A Comparison of Brighter Vision, TherapySites and My Digital Maven
I used to recommend Brighter Vision to therapists. A lot! People would ask me who designed my first business website because they wanted to hire that person and were disappointed once I told them I did it all myself with SquareSpace.
Years ago there were fewer options for therapists looking for a web designer that specialized in mental health private practice. There was TherapySites and then a few individual web designers who were amazing, like Kat Love and Nicole Bonsol. Unfortunately, Kat and Nicole were soooo amazing that their schedules quickly filled and they were booked months out, and neither are currently taking on clients at all.
There are a few more people (like myself) now popping up in this space, but most of them focus on creating WordPress websites that you’ll need someone else to manage for you. Very few web designers offer all-in-one services that include creating the website, making it pretty, optimizing it for SEO, and writing the copy that will grab your client’s attention.
So that leaves us with:
Individual web designers who don’t specialize in mental health practices
DIY’ing your website
Paying a website subscription service like TherapySites or Brighter Vision
For sake of time and so we can really dig in to what Brighter Vision and TherapySites offer, I’ll review DIY options and individual web design services in another post.
Please note the original version of this post inaccurately presented Brighter Vision’s low tiered pricing option and also mistakenly reported they charge to install Google Analytics on a website. These have been corrected.
Website Subscription Services
These are services that offer a monthly rate to get your website up and running so you don’t have to pay a large, up front fee. They typically capitalize on serving a large audience and using templates so they can offer affordable services.
First, let’s do a review of the “OG” therapist website service we’ve all heard about for years: TherapySites.
My number one complaint about TherapySites has always been their cookie-cutter designs that are about 15 years outdated. I could spot a TherapySites website from a mile away even before I knew anything about designing websites. You probably can, too.
To be fair, TherapySites started out when websites were a pretty new thing, and when they were definitely a revolutionary concept for mental health professionals. So the people who signed up almost a decade ago were well ahead of their time.
But things have changed (and improved) pretty dramatically over the last few years and there are very limited therapist website design options with TherapySites. Even after updating their website template options, most TherapySites examples look boring and outdated.
And for some reason, it seems most therapists choose the same template, anyway! Despite having a few options, most TherapySites websites that therapists create on their own end up looking almost identical. Does a left side menu with a sand-colored background and blue border sound familiar?
Here’s my ode to the most generic therapist website design of all, prevalent on many TherapySites websites, Stacked Rocks:
Here’s my therapist website design PSA: Just say “NO” to stacked rocks!
And when will we finally ditch the generic stock photos? Apparently, all therapists have clipboards in their hands when counseling. But I digress...
Having an outdated website is no different than having orange shag carpeting and a brown tweed couch in your office. It makes you appear out of touch and, more importantly, it actually detracts from what you want your clients to think and feel so they can make a connection with you.
Outdated website design isn’t the only thing that’s concerning about TherapySites.
They promote offering “built-in” SEO but that means they are likely not optimizing your website for the things that matter most- your geographic region and your services niches. Sure, they’ll create a standard menu of pages and there are some common search terms that apply to therapy websites, but you always want to build your site around specific and carefully identified SEO keywords. You’re not getting that with a TherapySites website.
And although they tout their pre-created therapist website content as a bonus, it is actually a huge problem for websites.
I’ll dig into this more below in the Brighter Vision review, but you need a website that is personalized, unique, and sounds like you for two main reasons:
To connect with potential clients, so they get a sense of who you are.
To establish and maintain good SEO.
In my opinion, these are two things that are simply non-negotiable because without them, there is hardly any point to paying for a website at all.
A few other things you should know before investing in a TherapySites website:
You don’t actually own your website or your domain; you’re renting it from TherapySites. You do own anything you wrote yourself, pictures you purchased on your own, etc. However, you’ll need to copy and paste all of that somewhere first if you ever decide to leave TherapySites.
Pros of TherapySites are that you can easily sign up and get started all on your own, any time you want. Since the website is heavily templated, all you have to do is add a few pieces of information and tweak some of the wording and voila, your website is live.
Will anyone ever find that website in a Google search, though? That part will be the real challenge.
Now, let’s review Brighter Vision, the “fresh on the scene” website design service.
As I mentioned earlier, I used to recommend Brighter Vision quite frequently. Most people were happy with their websites and happy to be hands-off in the website creation process. However, I started to notice some concerning trends in 2018.
Very randomly, a few different therapists had asked me to check out their websites, all within the span of a week… okay, maybe it wasn’t so random since I’m obsessed with online marketing and love checking out websites.
Anyway, I noticed these people’s websites weren’t ranking in Google at all. They had said their websites weren’t getting them clients and my own search confirmed they had poor, almost non-existent, SEO.
The websites all had multiple design and user issues:
Their websites were difficult to use because web pages were incomplete or totally empty.
The pages weren’t organized so it was unclear how to go where you wanted to go or where the information you’re looking for is on the site.
The design was really just “meh.” Not quite stacked rocks level but getting close (and definitely using some of those generic professional photos).
Then I noticed something really disturbing. Many of these therapist websites had the exact same content. On multiple pages. This is a big no-no in the land of SEO and making Google like your website!
It was seriously like a horror movie moment when I realized these websites all had the same content and the same usability problems.
That’s actually how I noticed that all these websites also had something else in common: They were websites designed by Brighter Vision.
Similar to TherapySites, Brighter Vision proudly promotes their “Pre-Written Therapist Content” that is included in even their lowest price option. They also promote their social media and blog content library, which are part of the higher priced option.
