The 3 Things Clients Check Before They Email You

Watch how anyone actually reads a therapy website and it is not reading. It is a scan, in a fixed order, looking for three specific things. Most sites answer one of them.

What do therapy clients check before they make contact?

Your face, your fee and whether anyone else has been here before: they are deciding whether this will be awkward, whether they can afford it, and whether you are real, and all three are settled before a word is written.

1. Your face

The photo is not decoration and it is not vanity. It is the fastest answer to the only question that matters at this stage, which is whether sitting in a room with you would be bearable.

This is why stock photography of a couch or a plant does real damage. It answers nothing, and its absence is read, fairly, as reluctance to be seen.

It does not need to be a professional portrait. It needs to be you, looking at the camera, in reasonable light, roughly as you will look when they walk in. Therapists routinely choose the most formal photo they own, which is usually the least reassuring one they own.

2. Your fee

The most common reason a page produces no enquiries is that it does not say the price, and the most common reason for that is a worry about seeming transactional.

Consider what the omission actually communicates. Somebody deciding whether they can afford help has to write an email to find out, and expose that they are worried about money, to a stranger, before knowing whether it was ever affordable. Most people will not do that. They will find someone whose page says it.

Publishing the fee is not commercial. It is the considerate option. It also means the enquiries you get are from people who have already accepted the number, which changes the whole tone of a first conversation.

3. Whether anyone else has been here before

The third check is quick and almost unconscious: has anyone else done this and been alright?

A testimonial, a review, a case study, a note about how long you have practised. Not volume, and not five stars. One specific account of somebody who arrived worried and found it survivable is worth more than a page of praise, because the fear is specific too.

For therapists this is the awkward one, given confidentiality. It is still solvable: consented and anonymised feedback, a description of the kind of person you work with, or simply saying plainly how many years you have been doing this.

What this changes

Three things on one screen: a real photo, a real number, and one piece of evidence that other people have been here.

Most therapy websites make you hunt for all three, and the hunting is where they lose people, because the alternative to hunting is closing the tab and picking someone else.