Website Fixes That Win More Clients

We walk through a practical checklist to find the hidden reasons a therapy practice website fails to convert visitors into booked consults. We focus on speed, clarity, and simple language so patients can instantly understand what we do and take the next step without friction.

Our Profit Coaching program is enrolling new practices now. 

We specialize in helping therapy practices like yours achieve financial clarity, so you can focus on what you do best—helping your clients and managing your team- while we help handle all the businessy stuff they didn’t teach you in grad school. 

To see if your practice might be a good fit, schedule a free consultation at therapybusinesspod.com. 

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Hey Physical Therapists! I'm currently writing the book Profit First for Physical Therapists and I'm looking for advanced readers. Go to www.pf4pt.com to join the waitlist and get early access. 

*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:49

One of the most important assets you have as a practice owner is your website. And yet, oftentimes it can become an afterthought, this thing that we threw together or we hired someone to put together, and then we haven't even really looked at it or analyzed it in a long time. Today I'm going to walk you through ways to improve your website. And if it's not working right now, I'm going to tell you why it probably isn't converting. My name is Craig, and I'm the owner of Daisy Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money, and serves more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast. One of my favorite things in

Why Your Website Loses Leads

SPEAKER_00 1:38

walking clients through becoming more profitable is really investigating some of their marketing efforts. And one of those landing pages, the most important pieces is your website. This is how people find you, get to know you. You are engaging with patients and leads before they even you even know they exist, right? They are finding you and they're making a decision on whether they think you can help them or not. And at this point, the only vote, the only voice you have is what you put on that website. And oftentimes we don't even realize that we are pushing people away based on our website and the what and what it says and how it functions and how it drives people around. We can be way too wordy. We can speak in words that people don't understand that might be off-putting. In fact, it could be something that they don't even realize when they land and they start reading that just causes them to hit that back button. So I'm going to walk you through some things that you can do. This is almost like a checklist, right? I want you to utilize this as a way to just go through your website. And so if you're at your computer while you're listening to this, pull up your website and think through these things along with me. If you're in the car, at the gym, wherever you are, out and about, that's okay. Listen through this and kind of just make a little mental log to check these things later when you come back. But I do want you to start kind of thinking through, even if you're not able to visually look at your website right now, think through does my do I think my website checks these boxes? Does it do these things well? So the first section I want to talk about is the techie stuff, the stuff on the back end. And that is, does your website load quickly? Uh go click on your website using multiple browsers, different formats, and just see how quickly do pages load. You'd be surprised that sometimes it's our own website, so we may not even pay attention to that when we visit it. But if it takes longer than just a few seconds, sometimes people are hitting the back button already. And so check to see if it load quickly. If not, a lot of times this is something you can reach out to your hosting platform, see if there's a way to uh up the speeds, find a different host out there who might be able to improve on those website speeds. If you have a website developer, reach out to them and talk to them and say, I want to improve how quickly our website's loading, what's bogging it down.

Speed, Mobile Fit, Button Tests

SPEAKER_00 3:55

You don't have to be a techie expert here on whether on how to fix it necessarily. It's just a matter of does it need to be fixed? Does it load? Does the do the pages load within one or two seconds? Now, does your website function well on all types of screens or browsers? So this is just simply opening your website in Chrome and Firefox and Safari and Explorer, whatever it is, all the different web browsers, just open them and browse around your own website and make sure that everything fits in there, that nothing is wonky, that things aren't cut off on the edges of the screen. Same thing on your phone. If you have a tablet, access your website from the tablet and just view the viewer experience. Most this day and age, most people are visiting your website on their phone. And what's funny is as we're building our websites, especially if you DIY'd it, uh maybe you built your own website through a platform or or something like that, you just do it from the computer, and then the phone kind of becomes something we don't even really think about. And then you go look at it on your phone, and there's like this weird image that's gigantic that's covering up the buttons, and it just doesn't convert. So it's something to be looking at on all different types of screens, all different browsers, and it's something to check every now and then because sometimes, depending on how your website was built, if you're using like a WordPress website that has some theme built into it, maybe the theme has an update, and that update messes it up. That happened to our my website uh last year, actually. And so the the theme we were using had an update and everything kind of became weird, things no longer fit on the screen, words were bigger than they were supposed to be, the spacing was all off and funky, and it just didn't look right. And so ultimately we ended up doing a whole website redesign. But it was something we, if I wasn't paying attention to my own website, which it's easy to just not visit your own site, I wouldn't have caught it. The other techie thing is to test all the buttons. So every now and then just go through and click all the buttons, the call to action buttons, the buttons that take you to different web pages, just make sure they're all still working. Every now and then maybe something changes and you don't even think about it, and all of a sudden the button no longer works. All right, the second piece outside of the techie stuff is I want you to stop and think, what is my goal of this website? What is the goal of the website? And that might seem pretty obvious, but it's truthfully not always reflected in the website, and that's the key here. What do you want visitors to do and pick one clear goal? When somebody lands on your website, what action do you want them to take? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to experience? We want it to be just one clear point that they are going to. If you offer multiple services, then your goal probably is just for them to schedule uh a consultation to figure out what their most important need is. If you offer something where you maybe you sell it on your website, maybe your goal is for them to make