They are offering you and hundreds of other therapists the exact same content to copy and paste all over the web.
Honestly, it’s unlikely that you’ll choose the exact same Facebook post as another therapist in your area and post it on the same day. It’s just as unlikely that a potential client follows you AND another local therapist using Brighter Vision, or that the potential client would notice if you both post the same content more than a few days apart.
However, Google basically sees and reviews everything you do on your website. And Google wants to offer an exceptional service to people who are searching online. That means Google doesn’t like seeing duplicate content that is copied and pasted over and again.
Google also doesn’t like to direct searchers to a bad user experience. So if your website is unorganized, links don’t work, or pages are blank, you take another major hit.
These trends negatively impacting therapist websites continued to be so pervasive that I stopped referring to Brighter Vision altogether.
Keep in mind that these are all things that are basic to the concept of SEO. So while there are hundreds of things impacting your SEO, these items at the base level (along with a few other things like having your contact information on every single page of your website) are most important.
This brings me to another problem with Brighter Vision. They encourage therapists to create a multitude of web pages, regardless of whether or not these pages have any content that is helpful… in fact, regardless of whether or not there is any content on the pages at all! This creates a confusing and disjointed website that appears incomplete.
There is some underlying SEO strategy here, because in a nutshell, more content online means more content for Google to find you. However, as I outlined above, the most important thing is that the content on your web pages is high quality and cohesive. Having multiple pages that say exactly the same thing, break up information into too many pages, or have almost no information at all, is more detrimental to your website performance than helpful.
Perhaps what’s most concerning about all of the above is that it seems to apply to MOST Brighter Vision websites.
Take a tour of their portfolio and see for yourself. You will find websites that have the same pages, confusing menus, similar content, and almost every one of them have at least one page without any content at all (but there’s a nice “Content to come…” message on the page).
A note about SEO and why is it so important to track your analytics and understand what is going on with things like keywords:
You need that data to determine whether or not your investment is bringing you a return, and also to know how to adjust your marketing strategy over time. So, whether you use Brighter Insights, Google Analytics, a referral tracking sheet, or all of the above, make sure you are paying attention to what your website is doing and how people are finding it.
But don’t confuse a website subscription service, pre-written content, and/or access to analytics as SEO strategy. You’ll need to understand how to interpret your analytics and make corrections to your website accordingly. Basically, you can’t use a subscription service to be a passive bystander and expect your website to soar in rankings.
Correction to this blog post: I had previously stated that Brighter Vision charges to include Google Analytics, but this is incorrect. They do charge for their “Brighter Insights” service that offers metrics to track things like social media, as well as your website analytics. The do NOT charge for adding the tracking code you receive from Google when you sign up for Analytics. This would be covered under the ongoing maintenance in the subscription.
However, you do need to create your Google Analytics account and send them the tracking code in order to start getting detailed analytics on how your website is performing. Brighter Vision offers basic metrics with their lower tiered pricing plans, but this would not include Google data until you send them the tracking code. For comparison, this would also not happen with TherapySites until code was installed or with SquareSpace until you connect Google to your account.
Side note on Google Analytics… Google Analytics is a FREE service for anyone with a website. It’s very easy to set up and I highly recommend EVERYONE with a website do so because the majority of web traffic is happening on Google. One benefit of SquareSpace over WordPress is that you don’t have to copy and paste any code to set up Google Analytics. You simply click one button to connect the accounts and then all your Google Analytics data shows up in your SquareSpace Analytics… and it’s the actual data from Google so you don’t have to deal with their clunky interface (as much as Google wants us to create client-friendly user experiences, Google still seems to be working this part out themselves, but I digress).
The bottom line with comparing TherapySites and Brighter Vision…
It only takes a quick Google search of the phrase “brighter vision vs therapysites” to discover that Brighter Vision is obviously doing better at SEO than TherapySites. Brighter Vision is ranking for multiple pages, while TherapySites shows up once at the very bottom of the page. Unfortunately, Brighter Vision doesn’t seem to be passing this SEO know-how on to their customers.
Both companies have a large share of the therapist website design market and are trying to offer affordable solutions, but the shortcuts they’re taking to make services affordable are negatively impacting their customers.
This does nothing but cheapen what they offer and create stress for the therapists who eventually decide to choose another option.
Conclusion of our Brighter Vision vs Therapysites review:
When you sign up for a therapist website subscription service with TherapySites or Brighter Vision, you end up getting much less than you anticipated:
You get a website service, not a website you can keep and with TherapySites, you need to pay a small fee to purchase the domain name you’ve been using (unless you purchased it elsewhere).
You still have to do most of the SEO yourself, like identifying keywords and phrases that are best in your geographic area, connecting Google Analytics, and reviewing Google Analytics yourself (unless you’re on the highest Brighter Vision plan or choose the “SEO Boost” from TherapySites).
You still have to write the website copy (the text content) on your own, or risk using the generic templates that may not use your voice and very likely make Google angry.
You don’t need either of these services to have a HIPAA secure form on your website or HIPAA secure email attached to your domain, but they will each imply these are unique things that are very complicated to set up and may require extra payment.
You get a far more personalized website that will set you up for successful SEO, give you a branded online presence, and your website will be something you can easily edit on your own, whenever you want. If you’d like to invest in a website that sounds and feels exactly like you, click here to learn more about how we can help you. I’m confident we can provide you a website you’ll love, that will also bring you an excellent return on investment.
Comments are open and I welcome them! Please remember to be kind and respectful.
