Website for therapists and psychologists, with booking nobody has to ring for
Whoever is reading your page has usually been circling the idea for months, and they are reading it late, on their own, with the door shut. What they want to find is an hour, a fee and a way of taking that hour that does not involve saying any of it out loud to a stranger on a telephone first.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.
Three practical problems, none of them clinical
This is about the administration around the hour, which is the part that is allowed to be automated.
Nobody wants to make that call
The step people stall on is not the session. It is the phone call before it, where they have to explain themselves to whoever picks up, and possibly leave a message with their name on it.
A form or a bookable time removes that step entirely. They choose an hour, type what they are willing to type, and press a button. Whatever they were going to say on the phone they can say in the room instead, which is where it belongs.
Thursday at four, every week
Most of your work is a standing hour. The same weekday, the same time, for as long as it runs, and that hour has to stay held against a diary that is also being read by anybody looking for a first appointment.
When the hour is only held in your head, one absent minded booking gives it away, and then you are the one making an awkward phone call to move somebody who has organised their working week around four o'clock.
Online and in the room are different bookings
One of them needs a room, a chair and a door that shuts. The other needs a link and nothing else, and can happen on a day you are nowhere near the office.
If they are the same entry in the diary, somebody eventually books a room session for an afternoon you are working from home, and the first anyone knows about it is when they arrive and press the buzzer.
Four things that keep the administration quiet
Everything here is about arranging and confirming appointments. Nothing on the page needs to describe what happens inside them.
A first session that can be booked in silence
The client chooses the type of session, sees the hours that are genuinely open for it, takes one and receives a confirmation. No conversation, no message left on an answerphone, no waiting to see whether anybody rings back.
Session types are separate entries, so a fifty minute hour, a longer first meeting and an online appointment each have their own length and their own availability rather than sharing one generic slot.
The client moves their own hour, through a private link
Every booking comes with a link that belongs to that client and nobody else. If they need to move next Tuesday, they do it there, inside the notice period you have set, and the hour goes back into the diary the moment they release it.
It also means the cancellation terms are visible in the same place as the button, rather than being something you have to say out loud to somebody who has just cancelled.
A confirmation and a reminder, worded by you
The confirmation goes when the booking is made and the reminder the day before, and both carry only what you decide to put in them. For a lot of practices that is a date, a time and an address, and deliberately no subject line that says anything at all.
E-mail reminders are part of the plan. Text messages are available as a prepaid add-on where clients prefer them.
The questions people are too uncomfortable to ask
How long is a session. What happens if I cancel on the day. Do you keep notes and who can see them. Is it confidential. Are you accredited, and by whom. People will read those answers on a page at midnight and would never ring to ask a single one of them.
Write each once and the site answers it from then on, in your words, without anybody having to identify themselves.
How the session list is usually set out
The names and the fees are yours. The structure is what does the work: one entry per kind of appointment, each with its own length.
Entries can sit under headings of your choosing, so what happens in the room and what happens over a video link are not muddled together.
What therapists want to know first
Yes, and for most practices that is the reason to have it. They choose a session type and an hour on the site and get a confirmation. If you would rather see an enquiry first, a plain form with a free text box can stand in the place of the booking button.
The hour is blocked in the diary for as long as the arrangement runs, so it never shows as available to anyone else. New clients are only ever offered what is left around those blocks.
Only what you ask for at booking, which for most practices is a name, a contact address and whatever they choose to write in the message box. It sits in the customer register on your site, not in a shared inbox and not on a phone.
They can be written next to the booking and repeated in the confirmation and the reminder. Because the client cancels through their own link, the notice period is applied by the system rather than argued about afterwards.
No. Whatever is there can be pulled in, and the builder adds the pages that are missing around it. You then rewrite anything that does not sound like you by clicking the pencil next to it.
Plans run from €49 to €199 a month plus VAT. Whichever you take, the site sits on your own domain with SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support behind it. SMS is prepaid on top of that.
More trades
- Dental practicesReminders that keep the chair from standing empty.
- OsteopathsFirst visit and follow-up as separate bookings.
- ChiropractorsQualifications stated, next visit booked in the room.
- PhysiotherapistsPatients book, employers get a written offer.
- Veterinary practicesBooking against both a vet and a room.
- Dog groomersSlot length per breed, an eight week rhythm.
- All trades
Set up your booking page
Write a few lines about how you work, or hand over the page you already have, and a first version comes back with your session types, your hours and a booking form. Nothing is visible to anybody until you decide it is.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.