helping a client rebrand her business to reach a wider audience
Project Timeline: 2.5 months
Tools: Figma, FigJam
Roles: UX/UI Research and Design
BACKGROUND
Almost one-fourth of American adults live with some kind of mental illness.
Back in 2022, the exact number was 59.3 million - 23.1% of all adults in the US.
Half of those Americans are seeking help.
Among those 59.3 million adults, 30 million - or 50.6% - received mental health treatment in 2022.
(Source: NIH)
Do you remember the days when having a therapist meant you had either gone through something horrific or you must be going insane? Yep, I do too.
But now, mental health is a topic talked about in every corner of the media. And with more and more people searching for professional help…
Helping a local therapist to expand her reach through her website was the perfect way to contribute - and more crucial than ever.
The Client and Business Goal
The original goal was simple - but it was clear a bigger problem existed.
The Client’s Hidden Problem
Keanna is the owner of New Freedom Counseling. She created her website in 2013 and was ready to give it a simple facelift.
But as she discussed her wishes, she shared a dilemma she was facing.
Keanna is approaching retirement - but it’s not time to celebrate yet. She wants to save up more for her retirement fund, which means she needs more clients.
But unlike many other self-run businesses, Keanna doesn’t need help in that area because she specializes in a niche most therapists wouldn’t opt in for. Keanna is a CSAT - or Certified Sex Addiction Therapist.
She explained that this sort of addiction isn’t only hard on the addict - it’s harmful to the therapist’s own mental wellbeing as well.
Thus her dilemma - she’s already burnt out from years of being a CSAT, so adding on even more clients was a dangerous idea. But when money is needed, it’s easy to let that slide.
The Suggestion & New Goal
Keanna had mentioned that other therapies, such as IFS (Internal Family Systems), are much more pleasant and easy for her to do. But having been branded as one of the more rare-to-find CSATs, it wasn’t possible to just stop doing it.
But what if there was a way to keep doing it while still rebranding herself?
The idea came up that if she were to simply add the IFS specialty to her website, then she could continue working with her CSAT clients but hopefully start getting more calls from people needing help for the general mental health needs covered in IFS therapy.
In this way, she could gain more clients without also gaining the additional stress of CSAT therapy.
Keanna loved the idea and didn’t think it would hurt to at least try.
And so, a simple facelift turned into something much more important: both for its owner and for the wider audience that she was hoping to now be able help.
RESEARCH
Well, it’s great to know the problem and goal of the client - but what about the user?
The objective was to find answers to the following 2 questions:
How do users looking for IFS therapy feel about working with Keanna based on her website as it is currently?
What changes will help those same users find Keanna’s website more helpful to their needs?
The user tests produced 4 key findings.
See what the participants saw!
Here’s a quick video run-through of what the New Freedom Counseling website originally looked like.
The participants found the home page frustrating. They wanted to get straight to the specialties she works with. Instead, they found:
A banner picture they felt didn’t have a purpose, making the scroll down to the wanted information a pointless chore
A biography of Keanna and how she helps sex addicts and their loved ones
The participants didn’t understand how exactly Keanna would work with them, leaving them with unanswered questions:
What methods of therapy does she use? What does a typical session look like?
Interview Key Findings:
When searching for a therapist, they are looking for a specific kind of therapy.
But what they found most important was simply finding someone they had a connection with who could also help them with their problems.
The main reason behind the decision to search for a different therapist was when they felt that connection was lacking.
The goal for the user test portion was to find out if the participant:
Would want to reach out to Keanna to discuss working with her
Felt they saw enough information to fully determine whether or not they would want to work with Keanna
None of the participants wanted to work with Keanna after looking through her website for 3 reasons:
Instantly seeing that she specializes in CSAT therapy, they knew she didn’t help in the more general problems they were seeking help for
Throughout the website, they felt too much written for them to want to read through it all
The writing was too specific to CSAT therapy and not personal enough for them to get a feel for Keanna’s personality
A major factor in deciding to work with a therapist was the cost of sessions and whether or not they take insurance.
Seeing that the website didn’t have any kind of financial information caused the participants stress in being forced to contact her for that information or to leave the website, considering their time wasted.
A combined user interview and user test of the New Freedom Counseling website were conducted with 5 participants who had experience working with local therapists for the more general problems that would be worked on in IFS therapy (anxiety, depression, trauma). During the interview portion, 2 main points were discussed:
The specific details they were looking for while searching for a therapist
The factors that led them to:
initially reach out to the therapist
either continue or stop working with that therapist
Speaking with the participants proved a challenge that needed to be considered while doing a competitive analysis - but speaking with them also provided some clues on how to handle it.
