Common Website Mistakes that Drive Clients Away

Camille McDaniel (00:13.514)
Welcome back. And if you happen to be new here, then welcome. It’s wonderful to have you. We are going to talk about something that is going to be really important for any business owner, really. But especially with all the people today that go online, tens of millions of people go online to find help for the mental health challenges that they have, whether it be stress within their home.

whether it be stress that they’re dealing with within their marriage or anything else, there are people, like I said, by the tens of millions, Pew Research studies show it, there are psychological associations that are showing these numbers and stats saying how many people are going online to find the help that they need. And we as business owners wanna make sure that we are going to be there when they show up.

And how do we do that? With our websites. But if our websites are not what they need to be, then our website can end up costing clients instead of bringing us clients. And we don’t want a website that’s costing us clients. What in the world kind of investment is that? We want something that is going to help put our healing message out there for anybody who needs help.

You want to think about it like this, as a Christian counselor, it’s not just about us being professional, it’s obviously about that, but it’s about building trust. And our website helps us to build trust. And so we want to make sure that we have a website that is building trust, communicating clearly, making it easy for people to find the help that they need. But if our website is not

kind of constructed the way we need it to be. And if our written copy is not exactly where it needs to be, then we want to make some changes. And we are going to talk about that today in this episode. We’re going to go into common website mistakes that could be turning away your potential clients. then I’m going to share with you some actionable tips that you can take right away.

Camille McDaniel (02:38.912)
in order to ensure that your online presence is working for you and not working against you, okay? So, I mean, this is not even about, you know, the website company and I know that you all know that we have that but literally, if you never contact us for a website, you’ll be able to know what to do.

and if you do want to contact us for a consultation and you want for us to go over the copy on your website, we can do that too. But either way, please stick around for this episode so that you can just double check, make sure that your website is where it needs to be. And maybe you even gleaned something from this episode that you can pass on to someone else or share this episode with someone else.

who is building a private practice and needs a website or has a website already and probably has not taken a look at it in quite some time. It’s probably a little dusty. So we’re going to go ahead and jump right in and looking at what are some of the common mistakes that people make when it comes to their website. Before I even list number one, one of the things that I want to really impress

on everyone who is listening today is just the awareness that as we meet all of these individuals who are online looking for help, our website acts as like the front door to our business. It’s like the digital front door, our digital storefront, if you will. So when people are searching online and they come to our practice website, we want to make sure

that it is showing exactly what we want it to show. It’s speaking for us even though we are not there. Okay? So one of the first things that does us in really, really bad when someone comes to our website and this is the number one listing that I’m gonna say, I’m not gonna say this is the number one problem out of all problems, but

Camille McDaniel (04:52.354)
I will say number one is an unclear message. There is no clarity of who you serve, how you serve, what you stand for. It’s not compelling. It is as clear as mud and it is very confusing for visitors. Matter of fact, it might even be confusing for referral sources.

Let me ask you this, how many of you listening to this podcast right now can say that you have had a time where you’ve asked for referrals? Let’s say you need to refer a current client out or let’s say somebody needs counseling, but you happen to recognize you’re not the right fit. You don’t have the specialization they need, but you offer to give them some, some help.

So you’re like, you know what, I will ask my colleagues and I will send you a message just to help you along the way, get you pointed in the right direction. The person is really thankful, you’re like wonderful. Let’s pretend this person happens to have a struggle with their relationship with food and they have an eating disorder. You happen to ask whether you’re asking online or happen to be asking like in like a listserv, so like kind of an email kind of group that you belong to.

Wherever you’re asking, you ask for individuals who happen to have a specialization in eating disorders of whatever specific kind that this person has. And you get responses back. And you decide to do your due diligence. So you go and check out those individuals before you put your name behind those referrals, right? And when you go to some of the websites, there is not a

thing on the website that would indicate they work with an eating disorder population. How many of you have had that happen? You ask for referrals, people give you their names, say that they work with this particular thing, and when you go to their website, you see all kinds of everything else, but you do not see what they said they actually can help you with. How do you feel about that? Does that make you feel confident about passing their information on? No, it doesn’t.

Camille McDaniel (07:15.308)
Because when the client, the potential client goes to their website, they’re gonna see the same thing and be pretty confused or unsure. They’re not, they want the help, but they’re like, I don’t know, I’m coming to this website and all I see is like information on couples counseling and high conflict couples and how you can help build a wonderful marriage. It’s like, are you sure they focus on eating disorders? Okay.

So I want you all to do this real quick. This will be a good kind of check-in even for you. Go to your website and look at it with a clear mind. I know you know what you do. You know what you specialize in. But just go to your website as if you were just checking out a number of different people for help. When you look at the written copy on your website, when you look at the photos on your website,

When you click around, what do you think you specialize in based on what your website says? And if you happen to be a group practice, I didn’t forget about you. Okay. When you go to your group practice website, can you tell what you help with? Can you tell that you have multiple people with multiple specializations ready to help you in a number of ways? Can you tell that by looking at

the front door, the homepage. If you can’t, then you need to make some changes if you cannot, okay? And if you can, wonderful, good for you. That’s awesome, you’re on a roll, okay? The next mistake that business owners make with their website is the navigation of their website or what we would call like the user experience.

