Guidance
Before you redesign your website
A short checklist for working out whether you need a new website, a better one, or just half an hour with the one you have.
People usually decide to redesign a website because they have stopped liking it. That is a legitimate reason, but it is worth ten minutes working out what is actually wrong first, because the answer changes what you should do about it.
Roughly, there are three situations.
Situation one: it works, you are just bored of it
The information is right, the enquiries are the right sort, nothing is broken. You have simply looked at it four hundred times.
This is real, and it is not nothing — a website you are embarrassed by is a website you do not send people to. But it does not need rebuilding. It usually needs a photograph, a rewritten opening paragraph and some space.
Situation two: it is out of date rather than badly designed
Your fees changed. You stopped taking new referrals for something. You moved. You added online sessions and never updated the page. The About page still describes a practice you had four years ago.
Fixing this takes an afternoon and no money. Do it before you decide anything else, because a redesign that carries over stale content just produces a nicer-looking version of the same problem.
Situation three: the website cannot do what you need it to
The enquiries are the wrong sort, or there are not enough of them, or you cannot bring yourself to give people the address. Something more structural is off — usually who the site is talking to, what it explains, or how easy it is to take the next step.
That is the situation a new website solves.
The checklist
Work through these honestly. Where an answer is no, note whether it is a content problem or a design problem.
1. Does the first screen say who you work with and on what? Not “welcome”. The specific thing.
2. Is your fee findable in under ten seconds? If not, that is likely costing you more enquiries than the design is.
3. Is there a recent photograph of you? One. Looking at the camera.
4. Would a person who is not right for you be able to tell quickly? If everybody feels invited, you will keep receiving enquiries you have to turn down.
5. Does it work properly on a phone? Open it on your own phone, at arm’s length, in a room with the lights on. Most of your visitors are doing exactly that.
6. Can somebody contact you without ringing? A great many people considering therapy will not make a phone call to a stranger. If email or a form is not offered plainly, you are filtering for confidence rather than fit.
7. Do you say what happens after they contact you? “I usually reply within two working days” is one sentence and does a disproportionate amount of work.
8. Is anything on it untrue or out of date? Fees, availability, location, qualifications, membership, the list of what you offer.
9. Do you own it? Your domain in your own account, your content exportable, no monthly fee you cannot stop without losing the site. If a website is rented, a redesign is a good moment to stop renting.
10. Does it sound like you? Read the homepage out loud. If you would not say those sentences to somebody sitting opposite you, that is the thing to fix — and it is a writing problem, not a design one.
What to do with the answers
Mostly yes, one or two nos. Fix the nos. Do not redesign.
Nos clustered around content — fees, who it is for, what happens next. The words are the problem. A redesign will help only if it comes with a rethink of what the site says, which is a different and usually more valuable piece of work than choosing a new look.
Nos clustered around the practical — phone, contact, ownership, it looks wrong on a phone. That is a build problem, and it is the clearest case for starting again. Websites of a certain age cannot be made responsive by editing them.
You cannot answer question one at all. That is worth knowing. It is not a website problem yet — it is a question about what the practice is, and it is much cheaper to answer it before somebody builds you a site around a guess.
One more thing
Before you commission anything, write down what you want to be different in six months’ time. Not “a better website” — something you could actually notice. Fewer enquiries from people you cannot help. Being willing to give somebody the address. Not having to explain your fees in every first email.
Whoever you work with, that sentence is the most useful thing you can hand them.