Pick One Goal And One CTA

SPEAKER_00 6:52

the purchase on the website. Maybe your goal is for them to schedule an evaluation. Whatever it is, pick your goal. It's important to know what that is. I'm gonna go ahead and just say that nine times out of ten, if you're a PT, if you're a mental health therapist, if you're in in that realm, your goal is to get somebody to book an appointment, right? Whether it's a consultation or an evaluation or something, that is almost always the goal of your website, is to get them to take that action. Now, again, you may be different depending on how you're serving people. Maybe there's different things you're trying to do. If you are focusing on doing uh retreats and different experiences like that, then maybe that's your goal is for people to actually sign up on the website. But 99% of the time, your goal is to get people to schedule an evaluation or a consultation. Then have a clear call to action. This is what your buttons will say. This is what any text will say that's telling them what you want them to do. So your call to action is book an appointment, book a free consultation, book a free evaluation, or book your book an evaluation if it's not free. Don't if your buttons say is learn more, that's not cutting it. We we want a very direct, here's what you need to do. So when you're speaking to them on the website, you know, here's what you're struggling with, here's how we help you, here's how you can get the help. It's book an appointment. It's not, here's what you're struggling with, here's how we help you, and what you should do is learn more. What if they don't want to learn more? What if they're what if they're already sold on the idea of like, wow, this person, this is what I've been looking for, I'm gonna book an appointment. And then your button says learn more and they click it and it takes them to another page that has a lot more text and a lot more information that maybe they weren't looking for. And sometimes that can create overwhelm and suddenly they're hitting the back button evacuating your website. So we want it to be really clear that whatever page they're landing on, you have that one clear goal of what is that call to action? Now, your website, if again, if you have different pages for different services, that call to action might be tweaked. So if they land on um, if you have pelvic floor therapy that you offer, maybe the call to action for that is a very specific thing you want them to do. So to book a specific evaluation for that versus if they're there to look at something different, uh, maybe that has a different call to action. But ultimately it's just this what do we want and what are we going to do? And then being really, really clear about it and not giving them the run around. If somebody wants to learn more, they will explore your website on their own and we'll talk about how you can create that opportunity. But all throughout your site should be just multiple opportunities, clear, bright buttons that say book an appointment, schedule free consultation, fill in that blank, whatever that call to action is, making it really direct on what they need to do. All right, the next thing you want to think about on your website is who is your client? Put yourself in their shoes. What are they dealing with? What are their pain points? How do they speak? This is really, really important. You are educated, right? You are really good at what you do. You you a lot of you are doctors, uh, a lot of you have your master's degrees, a lot of you, uh pretty much all of you, if you're in the mental health or PT space, have at least a bachelor's degree. Whatever your level of education is, I know that you are highly intelligent and you live in a world where you're using language and you are very familiar with everything. So it's easy for us to start speaking in a way that we would speak to a colleague in this same world. But a client or a patient won't be using that same words,

