Insights on User Experience, SEO, Content Strategy, and More
For behavioral healthcare providers, it’s essential to make information on your services easy to access. Whether you run an addiction treatment center, an ABA therapy clinic, or a mental health practice, your website is one of your most crucial marketing and audience engagement tools.
It’s the first impression many potential clients will have of your services. And in many cases, it determines whether someone will reach out to you for help, keep searching, or give up on finding the services they need.
A well-designed website doesn’t just look good; it guides potential clients and encourages them to take action. Unfortunately, many behavioral health websites fall short in key areas, like:
User experience (UX)
Is the website easy to navigate for someone in distress or unfamiliar with behavioral health services?
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Can potential clients find you when they search for services in your area?
HIPAA compliance
Is your website handling patient inquiries securely and safely? Are you risking legal liability unnecessarily?
Content strategy
Are you addressing the specific services and locations potential clients are looking for? And are you using the language that they understand to talk about those services?
Differentiation
Does your website clearly communicate what makes your practice or facility stand out from the competition?
In this article, we’ll break down each of these critical elements and explain how they can make or break your website’s ability to attract and convert new clients.
The Importance of User Experience (UX) Design in Behavioral Health Websites
Website user experience matters in every industry but is critical in behavioral health. Many visitors are experiencing conditions like anxiety, depression, and others that make it hard for them to concentrate on and process information.
Consequently, if a website is difficult to navigate or confusing in any way, a visitor is likely to not reach out. Instead, they leave and don’t become a client.
How do you avoid that situation, which is bad for the person and your organization? These UX best practices for behavioral health websites are essential:
UX BEST PRACTICE
Ensure your website has simple, intuitive navigation.
That starts with a clear menu structure with easily accessible service and contact pages. You should also avoid cluttered layouts that can overwhelm users, instead opting for designs with plenty of space.
UX BEST PRACTICE
Use a mobile-friendly design.
The percentage of website traffic coming from mobile devices continues to climb, meaning a significant percentage of visitors will likely find your site on their phone or tablet. Consequently, your site must function seamlessly on all devices.
UX BEST PRACTICE
Prioritize accessibility and inclusion.
You should use WCAG-compliant design (e.g., large text, color contrast, text-to-speech tools) that provides a frictionless experience for users with disabilities. You should also focus on language accessibility for diverse audiences.
Following these guidelines not only benefits your audience but can also help your organization grow. Just ask our client North Range Behavioral Health, whose web transformation led to an increase in conversions of 1,303%.
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Increase in conversions for North Range Behavioral Health after a website redesign.
SEO: Helping People Find Your Behavioral Health Website
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a practice that’s been around for a long time. Consequently, organizations sometimes ignore it in favor of other initiatives. But to be clear: SEO is critical for lead generation.
The vast majority of people looking for mental health or addiction treatment services start with a web search—most often a Google search. If your website doesn’t rank well and appear on the first few pages of the results, the person probably won’t see it. And if they don’t see your name, it’s as if your organization doesn’t exist.
Let that sink in for a minute! If 20 people search today for services like yours, and your name is buried on page 3 of the search results (a page they never get to), you’ve missed out on the chance to serve 20 new clients.
Fortunately, you can climb the search results by addressing these SEO essentials for behavioral health websites:
SEO ESSENTIALS
Keyword optimization.
It’s crucial to know the terms searchers are using (depression treatment, addiction treatment, etc.) when looking for treatment, and then incorporate hyper-specific, location-based keywords wherever possible on your website.
SEO ESSENTIALS
Local SEO strategies.
You should optimize your Google Business Profile and include NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency across listings. It’s also vital to create location-specific pages instead of just creating a list of all locations/areas served (e.g., “Rehab Center in Los Angeles” or “ABA Therapy in Denver”).
SEO ESSENTIALS
Technical SEO considerations.
Fast page loading, mobile optimization, and proper meta descriptions impact search rankings, so staying on top of those factors is important.
Our client, Health Solutions, is an excellent example of the power of SEO. In just six months, they improved their visibility and increased conversions by 248%. Hilltop Behavioral Health had an even more remarkable conversion increase of over 2,300% as a result of our guidance and their focus on SEO.
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Increase in conversions for Hilltop Behavioral Health after enhanced audience targeting.
HIPAA Compliance & Website Security: Protecting Patient Data
As healthcare organizations know, protecting patient data isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s required by law. Any website that collects patient data (via contact forms, cookies, live chat, etc.) must comply with HIPAA regulations.
Even providers who know this may not realize that data security and protection requirements carry over to almost any contractor who works on your website, customer relationship management (CRM) system, or digital ad accounts. Is your marketing agency currently under a business associate agreement (BAA) with you?
