist website-building checklist.

How SimplePractice streamlines running your practice

SimplePractice is HIPAA-compliant practice management software with everything you need to run your practice built into the platform—from booking and scheduling to insurance and client billing.

If you’ve been considering switching to an EHR system, SimplePractice empowers you to streamline appointment bookings, reminders, and rescheduling and simplify the billing and coding process—so you get more time for the things that matter most to you.

Try SimplePractice free for 30 days. No credit card required.

READ NEXT: 9 Tips for Creating a Website That Converts