For therapists and counsellors in UK private practice
Your practice worked out first. The website built from it.
Most therapist websites start with the website — the colours, the layout, what the homepage should say. I start earlier, with your Practice Fundamentals: who you work well with, how you think about therapy, and what somebody needs to understand before they contact you. Your identity and your website are built from that.
£495 for the first three practices, then £995. The first year of Website Care included either way.
£100 to reserve your place. £395 once you approve your Practice Fundamentals, before the website is built. Why the first three are less.
The short version
You are good at your work. You should not have to be good at websites as well.
You bring the practice — who you work with, what you offer, how you would like it to feel. I bring the structure, the design and the build. There is no stage where you have to become a marketer.
The job is accuracy rather than persuasion. Someone should be able to tell from your website whether you are the right therapist for them — and if the answer is no, that is a good outcome too. It saves you both a first conversation that was never going to work.
Who makes it
Marketing and communicating online first. Counselling now.
I spent years working in marketing and personal branding, and creating content online — including building my own audience on YouTube. I know from the inside what it is like to put yourself in public without wanting to perform or to sell.
I am now training as a counsellor, with supervised client work on placement. The studio brings those two things together for therapists and counsellors. One person, not an agency: the person who works through your practice with you is the person who builds the website.
- Prices
- Published in full, before you speak to me.
- Process
- Written first. Calls only where they genuinely help.
- Scope
- Agreed in writing. If something falls outside it, I say so before doing it.
The collection
Three practices. Three different answers. One method.
Three fictional practices, each worked through with the Practice Clarity method and then given a complete website. They are not three designs to choose from. They look nothing alike because the practices underneath them are different — which is the point.
Where a design comes from
What understanding a practice actually changes.
For a client, the website is the second thing that happens. Here is that order traced through one of the three: a single observation about the people who write to Maya Bennett, and what it went on to settle.
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What was understood
People arrive mid-thought. Most are not in crisis, most have never done this before, and they open by apologising — for not having a proper reason, for taking a place somebody else might need more.
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What that decided
Then the site cannot ask for a prepared account before it will accept contact. Whatever version somebody has now has to be enough to begin with.
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What the site says
“Most people start in the middle of a sentence.”
The largest type on the first screen — the reader’s state, not a service and not a promise. -
What the site does
The enquiry asks for a name, an email address and a format, with “not sure yet” already selected. The message is optional, and beside it one line: “I’d like to talk to someone” is a complete enquiry. Everything practical — the fee, the availability, the cancellation charge, the two reduced-fee places — is published on the page, so nobody has to make contact in order to ask.
One thing understood about who is reading, and it has settled the headline, the practical section and the enquiry form. None of that is a visual preference. Sofia Marin and Daniel Mercer settle the same three things from different observations about different readers — which is why the three sites read nothing alike.
Every line above is either quoted from the published Maya Bennett document or checkable on the site it describes. Maya Bennett is a fictional practice designed and built by the studio; its document was written after the concept site, in the form a client’s is written before one.
How it works
Six steps. The fourth is the one that matters most.
Nothing is built until you have seen your Practice Fundamentals and approved the direction. After that the design decisions are mine to make, and they follow from what you approved rather than from my idea of a good therapist website.
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01
Enquire
Tell me about your practice and answer five short questions. I reply personally.
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02
Reserve the project
The scope and price are confirmed in writing, and a £100 deposit reserves your place.
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03
Complete the intake
One form, in rough notes or voice notes if you prefer. The practical facts are asked for exactly; nothing is guessed.
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04 · Your decision
Approve the direction
Your Practice Fundamentals: your words, your facts, your logo, colours and typography, and a preview of the website’s opening screen.
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05
Website build
One complete, carefully designed page, built from the direction you approved.
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06 · Your decision
Review and launch
One set of feedback, then corrections, your domain and launch. The first year of Website Care is included.
Why three, and not one house style
Two of the three, side by side.
Maya Bennett and Daniel Mercer are both one integrative counsellor, working with adults, at the same fee for the same fifty minutes. Both are about the moment before somebody makes contact. Nothing on the two pages agrees about anything — because the practices behind them do not, and the design is downstream of that.
Case 02Maya Bennett
Case 03Daniel Mercer
- PaletteMaya is warm paper and plum, with apricot kept for one thing only: the moment something is met. Daniel is black on off-white with one electric blue that appears only on things you can press. One accent each, doing opposite jobs.
- TypographyMaya uses a soft serif for what a visitor brings and a plain grotesque for what is said back, set at the same size as the sentence it answers. Daniel has no serif anywhere: a very large grotesque headline that behaves like a statement in a room, and facts set as facts.
- StructureMaya demonstrates rather than asserts: a sentence people say, and the reply to it, already on the first screen. Daniel answers a fear with a fact in every section and puts the first step within reach of each.
- WordsDaniel removes an entry requirement: you do not have to be good at talking. Maya argues the requirement was pointing the wrong way: the unprepared account is the more useful place to start. Neither promises an outcome.
Both are fictional practices designed and built by Alexander Watson Studio as portfolio work. Neither is a commissioned client project, and no counselling service is offered by either.
What it costs
One price, published, and the whole scope with it.
One piece of work, sold once. You are not asked which parts of it you need.
£100 to reserve your place. £395 once you approve your Practice Fundamentals, before the website is built.
The first three practices. The process, the method and the three finished cases are built; what they have not had yet is a real practice going through them from beginning to end. So the first three are £495 rather than £995 — the same work and the same scope, at a lower price, because I want to run the complete process with real therapists and learn from it. Most of it falls due once you have seen and approved your Practice Fundamentals, rather than at the start. The founding three are taking on more uncertainty than a later client will, so the larger part of the fee waits until there is a finished direction to look at. The longer answer.
- Practice Fundamentals — eleven pages on who the practice is for, how it should sound and how it should look, with your logo or wordmark
- Approve the direction — nothing is built until you have approved it
- One complete page — your words, fees, practical information and an enquiry form, built from what you approved
- Review and launch — one set of feedback on the built site, launch, and the first year of Website Care
You do not have to make web-design decisions. That is my job.
You do not need to arrive with your positioning worked out or your copy finished. Your own words about who you work with and how you work are enough to start from; turning them into something clear is your Practice Fundamentals, and it is part of the price rather than a separate purchase.
You keep your Practice Fundamentals, with your visual identity written down, so the next time you write a directory profile or a leaflet there is something to work from. What you keep.
Something outside this — several pages, online booking, a blog, unusual functionality? Tell me what you are trying to build and I will scope and quote it separately.
When you are ready
Tell me about your practice.
You do not need a brief, a moodboard or a finished plan. A few lines about who you work with and where you are up to is enough, and writing commits you to nothing.