Write Like Your Client Talks

SPEAKER_00 10:28

the same words. So you want to put yourself in their shoes. What are they dealing with? You know, I deal with profitability and business finances, and as you can hear me talking, I don't speak in a way as somebody who who seems like they've been in the world of finance for their entire their entire career, right? My background is in education, so my whole everything I do, the what I would call my superpower is taking complex ideas and just making them really simple to understand. And that's because that's what I need. And if I put myself in my clients' shoes, it's my clients or potential clients are really, really smart and really good at what they do. They just don't have a ton of experience when it comes to managing the finances in a business. And so when they're coming to me, I'm not going to be speaking in using terminology that maybe they don't fully understand or resonate with. In fact, it could be words that have always scared them away. And so putting yourself into their shoes, what are they dealing with? What are their pain points? And then speaking in that language, not using acronyms behind just going into the the in-depth of here's all my acronyms and all the certifications and licensings. It's more of how are you feeling, or what chronic pains do you have? And we understand that feeling, we understand how it's affecting your life, and here's how we help, right? It's just very clear in their own words. You want the website to feel conversational because again, this is your only shot, and it should reflect your personality and your your values, but also this is your only this is your chance to connect with them. And if you're speaking in a way that they don't speak, you're not going to connect. Now, let's go into your different web pages, because I think each page has some clear purposes, and then I want to really hone in on the home page first because I think this is the most important page on your website, and this is where most people land and most people abandon. So the home page being really clear once again what you do and who you help. And I think that should be at the top of the webpage. This does not need to be an extensive list of all the services you do and all the treatments you offer and all the different things that you provide. It's just a very clear, simple remember, you are just thinking about who your ideal client is. What is their thing? Are they dealing with chronic pain? Right? So for my physical therapists, are they dealing with chronic pain issues? So at the top, it should speak to that. You know, struggling with chronic pain, we help you get back to your day-to-day

Home Page Clarity And Fewer Words

SPEAKER_00 13:57

life or whatever that is. So speaking, it's not going into we use this specific treatment uh that's been tested in the Himalayans for the last two centuries, right? It's it's we know you you've got this pain, we will help you return to a place where you can play on the floor with your kids without feeling like your knees ache. So really clear on what your call to action is, what you do for people, and how you serve them again in a way that resonates with them. So, as an example for my website, and and I never want to say that my website is the end-all be-all, but on the very top of our page is never stress about money again. We don't go into improve cash flow and your money system's broken, or are you struggling with debt? We help with debt, we help with no, it's just we know that what it can really boil down to is money is stressful. Our clients deal with that in an array of different ways, and we solve that. So never stress about money again. Never let pain stop you from enjoying life, right? This is what we want to be really clear and we want to resonate. Can someone figure out what you do within a few seconds? So putting ourselves in their shoes of somebody who has no idea what a PT or what a physical therapist is, or what a mental health therapist is, or what a fill-in-the-blank is, what do you do? And can they figure that out pretty quickly? Is it easy for them to contact you? So, once again, I would say on that home page, because this is what we're speaking to specifically, is having buttons all over the home page. I would put one in the header that kind of sticks there. So no matter how far they scroll, there's always a button for them to contact you. And then I'll probably add, depending on how big your your homepage is, I would put probably a minimum of four buttons throughout there after each section. After each section, when you talk about something, uh maybe you're sharing uh a detail of what you offer, all these different things. It's call to action, right? Book an appointment, book an appointment, book an appointment. Make it so incredibly easy for them to take action that if they don't take action, it's because they've decided it's not the right fit, not because they can't figure out how to get in touch with you. And you would be shocked how many websites it's it's difficult to get in touch with a person. Like it's confusing on, okay, but how do I work with you? Right. And and we're people are not gonna sit there and try and decode your site and figure it out. So make it super easy. I found some where the homepage, again, has that learn more, and you click learn more and it takes you to a web page, and then you're reading the webpage, okay. But how do I what do I do? Like, do I book a call with you? Do I send an email? Uh do I pick up the phone? What am I supposed to do? So that's what we want to be super clear. Uh avoiding that industry jargon. So again, I'm instead of I'm a doctor of X, Y, and Z, and we use this methodology, it's I help people struggling with X become Y so that they can enjoy Z, right? It's just very clear and at their level. So going through your site. And so for those of you who are looking at your site now, count how many times you have a call to action button in your site. Go through, look at that, read the the text again. You can even ask friends, uh I would say I'm saying friends, but maybe people who are really good at being honest with you, uh, to read your website. And and here's a great way to do it because even this this isn't like you asking for is it good or bad? It's just, hey, can you read this website and then tell me what do I do? Like, can you tell me how I help people? And you can create just a few questions of based on the website, what would you say is my role? How do we help people? What do we help people with? What are people struggling with? Um, and just have them answer that honestly. And you can really see a disconnect there if they if they either can't answer it or they start writing things, you're like, what are they talking about? Like, that's not what I do, or that's not even close to what we help people with. It can be an eye-opener all of a sudden when you're like, but that's what the average person who's not in my world is reading and understanding from this page. All right, so that's the home page. Now, your website can have any number of pages, you know. So I'm gonna walk through some of the purposes of these pages. Um, starting with that homepage, just in general overview, is it's for taking action. It's clear and to the point. Here's what you do, here's who you help, how they can get help. You're not getting into the weeds on this page. I would say a most you don't want a lot of text on the homepage. You want bullet points, you want really just short, to the point information here of just very honed in. There are pages, you can have your services page, which is where you can go more in depth. So going back to my site, we have our homepage, which is all about taking action. Then you can go to two different pages uh because we offer two really main services right now, and that is profit coaching and personal finance coaching. And so for those who want to learn more about profit coaching,

