As a group practice owner, I'm willing to bet you've had this happen…a new inquiry comes in, your schedule is full but your clinicians have openings, and the potential client says they'd really like to see you. It might even be the third or fourth time this week.
It's one of the things I hear often from the owners I work with (especially new GPO), and it can start to feel personal. You might wonder whether your clinicians are the problem, or whether you'll ever be able to step back from your own caseload. More often than not, though, it isn't your team at all... it's what your website is telling people about who's there to help them.
On episode 42 of the Empowered to Lead podcast, I sat down with Kat Love of Empathy Sites. I've been following Kat and learning from her for about nine years, as she's spent almost 11 years building websites for therapists. I’ve always appreciated her practical perspective that is different (and yet aligned) from how a therapist might approach things. Her passion for this work comes from her own deep gratitude for what therapists have done in her life, and you can hear it in everything she shares. There was so much practical wisdom in our conversation that I wanted to share some of it here too.
Why Your Website Still Says "Me"
Most group practices start as a solo practice, which means most group practice websites start as a solo practice website. Kat described what often happens next as a little bit like Frankenstein. You add an eyeball over here and an extra ear over there, and the website gets cobbled together one new page at a time as your team grows.
The trouble is that the original site was built around YOU - your identity, your story, and the people you help. When you keep adding to it instead of rebuilding it, the website quietly reinforces the very thing you're trying to move away from. Visitors read your story first and most often, so of course they want to see you.
Kat's advice is to rebuild from the ground up, so that the story of your practice shifts from my identity to our identity. That mindset is the foundation for everything else.
Start With the Story of Who "We" Are
Before you can tell that story, you need to know who you're telling it to. When I work with group practice owners, this is often where we get stuck. You know your own ideal client as a therapist, but now that you have a team, who is the group practice's ideal client? Who are we trying to attract, and what do we value as a practice?
Kat identified two kinds of group practices, and the story looks a little different for each one.
The first is what I'd call the "mini me" practice. Kat shared the example of a teen therapist who expanded so she could help more teens, run groups, and offer more services, and her practice grew to six, seven, eight clinicians all doing teen work. In a lot of ways, that's an easier story to tell, because you already speak the language and you can carry your solo story through for everyone.
The second is more of a generalist practice. Maybe your specialty is postpartum, and then you realize many of the women you see also need support in their relationship, so you bring on a couples therapist. Now your team offers services that complement yours but aren't exactly what you do. In that case, Kat suggests you zoom out. Instead of focusing only on helping women through a huge life transition, the story might be about transforming lives in a positive way, taking people from dysregulation and stress to somewhere better. That's something your postpartum work and your couples therapist's work have in common.
She also pointed out that what often unifies a group is something they believe in, whether that's a population they advocate for or a value they share. You get to be a bit of a detective here, looking for the thread that connects your team, and that thread becomes the story your website tells.
The Structure That Helps Clients Find Your Team
Whether your practice is highly specialized or more generalist, Kat says the structure of a group practice website is pretty similar. You'll want:
A home page
An about us page
A separate page for each clinician
Specialization pages for each niche or sub-niche you help with
That third one matters more than most owners realize. Kat was clear that every clinician needs a full page of their own, not one little paragraph on a shared team page, especially if you want people to get excited about working with them.
The specialization pages do a lot of the heavy lifting too. When someone visits your website, they usually aren't coming with a general pain, they're coming with a specific one. If you've done the work to understand who you want to serve, those pages can speak directly to that pain and link to the clinician who helps with it. Your home page doesn't have to talk about 10 different specialties, because each specialization page can show how you help with that one specific thing.
What Every Clinician Page Needs
Let's start with the photo. Kat believes a current, professional photo makes a huge difference in building credibility and trust, and by current she means it looks like it was taken this year, not in 1998 (or when you were 20). Some of the larger group practices she works with have a local photographer they call every time they hire someone new, so the photos stay consistent and every new clinician gets a photo shoot as part of joining the team. Or you can have that photographer give you some pointers on how to take consistent photos between sessions so your branding stays consistent.
Beyond the photo, Kat recommends three things on every clinician page, as a starting place you can build on:
Their professional background. This includes where they studied, their licences, associations, and any trainings or certifications, and it can simply be a bullet list. It's especially helpful for referral sources, and for clients looking for something specific like IFS or EMDR.
Their "my journey" story. This is how the person became a therapist, and it's where your clinician gets to be human. It can be written within their own comfort level with self-disclosure, so even the most private psychoanalyst can have one.
Why being a therapist is meaningful to them. This quietly answers a fear a lot of clients carry, which is wondering why anyone would want to sit and listen to all of the heavy things they've been through. It also gives your clinician a way to share that they love watching clients heal and transform, so they can show they get results without sounding like they're bragging.
