Before & After of My Psychology Ireland: From DIY to professional website

Many business owners start out with a DIY brand and website and that works really well for the first few months or maybe years of their business.

But once the business starts to grow and the business owner needs to show that, they often outgrow the DIY approach.

That’s exactly where my client Patricia was when she came to me. She founded the psychology practice My Psychology Ireland in Galway and she set up the brand and website herself to get things moving in her business.

She put so much work into the website which was great but it had gotten to the point where the changes she wanted to make were beyond her capabilities. And that’s completely fair, she’s not an expert in web design so why would you be able to create an expert website?

We worked together on redoing her brand identity completely and brought these changes and design elements across her website.

In today’s post I’m going to highlight 3 elements from before she worked with me and after she worked with me. This will give you a quick snapshot of what I see when I look at a DIY website and the first steps I take to improve them.

A homepage layout that needed work

The main things I wanted to tackle on the homepage were:

• Centred text squashed into narrow columns
• The size of some images was too small
• The events section on the homepage wasn’t on brand or engaging to look at
• Default images that have no relevance to Patricia’s services
• The footer didn’t guide visitors with a call to action (Your footer is a great opportunity to re-engage people)

Apart from the revitalised brand identity, here is what we added to the homepage:

• A clear services section catering to the different types of patients that Patricia has
• A section about Patricia and her team
• An “Issues We Treat” section so people can identify if they’re in the right place
• A Google map of the office location
• A branded image for each event
• A trust-building “Featured In” section that links to articles in different publications that Patricia has contributed to

The team page was text heavy and hard navigate

The main things I wanted to tackle on the team page were:

• There was no intro section to give readers an idea of the types of therapist on the team and the approach they have to their patients
• No filter to sort through therapist quickly
• Very text heavy bios for each therapist, that meant too much scrolling on one page to reach standard information
• The text of the bios wasn’t very legible, defeating the purpose of presenting so much information in the first place

What we added to the team page:

• An intro section so people get a sense of the type of therapists on the team and their ethos
• Headings to differentiate the different staff on the team ie. Psychologists & Psychotherapists, Occupational Therapists and Administrative Staff
• A filter based on Location, Therapy Type and Difficulties for the Psychologists & Psychotherapists
• Staff bios collapsed behind a “Read More” function so people can still read all about their potential therapist without being overwhelmed at first

The mobile menu was being cut off

Something that’s really difficult for business owners DIYing their own website is to get right is the mobile responsiveness of their website.

For the purpose of this video I am focusing on the issues I found with the mobile menu. The issues were:

• Names of pages being cut off
• Submenu background was the same colour as the main menu

I made sure:

• Every page name in the menu is now fully legible
• The submenu text was on a slightly lighter colour so it’s clear when you’ve opened the submenu

People’s experience of your website on mobile has to be great. The issues that came up in this mobile menu may seem small, but they can easily put a website visitor off and we don’t want that.

Do you need my eyes on your brand and website?

Do you relate to some of the issues presented on My Psychology Ireland’s before website?

• Maybe you also DIYed your website and you are interested in making improvements.
• Maybe you are not ready for someone else to design a whole new website for you but you want some solid advice.

My Brand & Website Audit could be the perfect fit for you. It’s a live audit, held on Zoom, where you get my eyes on your brand & website along with my in-depth feedback. You will also get follow up support so you know exactly what you need to tackle after the call is over.

You can book your Brand & Website Audit here. Or contact me here if you have any questions about it.

Other supplier: SEO work by Honest Marketing