Services, About, And Content Pages

SPEAKER_00 18:58

they can go to that web, the that services page, and it's gonna go way more in depth onto what that service is. So the service page is going more in depth. This does not mean we abandon the no industry jargon. We are still focusing on the patient, we're still focusing on their pain point, and we're still focusing on how you solve that pain point. So don't abandon that. It's just this is for those who want to learn a little bit more. What does your process look like? So it's a something that's really helpful is a step one, two, and three. First, you book uh an evaluation. Next, we recommend a treatment plan for you. And then number three is you follow through with that treatment plan and suddenly you're pain-free or whatever it is. So it's just very clear on that, and then going in depth into just what does it look like? You know, what is what can they expect? So this is for the people who liked what they saw on the homepage. They're like, you understand me, you can solve my problem, but I just I'm the type of person who wants to know a little bit more. You're gonna have people who are action takers. They are not wanting to waste time, they're just like, hey, this looks good. I want to schedule a call and see if this is the right fit. Then you're gonna have the ones who want to read as much as they can before they can actually figure out if you're the right fit. So that's what the services page for. Again, don't go too, too, too in depth on this one. It's just you're gonna be more word heavy on this page than you would be on the homepage. Now, none of these pages should really speak a whole lot about you. This is not about you. If your homepage has anything in depth on who you are, it's okay to maybe have a little snapshot of you on there, but not going into your credentials, your background, that's what an about me page is for. And again, this is for those who want to continue to research and want to get to know your team and your uh clinicians and maybe more about you as the business owner. So that's where that can live and that's its ideal purpose. Now, this is gonna sound counterintuitive, but your about you page, should you are not the focus still, right? That's that sounds weird. Yes, this is a place where you can share about your experience. This is where you can share how long you've been doing it and that you what your level of education is. Um, but we still want to keep it focused on the patient, the lead, the prospect. What again, staying in their lingo? We don't want to speak over the this is not an opportunity to speak over their heads, uh not an opportunity to use acronyms that they're not gonna understand or lingo they're not gonna understand, because you're trying to make connection. The about me page is all about making that connection with them, sharing your personality, speaking to who you like helping and why, sharing transformations you love seeing and why patients like working with you. You it's not about bragging on yourself. Uh, and a lot of times people, you can read an about me page and almost see some insecurities coming out because it's like, here's why I'm I'm able to help you. I hear here's exactly why uh you should be able to trust that I can do this. Uh look at how much I've accomplished or my track record, but more so just like again, showcasing that personality and making that deeper connection. It's to help them realize that you understand them and that you are equipped to help them. All right, so that's what the About Me page is. Uh, I always like adding in some fun things to just, again, showcase a little bit of your personality. What you do is very relationship-based. And so I think the more you can bridge that connection, the better it's gonna be. All right, a content page. You can have multiple content pages if you have a podcast, if you have a blog. Um, these are again are more, this is where you can, as we were talking about not having too much text. So, you know, the homepage is the least, and then services page, your content page, this is where you can create a blog on how we treat this or what the best things to do for this is. And this is so somebody who's dealing with I keep rolling back to chronic pain, but if it's if that's what they're dealing with, then having blogs on on those, and that's where you can get into depth of the hows and the what's and the whys and and the treatments, and get a little bit more into the weeds of it. Uh, because this is for a different level of person. You know, they've gone through the home, they've looked at your services page, they still want to learn more, and that's when they start looking through and engaging in your blog, or they've already booked an appointment and now they're spending time just learning more and more about what you do. So that's what the content page is for is it's serving people. It might even be people are not ready to book yet, and so the blog is there to just engage, educate, connect, and when they are ready, hopefully you'll be top of mind. All content should also Have a clear call to action, and that call to action should be the same as the one throughout the website. We're not changing it up, we're keeping it very clear. If you know at the end of the blog, book an appointment with us or book an evaluation. Finally, the contact page. We want it to be easy for people to get in touch with you. When possible. So if the call to action is to book an appointment, when possible, put your calendar on the on the page. If it's a consultation process, if you know whether it's your admin dealing doing it, whether it's booking an evaluation with you or one of your team members, if you can, if this is how you operate, I always say default to having an embedded calendar where they can pick a date and time and schedule it. You can also do contact uh the submission forms, which are fine. It's just the problem is somebody goes in, they're they're stressing out about whatever it is, they fill out this contact form, and then what do they do? They either go to other websites and start looking for alternatives, right? And so maybe they find somebody who they actually get in contact with before you or your team