It’s a navigation nightmare. for example, one simple change, the way that things are titled on the website. So if I happen to be on the website and I see that this seems to align with my need and I think that I might want to give them a call, but I’m

Camille McDaniel (09:40.632)
just wanna know do they accept my insurance? And if they don’t accept my insurance, I’d like to know how much it’s gonna cost me. But I don’t see a tab for fees or insurance. Matter of fact, the information is on the website, but it probably is listed under like frequently asked questions. Well, my mind.

doesn’t think of that as a frequently asked question. Instead, I think of that as just a normal part of your practice policy that can be listed. It’s not like, you know, a question like, well, how long does therapy usually take? In my mind, it’s just a black and white. Do you accept this insurance or not? Do you even accept insurance or no? What are your fees? Now I do understand some people do not list their fees. They would prefer to talk to people first.

and that is your choice. I do think that you want to take into account whether that’s going to work for you during all seasons or all types of economies. You know, sometimes people just want to be able to be respectful of your time and their time and they know what they can afford and they know what they can’t afford and they don’t want to lobe all you or feel like they’re kind of haggling and if they know how much things are going to cost them.

then they can just know whether to reach out or not. But, you know, that’s conversation for another episode. So either way, just make it clear. So don’t hide things, you know, behind a tab that would kind of lead person on like a wild goose chase. Try to be just very clear about what it is that you’re offering by titling things appropriately. Make it clear, make it easy to find. Also,

when we’re talking about like a navigation nightmare we want to also make sure that we are not stacking too many opposite services or not opposite but unrelated services together. So if I happen to be a client who is looking for an appointment but first I want to know a little bit more about what you do with eating disorders then my mind says I’ll probably find that information under services but

Camille McDaniel (12:04.482)
Lo and behold, you provide services for clinicians who are trying to build a sustainable private practice and you provide clinical supervision for students who are trying to get licensed in that state. And you also provide help with marriages and eating disorders and a number of other things. And you put all of that right under your services page. Like literally you didn’t split it up, you just have one services page and you have all those different unrelated services on that page.

I recommend you not do that. It can be very overwhelming and confusing. If somebody happens to be coming to you and they are just looking for an appointment for counseling, they don’t want business building help and they’re not a student looking for a licensed or a clinical supervisor so they can get licensed, then it really can be a lot of them having to scroll through unrelated unnecessary information.

And remember, you are on the clock with people staying on your website because studies have shown that people stay on your website for like, you know, seconds and if they find what they need, then they’ll stay a little bit longer. But they really you might lose them if they have to go digging for what they are looking for. They may actually get distracted and then get to looking at something else or they’ll be like, you know what, let me

Let me just actually pause this. I’ll come back to this website. Let me keep on looking real quick because there was another website that I saw and believe me, people just look at multiple sites going down a list. That’s kind of what I have at least heard as far as feedback from a number of individuals over the years. They just are kind of going from site to site or list to list.

So you want to make things very easy for them so that they will stay on your site and so that they will go from your website to the contact page or to calling you directly. I would also advise on that note, if you happen to offer any help with business, if you happen to, you know, do anything with other clinicians along the lines of private practice, have another website for that.

Camille McDaniel (14:20.002)
keep your clinical counseling services separate from helping clinicians in business. Keep those separate because the two populations do not need what the other population is needing and it’s kind of sometimes overwhelming. If you absolutely don’t have a desire to separate those websites, even though it is advisable to do so, I would then say make sure that you have those services on two separate pages.

that they are titled appropriately so that people who are looking for clinical counseling services they know that’s not for me. It says business building or it says for clinicians in private practice. Nope that’s not for me, I’m not a clinician in private practice. I’ll click on this other note you know that way it keeps it very straightforward and easy. Okay the next thing that I’m going to say is a mistake that is made when it comes to websites

Slow loading times. So like your page actually just doesn’t come up quickly when somebody clicks on it. It just takes a while and slow loading time can have a lot of reasons, honestly. It could have something to do with where you are hosting your website. Maybe they don’t have, you know, good speed and good page speed or they, you know, their company kind of has outages.

quite frequently, you know, so it might affect your website. Sometimes the pictures on your website that you have uploaded have not been compressed in a way that makes it so that the page itself is not very heavy. I guess the best way that I can think of that is like, you ever tried to send an email to somebody and you have an attachment and the attachment is like some crazy number of megabytes?

and and the email can’t send it because the file is too large to send in that way. Well similarly sometimes you can put things on your website page that if they are not configured well like pictures or things like that, it sometimes can weigh your website page down and make it a little bit slower to upload when people click on it and that can actually really really impact

Camille McDaniel (16:43.576)
client retention because when people first come to your website, you do have seconds. Research shows people come to the website and they are scanning immediately just to see is this going to be what I need? And then if they don’t see what they’re looking for, they’re gone. It’s people’s attention is that it’s that quick. Okay, so you want to make sure that you are doing a check just to see how your own website loads.

