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

Six 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 Writing a directory profile that is remembered Every profile on a directory has the same headings, the same layout and the same amount of space. The only variable is the sentences — and most of them begin in the same place. 4 min read Read

If the describing is the hard part

The nine 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

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.