Useful guidance

A few things worth knowing before you think about a website.

Short, practical, free to read. Nothing here asks you to become good at marketing.

Handwritten notes and printed pages on a desk in warm afternoon light

Start here

Five notes, a few minutes each.

Written for the therapist who would rather not have to think about websites at all, and would like the one they end up with to be right.

What actually needs to be on a therapist's homepage Most therapist homepages contain roughly the right material in roughly the wrong order. Here is what a person arriving on yours is actually trying to find out. 4 min read Read How much should you say about yourself? Therapists tend to write either almost nothing about themselves or a great deal, and both come from the same discomfort. Here is a way of finding the middle. 3 min read Read Do you need professional photographs? A photograph of you does more for a therapy website than any other image. Everything beyond that is optional, and some of it is actively unhelpful. 3 min read Read Why a good website should put some people off A website that appeals to everybody produces enquiries from people you cannot help. Specificity is not a marketing tactic — it is how the right person recognises themselves. 2 min read Read Before you redesign your website Not every website problem is a design problem. Ten questions that usually reveal which kind you have — and three of them can be fixed this afternoon. 4 min read Read

Two longer guides

For a specific job, once a directory is doing the work.

Both are about the places prospective clients actually find and judge a practice, which for most therapists is a directory before it is a website.

Guide2 min read

Beyond Counselling Directory: How to Build a More Sustainable Private Practice

Why Counselling Directory should be one part of a wider marketing strategy, and how clarity helps therapists build a more sustainable private practice.

Read the guide

Guide19 min read

How to Optimise Your Counselling Directory Profile

A practical guide to writing a Counselling Directory profile that helps the right clients recognise themselves and build trust before first contact.

Read the guide

If you want the whole framework

The Practice Clarity principles.

Nine longer pieces on understanding a practice well enough to describe it. They are a set rather than a series of tips, and they take an afternoon rather than a coffee break. Most people do not need them to get a good website — they are there if the describing is the part you are stuck on.

Read the nine principles

Shorter reflections: Why clarity builds trust before contact · What makes a therapist website feel calm?

None of this is here to sell you a website. If reading it means you fix your own and never write to me, the writing has done its job. If you would rather someone else did it, the collection is here and the price is published.