Private Practice Success Newsletter

November 2007, by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC (Master Certified Coach)
www.privatepracticesuccess.com

Website Development

A survey from Psychotherapy Finances (2006) reports that we therapists are a low tech profession in a high tech world. Only 50% of therapists use a computer!

So it is no surprise that the majority of therapists in private practice lack a website.

But consider: The number of U.S. adults using the Internet to find health related information surpassed 98 million this year. Laurie Flynn, executive director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) says that mental health sites are among the five most popular types of health sites on the Web.

Regina E. Herzlinger, Ph.D., professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Market-Driven Health Care,” explains that proactive information-seeking patients seek out information and services through the web, in stark contrast to patients of a former era who were more passive and less involved and who expected their practitioners to direct their care.

If you are not part of this give and take about mental health, you are missing out on an easy and natural way to reach those people who actively seek your services. You need a website for your private practice to be part of this communication loop.

But a website is only part of the equation: You need your website to be effective, to meet your goals and objectives. Let me show you how to get started.

"A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done." Andrew Grove

One big question therapists ask: Do website visitors convert to paying clients?

Surveys rate the average website conversion rate at 2% for an optimized, well-advertised website.

Now, 2% may not seem like a high conversion rate for advertising dollars. But do the numbers. If 1000 people visit your website over a year, 2% means 20 paying clients in your office. What would those 20 clients yield in net income (total fees minus expenses) for you?

What would you be willing to spend for that extra income? How much energy and effort would you devote to have 20 new clients?

Done effectively, website design, development, optimization, and pay per click advertising could cost just a small portion of that income. If you get informed about this technology so that you know what to purchase and how, you can end up with a very good return on investment for advertising dollars.

"We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people." Pierre Omidyar

Your website serves two purposes: it can help people find your services but it is also a vehicle for bringing important information and ideas to the greater community.

As I indicated above, having a website is only the first step. You also need to optimize it and drive traffic to it, which I will explore in future newsletters.

But first things first. Set a goal to develop a website soon if you don't already have one. If you have a website and are not happy with its results, its time to redo it.

Here’s how to get started, from my resident web adviser, Deborah Gallant of Webpowertools.com (a DIY site to help new users easily build and host their websites.)

"Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other." Bill Gates

1. Register a domain name. This is your address in cyberspace (like www.privatepracticesuccess.com). You can register it at any of the domain registration sites (like godaddy.com or register.com), since they all link to the same database.

Register your own name and if your practice has a catchy name, try to get that too. They can all point to the single website. Some quick guidelines:

Shorter is better.
Dot com is better than dot anything else.
Make it easy to spell
Try to keep it distinctive so there is no confusion with other sites

2. Set up a professional email address at that domain, even if you aren’t ready to build a site yet. This is a mark of a professional. Stop using AOL or Yahoo for your email and start promoting yourself. Set up a signature file for your emails formatted as below:

Joan W. Therapist
Marriage and Family Therapist
999-999-9999
joan@joanwtherapist.com
www.joanwtherapist.com

Make it easy for your contacts to find you!

3. Then comes the website. First, it needs to have a marketing point of view and identification that matches the rest of your marketing. It should contain the following content elements:

A homepage that welcomes visitors and states your key words and phrases that you want people to remember about your practice and services
Your contact information, name, address, telephone number
Your biography and photo
Your services in detail
A map to your office
A form to fill out to contact you
Policies and fees
Many more things: articles, resources, links, workshops, etc.

The site needs to be built (written, designed, pictures added) and hosted (a firm must place it and maintain it on the Internet.)

You can build a website yourself, even if you don’t know anything technical with a number of different systems. Or you can hire a designer or developer to do it for you.

Do-it-yourself is cheaper and you maintain control of your website so you can change, update and evolve it over time. A designer can make your site slicker and more graphically pleasing, but you will pay more and may have to pay every time you want to update or change it.

Next month: More about optimization

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Books by Lynn Grodzki, published by WW Norton. To order, click on each book.

	The Business and Practice of Coaching By Lynn Grodzki and Wendy Allen (2005) Reviewed by author Richard Leider as "Nothing less than a radical rethinking of the essentials of building a coaching practice. A must read for all coaches, master and novice alike."
	Building Your Ideal Private Practice By Lynn Grodzki (2000) The best-selling guide to what you need to do and who you need to be in order to have a highly profitable, personally satisfying private practice. Often called the "private practice bible" this book has become a resource for tens of thousands of your colleagues.
	The New Private Practice:Therapist-Coaches Share Stories, Strategies and Advice Edited by Lynn Grodzki (2002) A groundbreaking look at the profession of coaching through the eyes of 16 successful therapist-coaches who tell you how to become a coach, what to charge, and show you how they coach their clients.
	12 Months to Your Ideal Private Practice: A Workbook By Lynn Grodzki (2003) This planned, motivational workbook will help you build the practice you desire. The workbook incorporates fresh ideas, new exercises, further skill sets and much more to give you a direct experience of being carefully coached by Lynn, month-by-month, for a full year.

More next time,

lynn@privatepracticesuccess.com
See the website for additional articles, information about individual coaching, and upcoming classes.