Spruce Up Your Healing Arts Website and Attract More Clients Than EverBy Juliet Austin
Marketing Coach and Copywriter
It's that time of year again, time for all things new - the new year, new resolutions, new goals. A time to make changes in our lives in order to make them better.
But what about your healing arts website? Have you thought about how you might make improvements to make it attract more clients this year?
Websites that are not updated become boring to your potential clients. And if your website becomes boring, prospective clients will stop visiting. And when they stop visiting, you won't be attracting new clients. Furthermore, from a search engine perspective, updating your site on a regular basis can help increase your rankings, thus increasing your visibility.
The most effective websites are fresh and appealing. They keep prospective clients coming back for more. Below I discuss 5 ways that you can spruce-up your website to draw in more clients and customers this year.
1. Stimulate Interest by Adding Something New
Because both web visitors and search engines love fresh content, what can you add to your site that is new and interesting to your prospects?
You might want to add a new article that you or someone else has written. Perhaps you will create an assessment test. This adds an interactive component to your website which engages your prospects and can keep them at your site longer. Perhaps you want to add an audio or video recording to your site.
Whatever you add, make sure it addresses the needs of your particular market.
2. Re-fresh Your Design To Make It More Inviting
When was the last time you had your site re-designed? Does your site reflect the level of professionalism that you want to project to your prospective clients? Does your navigation make sense to visitors?
Perhaps it's time for a re-design. Or maybe just parts of your site need to be re-designed. Often, changing certain elements of your design to make it more appealing can increase the number of phone calls you receive.
Take a look at your design and see if there are ways to make it more attractive and easier for your prospective clients to get the information they want.
3. Dazzle Your Prospects By Making Your Message More Compelling
Sadly, I still see way too many therapist and healing sites that have ho-hum content. Even if your message doesn't sound boring to you, are you sure it's not boring to your potential clients? And if it's not boring, is it engaging, inviting and motivating?
If your content looks and sounds like most other professionals, find a way to make yours different. Making yourself stand out helps potential clients notice and remember you.
Perhaps you are one of those people who still has very general, non-targeted content on your site. If this is the case, it's likely time you targeted your site more.
Make sure most of your web content is focused on your client, and their needs and goals, not on you and your services.
Making your message more compelling is the single most important change you can make to your site. Your words make a HUGE difference. This has been proven over and over again in copywriting tests.
4. Grow Your Ezine Subscribers By Making Your Opt-In Box More Enticing... Don't Have an Opt-in Box? Get One!
Newsletter subscribers are like gold to your practice. The good news is that there are an increasing number of helping and healing professionals that are seeing the role newsletters can play in bringing more clients to their practices.
However, many subscribe boxes leave a lot to be desired. Consequently, they dramatically limit the number of people who subscribe.
There are numerous ways to increase subscribers by sprucing-up your opt-in box. To begin with, make sure your subscribe box is clearly visible on your site, and is near the top of the page.
It should make a compelling offer by giving away something for free--a report or CD, for example. The more compelling the title of your newsletter and free offer are, the more subscribers you will get.
Finally, ensure that you specify your privacy policy so potential subscribers won't worry that by giving you their email address they are going to be sent unwanted email.
If you still don't have an opt-in sign-up box on your site, why not make 2009 they year that you get one?
5. Find Ways to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings and Increase Your Visibility
Is your site properly optimized for search engines? This is another area that is seriously lacking in healing artist and therapist websites.
Make sure you are using keywords on your pages and include these keywords in your title tags. Often, you can dramatically increase your search engine rankings simply by adding or changing your title tags. Also, find ways to add links in the copy (text) of your web pages and use your keywords in the actual links.
Your website should always be a work-in-progress. Don't let it become stale. Refresh and re-vitalize it on an ongoing basis--and start now--especially if you haven't up-dated it for a while.
Juliet Austin is a Marketing Coach and Copywriter who assists counselors, therapists, and alternative health professionals in building successful practices and in writing client-attracting web copy that compels potential clients to act.
You can get Juliet's FREE, 22-page, report, "67 Surefire Ways To Attract Clients" at julietaustin.com. You can also check out Juliet's new program, Client-Attracting Websites at clientattractingwebsites.com. While you can get the home study program anytime, the coaching program starts on February 5, 2009.