S1
A therapist’s directory profile was earning trust his own website couldn’t. This is the redesign that closed the gap — evidence first, credentials surfaced, rebuilt on a stack he owns.
Active Psychotherapy — Burnaby, BC · UX Strategy · Web Design · Next.js Rebuild
Client
Active Psychotherapy
Role
UX Strategy · Design & Build
Status
Live · awaiting domain switch
Cost to run
~$0 / month
S2
The Problem
His website wasn’t winning clients. Psychology Today was.
Frazer Bucholtz is a Registered Clinical Counsellor running Active Psychotherapy, a virtual practice serving clients across BC and Canada. He’s warm, credentialed, and easy to talk to — and almost none of that came through his website. Inquiries arrived through Psychology Today, a third-party directory, while his own site quietly collected bounces.
He was paying premium Squarespace pricing for a template that could have belonged to any practice: credentials buried, areas of focus missing, no SEO foundation. The redesign had one job — make the website earn the trust his directory profile already did.
S3
Discovery · The Audit
Before proposing anything, I read the Squarespace analytics and audited the site page by page. The case for a redesign didn’t need to be argued — it needed to be shown. Four findings did most of the work.
Sessions arrived — and left. The analytics showed visitors landing, scrolling briefly, and bouncing. The conversion moment (booking a free consult) was happening on his Psychology Today profile instead of his own site.
The copy promised a warm, compassionate, non-judgmental space. The template delivered a generic small-business layout that could have sold accounting services. For a first-time therapy client, that gap reads as untrustworthy.
RCC registration, BCACC membership, directory verifications, and a much longer list of areas of focus all existed — just not on the website. The strongest trust signals a therapist has were invisible at the exact moment a visitor was deciding.
Heading structure, page metadata, and copy gave search engines almost nothing to index. For local queries a prospective client would actually type, the practice effectively didn’t exist outside the directory.
S4
Before / After
Generic template hero — stock imagery, no sense of who the therapist is
Credentials and verifications absent above the fold
Areas of focus reduced to a short paragraph
No clear next step — the free consult was easy to miss
Trust signals — credentials, verifications, registration — above the fold
Areas of focus enumerated so clients can find themselves in the list
Free 15-minute consult as the single, repeated call to action
How-It-Works pathway lowers the cost of reaching out
S5
UX Strategy · Working with the Client
The biggest design work on this project wasn’t visual — it was editorial. Frazer had far more to offer than his site admitted: more credentials, more areas of focus, more proof. Over working sessions we inventoried all of it, and I made the case, item by item, for putting it on the page.
In most industries that’s marketing. In therapy it’s something closer to care: a prospective client is anxious, comparing strangers, and looking for a reason to feel safe. Every credential surfaced and every question answered in advance removes one more reason to close the tab.
If a first session takes courage, the website’s job is to lower the cost of that courage.
What moved from “existing” to “on the page”
Credentials & registration
RCC designation and BCACC membership, stated plainly and placed where a visitor is deciding — not on a buried about page.
Verification badges
Psychology Today and Lumino Health verifications brought onto the site, so the trust he’d earned on directories transfers to his own domain.
Areas of focus, in full
Anxiety, self-esteem, life transitions, dating, academic and career pressure, depression — the complete list, so clients can find themselves in it.
Transparent pricing
$145 per 50-minute session, stated up front. Surprises erode trust faster than price does.
Crisis resources
Emergency contacts for Canadian mental-health services — a page a therapy site should never make someone hunt for.
The free consult
A 15-minute, no-commitment call as the single conversion goal the whole site funnels toward.
S6
Process
Moodboard
Calm without being clinical: sage and sky tones, soft illustration, references that feel like a conversation rather than a waiting room.
Wireframes
The IA settled early — Home, Therapy, About Frazer, FAQ, Contact — with every page structured to end at the free-consult call to action.
Design system
A small, durable kit: palette drawn from the brand greens and blues, a serif/sans type pairing, and components Frazer’s site can grow with.
S7
Key Decisions
Credentials, verifications, and crisis resources are placed at decision moments — beside the consult CTA, above the fold — not stored on an about page the anxious visitor never reaches.
Reach out → free 15-minute consult → begin therapy. Making the pathway explicit turns an intimidating unknown into three small steps, and gives the whole site a single conversion goal.
$145 for a 50-minute session, stated plainly on the services page. Hiding the number signals there’s something to brace for; showing it says the practice has nothing to hide.
Sage and sky palette, generous whitespace, illustration instead of stock photography. The site now makes the same first impression Frazer does — before a word is read.
S8
The System
Decision 04, in practice: two typefaces, a sage-led palette, and a handful of soft components. Everything below is rendered live from the shipped stylesheet — real fonts, real hex values, real hover states — not a screenshot.
Playfair Display · 400 / 600 + italic · display
You want more than just coping skills — you want direction, confidence, and purpose.
DM Sans · 400 / 500 · body
Body copy sits at 18px with relaxed 1.7 leading — larger and looser than a typical marketing site, because an anxious first-time reader shouldn’t have to work for the words.
Palette
Components · hover them
Anxiety
Tools for the spiral — and for the quieter worry underneath it.
Pill buttons · 22px card radius · soft shadow
S9
The Build · Business Case
The rebuild is a custom Next.js site deployed on Vercel’s free tier. It costs the practice effectively nothing to run, loads fast, and — unlike the template — gives search engines a real structure to index.
| Squarespace (before) | Next.js on Vercel (after) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | Premium Squarespace plan | ~$0 — Vercel free tier |
| Design ceiling | Template constraints | Fully custom Next.js build |
| Search visibility | Generic structure, weak SEO control | Semantic pages, metadata, local-search foundation |
| Performance | Template weight | Static-first rendering, fast on mobile |
| Ownership | Locked to the platform | Portable codebase the practice owns |
S10
The Outcome
The rebuild is deployed and awaiting the domain switch. Try it below — it’s the real site, not a mockup. Before the Squarespace account is archived, its analytics become the baseline; after the switch, consult inquiries and search traffic tell the rest of the story.
Trust is on the page
Credentials, verifications, and the full list of focus areas are finally where clients decide — above the fold, on his own domain.
The site sounds like him
Warm, direct, and clear — the first impression now matches the person clients meet in a session.
The subscription is retired
Premium Squarespace pricing replaced by a free-tier stack the practice owns outright.
A foundation for search
Semantic structure and real metadata mean the practice can start earning local search traffic instead of renting visibility from a directory.
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