Challenge:
Strengths vs weaknesses weren’t going to be so clear-cut: what a user wants to find in a therapist’s website is highly opinionated.
Solution:
Choose therapists based on 3 factors:
Must be in the same city or surrounding area as Keanna
Must be listed on the Psychology Today website
Must be found using the search term “IFS therapist”
Create a website with consistent UI.
The confusing UI elements seen on the websites of the competition may not only lead to user frustration, but cause the company to appear unprofessional.
Include information that users want to see - even if the therapist feels uncomfortable sharing it.
During the user interview and test, the participants clearly stated what details were most important to find - a major one being financial information. Keanna is not the only therapist who doesn’t include this on their website due to the risk of turning users away before they make contact. However, the user and their needs must come first.
Weaknesses:
Opportunities:
Some therapists work for themselves, while others work for a firm that holds many therapists. Although Keanna works for herself, I didn’t narrow down the search in this aspect because the participants didn’t care whether or not the therapist was on their own.
However, there were some obvious weaknesses for those therapists who are part of a firm. The information found on those homepages is more about the firm itself due to having multiple therapists working in different specialties. Additionally, each therapist only had one page with a short section about them - not great for users who are trying to “get to know them” before making contact. And even worse, there’s no way to contact the therapist directly - users must contact the firm as a whole.
Other sporadic weaknesses noticed from site to site were confusing white space that hints at pages being complete when in reality there’s more information after too much scrolling, having to click on specific buttons inside a card rather than on the card itself, and inconsistencies in showing prices and specifics on what kind of therapy the therapist offered - information the participants said they look for.
Reasoning:
While one user would be pleased with a therapist not sharing too much about themself - sticking to how they will help their clients, another user would be upset and feel that they didn’t get enough information.
Reasoning:
Therapists are only licensed to work in certain states - typically only the state they live in. With the participants often preferring in-person therapy over virtual, it was best to narrow down the compared therapists to just the local community.
The participants found therapists through Google searches. One of the top suggestions when searching for therapists is either the Psychology Today website or a specific therapist’s listing on Psychology Today.
The participants were knowledgeable enough about certain kinds of therapy that they did typically search for specific one. Since most of them knew what IFS was, it was appropriate to do a specific search.
Devoted dad, striving to be his best
“I’ve made mistakes, but I don’t want to keep repeating them and hurt the people I care about in the process.”
Jason Thompson
Background
Jason is a single dad looking for a new therapist. He’s done therapy before in his past, but most recently he was seeing a marriage counselor, trying his hardest to save his marriage. Sadly, the counseling didn’t help and their marriage ended last year. However, Jason realizes that he’s not perfect and there are things that he needs healing from to help him get through this phase in his life. He’s willing to put in the work needed so that he can be the best dad he can be and become the best version of himself.
Motivations & Values
Always looking for ways to improve and better himself.
He values his time, and therefore values the knowledge of the professionals who can help him change quickly without having to figure it all out on his own.
Wants to give those around him the best version of himself.
Frustrations & Pain Points
Not only does he need to find a therapist that both meshes well with his personality and is knowledgeable in the area of his problems, but they also need to be affordable.
It’s hard knowing that he can’t afford the help that he needs. This limits his options of who he can work with even further.
The tedious process of finding a therapist, waiting for them to contact him, and setting up a first session just to realize they aren’t the right fit for him and he has to start the whole process over again.
Needs
A therapist that he feels comfortable around and confident in that they want to help him down the right path towards healing and bettering himself.
A therapist that he can afford.
Knowing as quickly as possible (hopefully through the therapist’s website) whether or not the therapist is a good fit for him.
Goals
A therapist that he feels comfortable around and confident in that they want to help him down the right path towards healing and bettering himself.
A therapist that he can afford.
Knowing as quickly as possible (hopefully through the therapist’s website) whether or not the therapist is a good fit for him.
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Turning her About info into its own page and creating a home page crafted to the general public.
Adding a page for financial information and explaining her costs.
Creating a page that shows all her specialties in one place, and giving the IFS specialty its own page.
Users need to know that Keanna can help them - not only sex addicts and their families.
Therefore, it was important to take away the CSAT-specific talk and create a welcoming, purposeful home page that would speak to anyone with any problem.
But this greeting needed to be on its own - not clumped in with her About information. Not all of the participants were interested in Keanna personally until they had seen what she could offer them.
Being less important to the users, the About information needed to be taken off the home page and moved to its own space.
