What Pages Does a Therapy Practice Website Need?
A therapy practice website needs five pages: Home, About, Services, FAQs, and Contact. That is the whole structure, and for most therapists starting a private therapy practice it is enough for years. The site's job is not to persuade a stranger to come to therapy. It is to confirm, for someone who already has your name from a referral or a directory, that you are real, that you work with people like them, and that they know exactly how to reach you.
Websites get overbuilt because building them feels productive. It is easier to spend a Saturday choosing fonts than it is to call a payer about a stalled credentialing application. But a fifteen-page site with a blog you will not update and a resources library nobody opens is not a better website. It is an unfinished one with more surface area. Here is what each page is for, and what it should actually say.
What goes on the home page?
The home page answers three questions in the first screen: who you work with, where you are licensed, and whether you are taking new clients. Everything else is secondary.
Someone lands here after a doctor said your name, or after they clicked through from a directory listing. They are checking that they have the right person. Give them your name, your credentials, your state or states of licensure, and whether you see people in person, by telehealth, or both. Put a Book Now or Contact button in view without scrolling.
Resist the urge to write a mission statement at the top. A line that says you offer a safe, nonjudgmental space tells the reader nothing they could not assume. A line that says you are an LCSW in Rhode Island working with adults managing anxiety and life transitions, currently accepting telehealth clients, tells them whether to keep reading.
What should the About page say?
The About page is the one people actually read, and it should sound like you rather than like a brochure. This is where someone decides whether they can picture talking to you for an hour.
Include your license type and number if your state board expects it, where you trained, how long you have practiced, and your clinical areas. Then add two or three sentences of something human. Not your whole life story, but enough that the page has a person in it.
One practical note: use a real photograph of yourself. Not a logo, not a stock image of a chair. People are deciding whether you feel approachable, and a face is the fastest way to answer that.
What belongs on the services page?
The services page lists what you treat and who you treat, in the words a person searching for help would use. This is also the page that does most of your search engine work, because it is where your specialties live as actual text.
Keep it concrete:
- The populations you work with, by age and situation
- The concerns you focus on, named plainly
- The modalities you use, with a sentence explaining each in ordinary language
- Session format and typical length
- Telehealth availability and which states you are licensed in
If you write about a modality, explain it the way you would to a new client, not the way you would to a supervisor. Someone searching for help with panic attacks is not searching for the name of a protocol.
What questions should the FAQ page answer?
The FAQ page should answer the questions you are already answering by email five times a week. Those are the real questions, and putting them on the site is the single highest-return thing you can do for your own inbox.
For most practices that means:
- What do you charge per session?
- Do you take my insurance, and if not, do you provide a superbill?
- How long are sessions and how often do people come?
- What is your cancellation policy?
- What happens on the first call or consultation?
- How soon can I get in?
Publishing your fee range filters out people who cannot afford you before either of you spends time on a consultation. That feels uncomfortable the first time. It saves hours after that.
What does the contact page need?
The contact page needs your practice phone number, your practice email, a form, and a clear statement of what happens next. It also needs to be built so that no protected health information arrives through it.
A contact form that invites someone to describe what they are struggling with is a form collecting PHI through whatever system delivers that email. Keep the fields to name, preferred contact method, and a short general message, and say on the page that the form is for general inquiries rather than clinical details. Confirm your own obligations with your own advisor, and keep a business associate agreement with any vendor handling protected health information.
Say how quickly someone can expect to hear back, and add a line directing anyone in crisis to 988 or emergency services. That line matters more than anything else on the page.
What can you skip?
You can skip a blog, a resources library, a testimonials page, and a separate page for every modality. Most state boards place restrictions on soliciting client testimonials, so check your own board before considering that one at all.
Your website is also not your directory profile. Psychology Today profiles and a Google Business Profile do different work and are indexed differently, and we have covered both separately. Your site supports them rather than replacing them.
How does this fit with the rest of practice setup?
The website sits downstream of your identifiers, your entity, your EHR, and your scheduler. Build it after those, because the site links to the scheduler and lists the insurance you are actually contracted with.
This is also where admin support starts to matter. A virtual assistant for therapists typically handles the traffic the website creates: the inquiries that arrive through the form, the scheduling messages, the response templates for rate and availability questions, keeping your listings current. Assistant to the Therapist builds a five-page site at the foundation level and pairs it with assistant hours at the next tier, with assistants trained for mental health practices rather than assigned from a general pool. If you are still sequencing the setup steps, Private Practice Prep School walks through the order.
Common questions
Should I list my fees publicly?
Most therapists find it saves more time than it costs. People searching for a therapist are filtering by cost whether or not you tell them, and a fee range on the FAQ page means the consultations you do run are with people who can afford to continue. Some therapists list a range rather than an exact number, which leaves room for sliding scale conversations.
Do I need a separate page for each state I am licensed in?
Not at the start. One services page naming each state is enough for a practice with a handful of licenses. Separate location pages can help later if you are deliberately building visibility in a second state, but it is a step to take once the core site is done and working.
How often should I update the site?
Check it whenever something factual changes: your fees, your availability, the insurance you accept, your license status. A site that says you are accepting clients when you have a three-month waitlist creates work for you and frustration for the reader. Beyond that, a quick review every few months is reasonable.
Can I build it myself?
Yes, and plenty of therapists do. The question is whether it gets finished. The common failure is not a bad website but a half-built one that sits unpublished for months while a practice opens without it. If you know your own pattern with projects like this, plan accordingly.
If this was useful
- Enrol in Private Practice Prep School — The step-by-step programme for clinicians opening a practice of their own.
- Book a free coffee coaching call — A short, no-cost conversation about what is actually slowing your practice down.
Photographs by Sami Abdullah, Alexey Demidov and dlxmedia.hu on Pexels.