Contact Page That Removes Friction

SPEAKER_00 24:48

is able to get to email them. You receive that form and then you email them. Maybe they've already found somebody, or maybe that pain point is no longer top of mind. So they they a million other things got put on their plate, and so they keep seeing your emails or your voicemails, and they're like, Okay, I'll I need to call them back when I get a chance. But if they put it in their calendar, if they schedule the appointment already, it's a check in their completion, right? So the average person is going to book it, and then they're already gonna be like, all right, I have taken action, and that's it. You know, some might continue to research and book a bunch of appointments, but most of the time, once they've scheduled that that evaluation or that consultation appointment, they're gonna stop and they're gonna meet with you and and they've already you've already got that ball moving. So if you can take away the friction, that's always a reduce the amount of friction between them visiting your site and them taking action, that's ideal. And your contact page is exactly that. Because if they are landing on your contact page, 99% of the time it is intentional. They've clicked one of your buttons, they've clicked the contact us at the top, or one of the call to actions, it's like book an appointment now. They have chosen to get to a place where they can contact you. Let's make it easy, let's make it super simple. The only time you may want to, I'm gonna say put some guardrails up or make it a little bit more not so easy is if you're just swamped and you have so many, you have barely any openings for your valuations, and so you're just wanting to make sure, or maybe you're you're swamped, and then you just don't want people booking and then not showing up, um, then you can create ways to to bridge that and you can do a contact form, uh, you can ask a bunch more questions that will vet out people who maybe aren't gonna answer those. Um, you can require deposits if you want to at that point. All of those are friction points. And so if you are trying to get as many evaluations as possible or consultations as possible, you want less of those. If you are trying to get only people who are ready or just right, and you're like, I don't, we don't need a a lot of business. We are already doing really well, and we want to make sure the people who are coming to us are have already been vetted as much as possible. That's where adding those barriers can come in handy and can help. And that can be an ebb and flow thing. You might be in a place right now where you're you're slammed and you're like, okay, I need to put more barriers up, and then six months from now, maybe it's you know, business is down. You're like, all right, so maybe we take away some of those barriers, we tweak our contact page so that we can get more consultations in. And then once we get swamped again, we maybe we put up some barriers again. So it doesn't have to be a set in stone thing, but that's just a good way to think about it. All right, there's your website. I know. Make a few tweaks. You don't need to go overhaul everything. And notice nothing I really talked about was too heavily on the design piece. You know, that's yes, it's important for it to be designed well, but really it's about how you're speaking. And so those are easy changes to make. You don't need to go need to hire a web developer to make a lot of these changes. It's as simple as going in and maybe tweaking the wording, making sure it's clear, making sure it flows. All right. Let me know how it goes. If you want me to look at your website, I'm always happy to. So just go to uh therapybusinesspod.com, get in touch with us, uh, give me a link, and I will be happy to go look at it and maybe send a few um things you're doing awesome, and maybe some things that could use improving, and I can be that guinea pig of a of a patient who's going through your site, pretending to try and book you and let you know, is this flowing or am I hitting that back button? All right, thanks for engaging with this. I'm excited to see how your websites improve.

Simple Tweaks And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a practice owner that you may know. If your practice needs help getting organized with the finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspod.com to learn how we can help.