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 Practice Clarity: who you work well with, how you think about therapy, and what somebody needs to understand before they contact you. The visual direction and the website are built from that.

Enquire about a founding place See the work

£495 for the first three practices, then £995. The first year of Website Care included either way.

£100 to begin. £395 when your website is approved and ready to launch. 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.

Alexander Watson, seated in a consulting room

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.

More about me

The collection

Three practices. Three different answers. One method.

Three fictional practices, each worked through with Practice Clarity 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.

See the work

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.
  4. 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

Four stages. The first one is the point.

Nothing is designed until we both agree on what the practice is and what the website has to say. After that the design decisions are mine to make, and they follow from what we agreed rather than from my idea of a good therapist website.

  1. 01

    Practice Clarity

    You tell me about the practice in writing. I work it into a Practice Clarity document: who you work well with, how you think about therapy, how the practice should sound, and what somebody needs to understand before they contact you.

  2. 02 · Your decision

    Agree the direction

    You read it and tell me what is wrong or missing, and I refine it. Nothing is designed until we both agree it describes your practice.

  3. 03

    Visual direction and website

    Typography, colour, how your name is set and how images are used — whatever the practice actually needs — then the website itself, up to five pages.

  4. 04 · Your decision

    Refine and launch

    Two consolidated rounds of changes, then your approval, then 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

The Maya Bennett homepage: a large serif headline reading Most people start in the middle of a sentence, a short introduction and one dark button beneath it, and a row giving who she works with, the fee and the location. To the right, a quoted worry — I'm not sure this counts — with the answer set directly under it.

Case 03Daniel Mercer

The Daniel Mercer homepage: a very large black grotesque headline on an off-white page reading You don't have to be good at talking to start therapy, a short introduction and one blue button beneath it, and a row giving the fee, location, hours and first step.
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

Practice Identity & Website£495

£100 to begin. £395 when your website is approved and ready to launch.

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 at the end rather than the start. The founding three are taking on more uncertainty than a later client will, so the fee is weighted towards the point where there is a finished website to look at. The longer answer.

  • Practice Clarity — who the practice is for, how it should sound, and what the website has to say, written down
  • The direction, agreed — nothing is designed until we both agree on it
  • Visual direction and website — up to five pages, built from what we agreed
  • Refine and launch — two rounds of changes, launch, and the first year of Website Care
See everything included

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 Practice Clarity, and it is part of the price rather than a separate purchase.

You keep the Practice Clarity document and your visual direction 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 — a larger organisation, unusual functionality, a great deal of content? 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.

Enquire about a founding place See the work