Chapter Two
The Website I Wish I'd Built First
Part of Building a Counselling Practice: The Journey Beyond the Classroom
After weeks of reading articles, watching videos and comparing counselling websites, I finally built one.
I was quite proud of it.
It looked professional.
It said all the right things.
It explained my qualifications, my approach and the services I offered.
It looked exactly like a counselling website.
That turned out to be the problem.
If you'd changed the logo at the top, it could probably have belonged to hundreds of therapists across the country.
There was very little that actually sounded like me.
Like many newly qualified counsellors, I thought the website's job was to explain counselling.
I wrote about being person-centred.
Integrative.
Safe.
Confidential.
Compassionate.
Ethical.
All of those things were true.
The difficulty was that they were also true of thousands of other therapists.
Eventually I realised something that completely changed how I wrote.
People aren't usually searching for a counselling website.
They're searching for reassurance.
They want to know:
"Will this person understand me?"
"Will I feel comfortable talking to them?"
"Have they worked with someone like me before?"
"Can I imagine myself sitting in that room?"
None of those questions are answered by saying you're warm, empathic and non-judgemental.
They're answered by showing people how you think.
That's when everything began to change.
Instead of writing pages that explained counselling, I started writing articles.
About men.
About fathers.
About grief.
About identity.
About the conversations I was already having every day.
Almost without noticing, the website stopped feeling like an online brochure.
It started becoming a reflection of my practice.
Something else happened that I hadn't expected.
Writing became easier.
I wasn't trying to sound like a therapist anymore.
I was simply writing about the work that genuinely interested me.
Looking back, I don't think the biggest improvement was the design.
Or the SEO.
Or even Google.
It was that the website finally sounded like the person clients would eventually meet.
If someone reads your website and then meets a completely different person in the therapy room, something has gone wrong.
Your website shouldn't perform.
It should simply introduce you.
That was probably the most important lesson I learned.
And it led me to an even bigger question.
If my website finally sounded like me...
Who was I actually trying to reach?
That question became the beginning of the next chapter.
Continue the Journey
← Chapter One: Getting Found Online as a Counsellor
Chapter Three → Finding My Niche as a Counsellor
Perhaps One Day...
These chapters began as reflections whilst building Me In Time Counselling & Psychotherapy.
The more I write, the more they feel like chapters of a book that hasn't quite realised it's a book yet.
Get in Touch
Has your website become a reflection of your practice—or are you still trying to sound like everyone else?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.