It may be a risk to a therapist to be upfront with pricing - especially when they don’t accept insurance, like in Keanna’s case.
But the financial information is one of the most important details users want to find on the website.
There was a compromise available for the sake of making both the client and the user happy, though.
Insurance companies have limited therapists on how they are allowed to help their clients - but not all of the participants knew this.
After discovering that these therapists aren’t just being greedy, but rather trying to help their clients to the full extent, these participants were more understanding of the high prices.
Some were even more willing to consider going out of network.
So it was important to not only be upfront about the pricing, but also the reason behind it.
Users looking for a therapist are going through many websites in one sitting - so they want to know as quickly as possible if a therapist offers the kind of therapy they’re seeking help for.
To see the 2 kinds of CSAT specialties Keanna already had on her website, there was simply a dropdown from the header. This required users to visit both pages to understand what the specialty was for.
Especially with branching her business out to include a third specialty, it was important to create a page showing them all in one place along with a brief explanation of what problems each specialty helps with.
This way, a user can quickly decide whether they want more information or if they need to find someone else.
This also meant another page would need to be created specific to the IFS specialty, explaining exactly how she uses this kind of therapy to help her IFS clients.
How might we help therapy seekers find value in what Keanna offers so the cost feels worth it?
Both questions could be answered by making 3 changes to Keanna’s website:
How might we transform finding the right therapist into an easier, faster process for therapy seekers?
ITERATION & UI DESIGN
Ultimately, the design goal was to provide as much value in as little space as possible.
Straight from sketches to hi-fi:
Due to a therapist’s value being highly based on what information is available on their website and how it’s provided to the user, testing out anything less than high fidelity wouldn’t have given accurate results.
Provided are sketches of different layouts for each page that needed to be created, along with the thought process that led to the final decisions.
The participants had made it clear that the search for a therapist is long and overwhelming, so providing the needed information without needing to scroll too much or click through too many pages would be necessary.
(They also confirmed that this kind of search was easiest on desktop vs mobile. Therefore, desktop wireframes would be the main focus - although mobile versions would also be created.)
Keanna wanted to keep her logo as is, but was open to just about anything else. The fonts being used worked well with the fonts of the logo and the logo’s colors were the inspiration for the color palette used in the wireframes.
The other colors of the logo were pleasing - variations of the blue became the background colors and the burgundy was a good accent color for actions that needed to stand out.
She created her website through Squarespace and had used one of their themes without customizing much of it herself. Because of this, her titles were using the yellow found in her logo, which wouldn’t work for accessibility purposes.
Primary Colors
#E6EFF0
#BDD3D6
Accent Color
#64343A
USER TESTING
Before the wireframes could be finalized, there was one last decision to make that would be crucial to the accuracy of these test results.
There were 2 flows that users would go through on Keanna’s website. But since the participants had already shown understanding of how to contact Keanna during the first user test, it wasn’t important to include that flow when testing the wireframes.
In order to decide whether or not Keanna would be a good-fitting therapist, the participant would need to look through the various pages of the website.
Task: Navigate through the NFC website to determine whether or not they would like to work with the therapist
In order to consider this test a success, these were the goals that the participants needed to achieve:
Complete the given task with minimal difficulties
Discover the following pages with minimal difficulty:
Specialties Page
Prices Page
About Page
Individual Therapy Page
Give verbal confirmation that they have found all the information they would need in order to make a decision on working with Keanna or not
Already knowing there would be personal biases due to personality differences, it was important to filter the results to focus on the difficulties and confusions from the design of the website - not from its copywriting.
To help the participants stick to this goal, it was decided to not use most of what was already written on Keanna’s website. I created the titles and some of the other content, but most of the copy in the wireframes was generated with AI to ensure the language was as “general” as possible.
User Test Results:
There was 1 major issue discovered, and 2 suggestions to consider.
The main problem:
The only way for users to access the Individual Therapy Page is by clicking on the “Individual Therapy” card found on the Specialties Page.
4 of 5 participants were either unsure or couldn’t tell at all that these cards were clickable elements.
A “Learn More” link was added to the bottom of each card.
The font size was increased to match the sizes on the other pages.
As a compromise, it made sense to order the information on the page from most to least crucial.
This way, those users who didn’t want more information would get what they needed at the top without having to scroll, but the information would still be available to those who were interested.
3 of the 5 participants said the text was too small to read easily. Sure enough, a careless mistake had left this page different from all the others.
Although based on more of a personal bias, some participants wanted to know more about Keanna on a personal level and about her educational background.
This was the only page in which the copywriting was barely modified from the original website, so this feedback felt noteworthy.
