OTT 4 - Does Your Therapy Website Have a Clear Call to Action?

Daniel Fava: and one more thing I almost forgot, ⁓ you need help with your online marketing ⁓ creating a great website or ⁓ have a website and you need help with your online visibility through SEO and AIO, ⁓ be happy to talk to you. So if you go to privatepracticeelevation.com slash kickoff, you can fill out a short form, let us know a little bit about. ⁓ Hey there and welcome back to another episode of On The Trail. Short episodes where we answer common questions therapists have about websites, SEO, and online marketing as they grow their private practices. I'm your host Daniel Fava, founder of Private Practice Elevation. All right, today we're talking about something that might seem small, but it actually makes a huge difference on your website. And that is... what challenges you're facing right now and schedule a 15 minute call with myself. There you go. There's my call to action and I almost forgot it. Thanks so much for listening. call to action ⁓ may have you may have heard this term before or ⁓ as you're researching online marketing You see CTA that stands for call to action. So today we're going to talk about What it? ⁓ Where it go? ⁓ And do you make your website? ⁓ Actually visitors to take that next step. So let's let's get into this and let's break it down So number one, what is a call to action? What is the CTA? simple definition Simply the next you want a visitor to take on your website. You're calling them to an action and without it visitors might like your site, they might click around, but they won't know what to do next. And I know that sounds really basic and just kind of silly sometimes. It's like well I've got a contact page why don't they just use it. But we live in busy times, we live in distracted times, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and so we have to make sure that we give those website visitors opportunity, ample opportunity to take the next step. So examples that we commonly see with the websites and practices we work with could be scheduling a consultation, book your first session, just contact the practice, schedule a call, a wait list, ⁓ maybe download a resource. That could be a call to action. ⁓ say primarily we're really focused on What's gonna be that next step that someone's going to take in order to be a client of your private practice? So your website shouldn't just inform people. We wanna do that and content, great content, helps you get organic traffic to your website. All that stuff is great, but we also want to guide them toward becoming a client. So why does this matter? So many websites miss this. They explain services, they talk about their approach, their modalities, their training, all that stuff, but they never clearly invite someone to take the next step. And kind of an example of this is like, well, what if somebody showed up at your private practice and they walk through the front door, you know, instead of calling you or emailing you. And they walk in and they say, I might need therapy. You wouldn't just hand them a brochure and then just walk away and you're like, you figure it out. You look through all this information and you figure out what you want to do next. You would say something like, would you like to schedule a consultation or let's talk more about what you're looking for. Let's find out why do you think you would need therapy? You'd start that conversation to ultimately, hopefully lead them towards to becoming a client and serving them. So that call to action at CTA an invitation on your website. You're inviting them to that next step. And I said, for most private practices, we have primary CTA. We call it a primary CTA, something like schedule a consultation ⁓ or schedule first session. This is a to get people started with those conversations and get that relationship going. And so one thing that we wanna do, or you should think about, is what is the primary call to action that I want somebody to take in order to start that conversation. it's okay to have multiple calls to action, but there should be just one primary. on each page and that primary call to action should stand out. It should be very clear that this is the next step I'm going to take in order to start working with this practice or with this therapist. And some of the things that we do to make sure that that is clear is number one, repeating it throughout the page. Let's use a homepage as an example. We'll likely have a hero up top and have schedule your consultation now, schedule a consultation to get started, you know, or get started today. And that goes to your scheduling. link or a place where they can access your calendar. So we have that in that top hero. We often have it too in the menu at the top of the page, top right. And those buttons that we have going with that call to action are going to be the same color. They're going to be usually high contrast so they really stand out. So that's two places you might see it on the homepage. Then depending on how much content you have on that homepage, we might break that up in the middle of the page again, calling out that call to action. You're ready to get started today. your free consultation. It's right there. And then another place would be in the footer. And often on, let's say like service, individual service landing pages where let's say you're talking about couples therapy, same sort of thing applies where you know it's up in that menu, it's in the hero, and then we always have this sort of anchor call to action as part of the page. Someone's gone through, they've read the information, and then they know exactly what to do next. We then we're kind of We're making that really stand out with website design, making sure that... it's contrast, you know, with the rest of the page, there might be a lot of content and a lot of text and all of a sudden, boom, okay, I know what I need to do next. I need to schedule a consultation. And so those are a few, few places where you can put your calls to action. And really kind of my encouragement to you is making sure that those stand out. And like I said, we use a different color for that button. We carry that consistently throughout the website. Other calls to action might be more informational related. You know, you might have a section where you introduce yourself on the home page and say learn more about me and that's a button. And that's okay. You can have that, don't make it stand out as much as that main call to action. So keep it simple. Think about the different things that you want people to do. I mentioned earlier to you about, you know, download a resource. You know, you could have like a PDF or a guide or something, and that is a way to build your email list and reach out to people in the future. And that's great too. But again, we don't want it to compete with that primary call to action. So, you know, make sure you're using that in different places, but not necessarily right next to that primary call to action. And we've really been at PPE, especially with our SEO clients, focusing in on those primary calls to action and making sure that at the top of that page, that we're only inviting them to do one thing. We're really making sure that they don't have to think, they know exactly what ⁓ need to do next. So I'll just kind of leave you with a a quick little website check you can do you know to see how you are stacking up how is your website stacking up when it comes to calls to action so go to your home page ask yourself within five seconds five seconds and Our attention spans are even shorter than that, but this is being generous five seconds Can a visitor see how to contact you can they easily schedule a consultation is there a clear next step if not? you might be losing out on potential clients. you know, make those changes in order to make sure people know exactly what to do. just some closing thoughts. Your website ⁓ isn't just to look nice. ⁓ to guide visitors toward taking that next step and becoming clients. So ⁓ calls to action are helping folks ⁓ exactly what that step is. ⁓ really serving them at this point, because if they're showing up and they're anxious and they're trying to find out information, is this the right fit? What do I do next? ⁓ you're laying that all out, you're like, hey, here's the next step. And it's very clear. Here's what's going to happen when you book that consultation, you know? And so this is all part of that clarity that brings people peace and helps them trust you and convert. So thanks so much for listening. Now go elevate your practice.