Below is the entire transcript from this podcast episode. Enjoy!
Uriah: What do you think are the top 3 most visited pages on a counseling website?
Tracel: Uhh, the first one comes to mind quickly, that’s gotta to be the “Home Page“, the landing page. Umm, after that, I’m not sure what the other 2 would be, what are they?
Uriah: You got number 1 right, the home page, that’s where most people will land.
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: And then the second one is the “About Me” or “About Us” page.
Tracel: Oh, that makes sense
Uriah: Which for a group practice would be like our team, or therapists, something like that…
Tracel: Right
Uriah: And then the third one, and what we’re talking about today is the contact page.
Tracel: Wow, so why is it important to have a good contact page?
Uriah: So if you think about it, it doesn’t always happen this way, but if someone lands on a website they’re probably going to be on the “Home Page”, but maybe on a blog post, and then somewhere on that page they’re gonna find some sort of call-to-action, a button or something like that. And most likely, that is going to go to the contact page, because that is how most people get in touch with us to initiate counseling.
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: So that’s why it’s important, because people are most likely going to land there and if you optimize that page it’ll just make it easier and make that process simple for the potential client.
Tracel: So I feel like contact pages I’ve seen before are kind of difficult. So, what are the mistakes that seem to be most common that therapists make with their contact page?
Uriah: You know it’s-it’s hard to ruin a contact page. In the sense that…
Tracel: Yeah
Uriah…putting your address, and your phone number, and your email address…
Tracel: Right
Uriah: …on a page, is not difficult and so probably nobody’s making a critical mistake, but I think that the top mistake that I see is that people add too much information…
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: …and too many ways to contact them.
Tracel: Right
Uriah: Which can be confusing so you’ve got a phone number, you’ve got an option to maybe text, or e-mail, you’ve got a contact form, maybe a fax number…
Tracel: Mm-hmm, (laughs)
Uriah: (laughs) some people still use faxes.
Tracel: …Smoke signals, all that stuff…
Uriah: Right!
Tracel: (laughs)
Uriah: And-and one thing you’ve got to think about is the mindset of the person that is landing on your website. They’re probably in some sort of crisis…
Tracel: Right
Uriah: …it might be serious, it might be less serious, but…
Tracel: Right
Uriah:… it might be 2 AM in the morning, and so what you wanna do is simply that, and make sure that page is not cluttered and overwhelming. Because that’ll just make it harder for them, and potentially someone could just go ahead and leave the-leave the website.
Tracel: Right, yeah. Yeah, I think about myself, if it was too difficult I would probably just move onto somebody else…
Uriah: Exactly.
Tracel: …if it was too difficult to navigate, to try to figure that out.
Uriah: Exactly.
Tracel: Yeah. So what is your recommendation, what is the one thing somebody should be sure to do?
Uriah: So we a-, we actually have a lot of recommendations, but the number 1 recommendation I want to mention on this podcast is the suggestion to choose one primary contact method and than prioritize that throughout the site.
Tracel: Mm-hmm.
Uriah: And it’s interesting, as we talk to different practices that we work with and that we talk to, uhh, some people really like to set up new, uh, sessions with clients through email primarily.
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: Some people, not a lot of people use text messaging, but some people do.
Tracel: Right.
Uriah: Some people prioritize phone, uh, there’s such …and than other people actually prioritize automating that whole process through their EHR and online scheduling.
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: For us, we actually prefer that potential clients schedule that initial phone call directly through our contact page. So everything on the website sort of funnels, if you will,…
Tracel: Right
Uriah: …into that one-one action….
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: …Because, it just-for-in our experience that works the best.
Tracel: Right
Uriah: And, we’ll actually do a separate episode on that at some point I think, because I think it’s-it’s a very clever way to solve that problem.
Tracel: Yeah, it’s good for the practice. It’s also good for the assistant or the virtual assistant too, a lot of good benefits to it.
Uriah: Absolutely, it makes things a lot, a lot better, for the person managing those calls.
Tracel: Yes
Uriah: Whether that’s the practice owner or the virtual assistant right?
Tracel: Right, yup.
Uriah: So we actually have a lot more to say about optimizing your contact page, but we don’t want to make these episodes too long.
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: So, we are actually going to refer you to a course we created called “From Website to Couch”. And what that is, it’s a clear-cut system to eliminate phone-tag, automate the initial contact, and get more clients on your couch.
Tracel: Mm-hmm
Uriah: The longest subtitle ever….
Tracel: (laughs)
Uriah: (laughs) …to a course…
Tracel: (laughs)
Uriah: …but it’s good right?
Tracel: …very good very clear, you know what you’re getting yourself into.
Uriah: Exactly. So the link to that course is in the show-notes, and I highly recommend you checking that out if you want to improve, not only, your contact page, but all types of different things on your website to help you get more clients. Yes.
Tracel: Sounds good.
Uriah: Thanks Tracel this was fun
Tracel: Alright, we’ll chat with you again.
Uriah: Alright. Thanks for listening everybody.
Tracel and Uriah: Bye!