There weren’t any other problems causing confusion.
However, there were 2 complaints shared by a few of the participants that felt worthwhile to consider making a change for. Seeing that these changes wouldn’t take much time to complete, they were included in the final iterations.
FINAL RESULTS & NEXT STEPS
So, how is the New Freedom Counseling website now helping:
therapy seekers find value in what Keanna offers so the cost feels worth it?
to transform finding the right therapist into an easier, faster process for therapy seekers?
Find out below!
Key changes from NFC’s original website, as seen in the prototype:
Home Page
There’s a focus on the general care and support Keanna offers to all clients rather than focusing on herself or just the CSAT specialty.
The banner picture (which Keanna definitely wanted to keep incorporated) takes up a bit less space, but the message on it now gives it purpose and helps the user to instantly connect.
A clear message tells users that Keanna will see clients both in person and virtually. Being next to a map allows the user to quickly know whether Keanna is within a range they’re willing to drive to.
A separate call-to-action is found at the bottom so users don’t need to scroll back up and can contact Keanna as soon as they feel the urge to. This CTA also includes a timeline in which users can expect to hear back from Keanna - giving them peace of mind.
Prices Page
Users don’t need to take the time to contact Keanna to see how much it costs to work with her.
A brief explanation of why Keanna doesn’t accept insurance is provided to help users see that she is a caring therapist regardless of her price. Seeing this value in her will help push some users to pay the out-of-network cost in order to get the help they truly need.
Specialties Page & Individual Therapy Page
There’s a designated spot for users to not only see Keanna’s specialties, but to get a brief understanding of each one to help guide them towards their personal needs.
It’s clear Keanna works with users looking for the more general mental health needs, not only CSAT clients. It’s also clear for users who may have been recommended to her or found her for the CSAT specialty that she is still available and qualified to help them.
The website now includes a detailed page for each specialty - including IFS therapy. Once users have read the general idea on the card, they have the option to get more in-depth information.
About Page
Not all users will care about Keanna as a person until they see her value in helping them. By putting this information on its own page, users are allowed to find out more about Keanna when they choose to.
Sections have been added for Keanna to include additional information she didn’t realize some users would want: her educational background and more about her personally.
Next Steps
Testing the iterated prototypes to ensure users are able to tell the cards on the Specialty Page are clickable - allowing them to find more information on the detailed IFS page.
Although results were filtered to focus on design issues, those personally biased comments didn’t just get tossed. Those opinions will be given to Keanna so that she can decide whether or not there’s any copy she would like to change.
Reflection
What went well:
Finding the right participants
Finding participants in the local area who had experience with searching for and working with a therapist was much easier than expected.
Having a client who was very easy to work with
Keanna was open to every thought and suggestion, but not rude when she didn’t agree. She was also very open about her struggles, making it much easier to discover the business goals she truly needed - not just a website facelift!
Challenges & lessons learned:
I learned a great lesson about saving time.
When I began creating the hi-fi wireframes, there were all these cool UI ideas swirling around in my head. After an (embarrassing) amount of time trying to get it just the way I envisioned, a terrifying thought occurred - “Can I even do this in Squarespace?” Keanna gave me access to the backend of her Squarespace website, and I discovered the answer was “no - I can’t do that in Squarespace.”
It taught me to always spend some time getting familiar with the client’s platform first. Yes, that takes time - but not as much as I had wasted designing something incompatible.
Pinpointing the user needs amongst all the heavily biased feedback from participants.
The first user test, most of the participants tore up Keanna’s website - except… It wasn’t really the website - it was how she “talked”. When she made this website years ago, Keanna had learned a bit about copywriting. Well things change over time - including effective ways to write copy. And for most of the participants, this form of writing almost felt fake - so they complained about it on every single page.
So I had to learn to separate those comments from what I could accomplish with the design.
Compared to my past works, this website was simple - almost too simple.
It was easy to start ideating creative UI elements, but that’s not what was needed in this case. Users aren’t looking for awesome animations or crafty bells and whistles when searching for a therapist. They’re looking for information. And I’m a designer - not a copywriter (although I do have experience from my YouTube channel days). I can’t design the information itself, only how it’s displayed.
Putting myself in a mindset to have very simple layouts was challenging after the challenges that came before of pushing myself to be more creative and out-of-the-box on past projects.
If you made it this far, you’re awesome -
Let’s talk!
Thank you for taking the time to read through this case study!!
Hopefully you’ve seen the potential you’re looking for and would like me to help you create a useful and thoughtful product for your users. If so…