Check on different browsers, know, check on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, all that kind of stuff and see how it loads for you. And if it’s not loading quickly, then you want to do a little bit of work around that. Okay. The next thing that I want to kind of mention is just lack of trust. This kind of goes back to the having a clear message, but your website, if your website again,

is not organized well, if the information doesn’t really seem to be pointing in the right direction according to your specializations. If there is a lot of missing information, for example, people do like to see who they are going to be meeting with if you don’t have a picture of yourself or if you don’t have any explanation of who you are and your training and your background, that can all lead to a lack of trust, right?

If you don’t have anything on the website that would allow people to understand that you actually know what you’re talking about when it comes to the specializations that you serve. And I wouldn’t want you to get offended about that. Look, if I’m looking for a medical professional or a mental health professional or dental professional, whatever it is I’m looking for, I am looking for indicators that I can trust what you say, that I can trust your professional level of expertise.

I don’t know you. So all I can go by is what I see online. Give me a good experience and enough information so that I can make a proper decision on whether or not you could be a good fit for me. All right. If I am looking for a faith based provider and you don’t have a single mention about faith integration or the fact that you are a Christian or the

Camille McDaniel (19:07.47)
the that you believe or follow Christ, like there is, I can’t find a thing, but you said, yes, I can provide Christian counseling. That’s not going to feel genuine. That’s maybe going to cause a little mistrust when you’re talking about a client, right? Especially in this day and time where people say a lot of things in order to get the client.

Increase sustainability and to increase income. mean, unfortunately, you know, I hate to hate to even have to think about it that way, honestly, but that’s the day and time that we live in. So if someone is looking for faith based counseling and you have said to people, this is what I can provide. But when I go to your website, I don’t see any indication at all that really doesn’t then validate what you say you do.

and then that kind of doesn’t increase the trust that you’re building with potential clients. So what do we all need? I think kind of like as I listed all of the four problems, that kind of also gives you those solutions right there. You know, what we need is we need a clear, compelling message like we talked about. So you’re gonna go and you’re gonna check that out for yourself and make sure that when you go to your own website that you actually see

clear, compelling information and if you don’t, you’re gonna work to make it clear or you’re going to get help from someone who can help you make it clear. You wanna make sure also that I didn’t list this on there but you wanna make sure that you are using proper key terms so that you can help yourself when it comes to search engine optimization so that when people are going on these search engines,

that your website has a better chance of actually being seen. It takes a lot to get on the first page of a search unless you happen to be in an area of town where there really aren’t a lot of people who do what you do. But they are changing a lot of things about how things are found on the internet. Everybody has their own artificial intelligence. So sometimes when you actually ask for information now, like let’s say you’re asking on Google,

Camille McDaniel (21:27.276)
Google will answer you with its own artificial intelligence first, then it may actually answer by giving you examples of like different videos that people have made or blog posts that people have created. And then it will do like all the sponsored ads, people who have paid for advertising. And then it will actually show, you know, the different people who happen to be in your area. So they’re making it so that we got to work a little smarter.

in in the way that we are doing things. So again like I said you’re going to make sure that you have a clear and compelling message. Compelling means that you are speaking to the pain points of the person that you want to serve, you are making sure your written copy says to that person they understand me, they get me. my goodness have they been like listening in on my conversations? It’s almost like they know exactly what I’ve been saying.

want make sure your navigation is not a nightmare, make sure that people can easily get through your website, things are properly clearly titled, things are not jumbled, things are information is not hidden under certain tabs over in the distance making it difficult for people to find what they are needing straight away, making sure that your

speed time, your loading of your website and loading of the pages on your website is not dragging, it’s not slow so that people don’t get impatient while waiting and click on off and go to another website and you want to make sure that your information is going to build the trust that you desire with the individuals you are supposed to be reaching. Okay so

I think that I have given quite a bit and I hope that you actually take action to just double check on this and and see what’s going on right. You know you want to make sure that you are actually reaching those individuals that you have been put here to reach and and the world needs healing. I mean we all know that right? So we have good work to do, a lot of people to reach and we definitely want to continue to work on this so that we are building our brand

Camille McDaniel (23:41.304)
People are thinking about us when they are thinking about needing help and they feel good about what we have to say about it because it gives them the confidence that maybe they are going to get the help that they need based on the website that we have crafted. So hopefully you go and you check out everything. If you need any help, you know where to find me. And so we’d be more than helpful help. We’d be more than happy to help.

you in creating what you need, the type of copy that you’re needing, and to look over your website. Until then, let’s all get out there and shine a light. Bye bye.