Failure to meet your behavioral health website’s data privacy and security requirements can lead to significant legal consequences and fines. Just as importantly, it can tarnish your reputation and cause a loss of trust that hurts your business.
You can protect your clients and your organization by implementing these essential HIPAA-compliant website features:
HIPAA FEATURES
Secure forms & chat tools.
You must ensure that contact form submissions, appointment requests, and live chats are encrypted and stored securely. Unprotected interactions are an invitation to cybercriminals.
HIPAA FEATURES
SSL certificates & HTTPS encryption.
Behavioral health websites must have an SSL certificate to protect sensitive information.
HIPAA FEATURES
HIPAA-compliant hosting & storage.
Bad actors will exploit any failure in how you collect and maintain sensitive information. Data you collect should be stored on HIPAA-compliant servers.
It’s easy to get complacent about data security if you’ve never had an issue. However, hardly a week goes by without news of a significant healthcare data breach. You need to be sure your organization doesn’t make headlines for the wrong reasons.
Creating Content for Specific Services & Locations
After finding your organization, potential clients will want to be confident you can meet their needs before reaching out. If your website doesn’t have sufficient current content about your services to reassure them about your capabilities, they’ll likely leave and visit your competitor’s site.
As with our example of missed opportunities from SEO shortcomings, it’s concerning to think about how many potential clients might reach your website and depart quickly because you have anemic or outdated content.
You can engage with and encourage them to contact you with these best practices for service- and location-specific content for your behavioral health website:
- Create dedicated service pages. Each of your core services (substance abuse treatment, ABA therapy, outpatient counseling, etc.) should have its own detailed, content-rich page. And you should organize the content so that website visitors can get the gist of your offerings quickly but continue reading if they want to learn more. The information architecture on your website can make a significant difference in user engagement.
- Maintain SEO-focused location pages. If your organization or practice has multiple locations or serves several regions, cities, or neighborhoods, create separate, unique pages for each, and optimize those pages for local search.
However, here’s an important note: It’s crucial that these are unique pages. Simply drafting verbiage for one location and duplicating it across several pages with only the location-specific page headline changed can hurt your website’s SEO. Take the time to provide the necessary information in different ways on each page.
The term “content marketing” was coined over 25 years ago to emphasize the power that helpful information has to sway opinions and generate leads. Still, the practice is just as relevant and impactful for behavioral health providers today.
Differentiation: Standing Out in a Crowded Market
Few behavioral health organizations enjoy a monopoly in their area. And those that do probably won’t for long, as new providers are continually opening their doors. For your business to thrive, you’ve got to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Too often, organizations have bland websites that use generic verbiage. While you surely provide “compassionate care,” you must share that information in an attention-getting way that sets you apart from the crowd. Clear visual branding and a unique brand voice make it easy for potential clients to understand why your practice is the right choice for them.
You can differentiate your behavioral health website in several ways, including:
Use authentic storytelling to engage visitors’ emotions.
You’ve got to share client success stories in HIPAA-compliant ways, of course, but doing so can confirm your capabilities and build trust. While much of the research on emotion in marketing centers on making more sales, the principles also apply in behavioral health settings.
Identify and highlight strong, unique value propositions.
Rather than vague statements about being able to treat various conditions, emphasize what makes your facility or services unique. For example, perhaps you use specialized or cutting-edge treatment methods that other providers don’t. Or maybe your staff members have credentials that are uncommon in the industry.
Include compelling calls to action (CTAs).
Every page on your website should direct visitors to take a desired action—whether that’s calling your office, filling out a form, or booking a consultation. And that encouragement should have some energy. Rather than, “Contact us to learn more,” consider CTAs that emphasize the benefits of engaging with you and have a sense of urgency: “Take the first step toward better mental health. Contact us today!”
Turn Your Website into a Client-Generating Machine
A behavioral health website isn’t an online brochure; it’s an essential tool that should actively help people find your organization, understand your services, and feel confident you can help them overcome their challenges. It must also guide them toward taking desired actions.
You can achieve these goals by focusing on:
- User-friendly design to create a welcoming, accessible site
- SEO best practices to increase search visibility
- HIPAA compliance to protect patient privacy
- Strategic and compelling content to address specific needs and locations
- Clear differentiation to stand out from competitors
With a little time, effort, and focus, you can enhance your website to attract, engage, and convert potential clients much more effectively.
If you want expert guidance on optimizing your website, consider working with a behavioral health marketing agency with extensive expertise in assisting addiction treatment and mental health therapy providers and more than 25 years of experience, like A-Train.