And if you're wondering whether a page can be too long, Kat's answer was "not really." Most therapists don't love writing, so she usually encourages people to write more. What matters more than length is format, which brings me to one of my favourite parts of our conversation.
Remember Who's Reading at Three in the Morning
Kat reminded us that most people looking for therapy aren't calm and loving life when they land on your website. Often they're dysregulated, and sometimes it's the middle of the night and they can't sleep.
She painted a picture that I think every owner should keep in mind. It's 3 in the morning, a couple has just had a huge argument, and one of them is on the computer looking for a couples therapist to help them through this period of conflict. Even in that state, they usually have one or two questions in mind. One person read a Gottman book and wants to know if anyone is Gottman trained. Another tried couples therapy before, where the therapist just let them argue, and wants to know if this time will be different.
People don't read websites like a novel, so your pages shouldn't be formatted like one. Headings and subheadings, shorter paragraphs, bullet lists, and breaks in the design (like an image on one side and text on the other) help someone find the answer to their question faster. Kat shared that the faster people find what they're looking for, the more satisfied they are with the whole website... and when you layer distress on top of that, it matters even more.
If someone landed on your website at three in the morning after the hardest night of their week, would they find your team... or just you?
Yes, Video Is Worth the Awkwardness
I've found that our clients like being able to watch a short video of a therapist, so I asked Kat if that was just me. It isn't. She shared that research on selling online shows video increases conversions, and she's seen it make a difference for group practices too, with more people taking that next step to book a first session.
The hard part is usually helping clinicians find the courage. I've done this a couple of different ways. Once, I hired a videographer and everyone filmed on the same day, so nobody felt like they were the only one being awkward on camera. Other times, I've just picked up my phone and said, "Okay, talk to me. Tell me how you work." It isn't as polished as the professional version, but you're talking to a person instead of a screen, and that helps.
Kat's suggestion was to make it part of your onboarding. The most successful group practices she works with have a marketing standard operating procedure for every new clinician, which includes their photo, their website page, their directory profiles, coaching on networking, and ideally a short video.
Making Many Services Feel Simple
If you offer a lot of services, you might be worried about visitors needing to click through 30 buttons to find what they need. Kat shared a few ways to keep it from feeling overwhelming:
Use a mega menu. For larger practices with many specializations, a mega menu opens to show everything at once, organized into categories like individual, couples, and groups. Choose categories your clients would understand, and steer away from clinical language they won't recognize.
Create index pages. If you run several therapy groups, a single groups page with a short, pain-focused description of each one helps people recognize themselves before they click through.
Link between pages. An individual therapy page might link to your anxiety, depression, and trauma pages for the person who realizes their struggles are in the shape of anxiety. Kat calls this internal linking, and it's good for search engines, AI search, and the humans reading it.
Your Website Doesn't Have to Do the Matching
This was the part that I think will shift the thinking of a number of GPO. Kat sees a lot of group practices hoping their website will do all the sorting, so that someone lands on the site, figures out exactly what they need, and calls to say they'd like to work with Susan Smith on trauma.
That isn't the website's job. Its goal is to answer the questions people have, ease their concerns, and build enough trust that they reach out. From there, you can reassure them that it's okay if they don't know what they need, it's okay if they're feeling stuck or overwhelmed, and if they call, you'll help match them with the right person. You're the experts, so don't leave them to be the navigator.
I hadn't necessarily thought of it that way, and I love how much pressure it takes off both the client and the owner.
A Quick Website Check for Your Group Practice
If you'd like a place to start, here are a few questions to walk through with your website open:
Does your home page talk about who "we" are, or is it still mostly your solo practice story?
Does every clinician have their own full page with a current, professional photo?
Does each clinician page include their background, their journey, and why the work matters to them?
Do you have specialization pages that speak to a specific pain and link to the clinician who helps with it?
Could a stressed visitor scan your pages quickly, with clear headings, short paragraphs, and lists?
Is your navigation organized into categories your clients would understand?
Does your site reassure people that they don't need to know exactly what they need before reaching out?
Is marketing (photo, website page, video) part of onboarding every new clinician?
Final Thoughts
When people keep asking for you, it's easy to take it as a sign that you can't step back yet. I'd invite you to look at it a little differently. Your clinicians may be ready and waiting, and your website just hasn't introduced them properly yet.
If you'd like Kat's help, you can find her website design work at Empathy Sites, where her team designs, writes, and cares for group practice websites over time, or her one-on-one marketing coaching (with a focus on building referral networks) at katlove.com. We're already talking about a part two, so stay tuned.
And if you'd like support thinking through how your practice is set up so your team can get booked, Group Practice Connection is our membership for Canadian group practice owners who want consistent support and a community that understands the weight of this role. I would love to have you in the room. You can learn more here.
You can listen to the full conversation with Kat on episode 42 of the Empowered to Lead podcast here
