Module 2 · Position and look

Who you help, in their words

Stage 1 of the build starts here, and it starts with words, not colors. By the end of this lesson, brand-strategy.md will say who you help in the words they use, what an hour with you is like, and what your license means, in sentences a stranger can follow. The look comes in the next lesson.

The three questions a visitor is answering

The people who build therapy websites report that most visitors arrive from a directory profile, already half-decided, and click through to check you out. That is a practitioner observation rather than a measured fact, but it changes the website’s job. It is not introducing you. It is confirming or ruling you out, and the visitor is quietly answering three questions:

• Is this the same person I just read about? Same name, same photo, same focus.
• Do they work with someone like me, on the thing I have?
• Can I afford it, are they available, and what happens if I press the button?

Anything on the page that doesn’t help answer one of those is decoration. This lesson is about the second question. Modules 3 and 5 handle the third.

Name the problem in their words, not the diagnosis

You were trained to write like a clinician, and on a website that training works against you. People search in the words of their own lives, not the words in a note:

There is research behind the gap. A 2023 study in the journal Psychotherapy Research, comparing psychotherapy trainees with members of the public, found the two groups wanted different things from therapy on most of the preferences it measured. A clinician writing from instinct writes for a reader with a clinician’s preferences. That is not a writing failure; it is the wrong imagined reader.

The diagnosis can still appear once, lower down the page, so people who search for it find you. It just shouldn’t be the first thing a frightened person has to decode.

Your focus is a problem people live with, not a demographic

“Adults” tells a visitor nothing. “People whose anxiety shows up as overworking” is a page someone can recognize themselves in. The kit asks you for two to four focus areas, named that way. A focus is what the website says first. It is not a limit on who you see, and a general practice is a legitimate practice.

Be careful with the claim you will hear everywhere, that clinicians with a niche fill their caseloads faster. This course’s research could not find a study that measures it. What the evidence does support is the clinical argument for specific copy: when clients get the kind of treatment they prefer, they are less likely to drop out.

That meta-analysis is about treatment inside therapy, not about websites. The bridge to your homepage is reasoning, not a finding: a site that says plainly who and what you work with helps people choose care they prefer.

Describe the hour, not the modality

One directory’s search data gives a sense of scale. On Zencare, 38% of users filtered by specialty, while the method filters were tiny: CBT 4%, EMDR 4%, IFS 2%, DBT 1%. The report publishes no methodology and the directory skews private-pay, so treat it as direction, not measurement. The direction is clear enough: people look for the problem, and the method is nearly invisible.

What a visitor can use is a picture of the hour. Clinicians who study client preferences describe four dimensions, and each one is easy to say in plain words:

Name the method once, then say what it feels like on a Tuesday

Every acronym gets a “which means, for you…” clause. This is the model the kit’s copywriting skill uses:

One thing not to strip out: “evidence-based.” A study of community members and therapists found that therapists underestimate how much the public values scientific credibility (d = 0.74; Farrell & Deacon 2016, 200 community members). On its own, though, the phrase is a badge. Say what the approach does and why it has research behind it.

Credentials a stranger can read

Most of your visitors can’t tell an LPC from an LCSW from a psychologist, and nobody has measured how many. The fix is three plain sentences: the license spelled out with its state, what it lets you do and not do, and any certification kept visibly separate. A license and a certification are different things, and setting them side by side in the same type suggests otherwise.

State your focus without awarding yourself a title

Describe what you have done and how much of it you do. It is more specific, more believable, and it is something a stranger can check.

Describe, never promise

One grammar rule does most of the work: keep the reader out of the predicate. “Clients often find…” describes. “You will feel…” promises.

The thousand-websites test

Emily Whitish, who designs websites for therapists, gives the test worth running on every sentence: could this sentence be on a thousand other websites? If yes, it is decoration. Delete it, or say the specific thing it was reaching for.

The kit’s copywriting skill carries the full list of phrases to cut, so Claude avoids them without being told. You still read every draft, because Claude sometimes slips one back in.

Paste this into Claude

Open a new session in your project folder. The interview lives in the kit’s brand-strategy skill, so the prompt only points Claude at it and sets the limits. Before it writes any copy, the kit has Claude fill in your facts in the guardrail block in section 8 of your CLAUDE.md; you will see that happen.

Let's start Stage 1, my brand strategy. Follow your brand-strategy skill, and read
practice-profile.md first so you don't ask me those questions again. Today is the positioning
half only; we do the look next time.

No client information. When you ask how people describe their problem, I'll give you made-up
examples of the kind of thing I hear, never a real client's words.

Interview me in small rounds and wait for my answers. Then give me:
1. My two to four focus areas, named in the words people use, not the diagnosis.
2. My positioning line, two versions, and which one you'd pick and why.
3. Three options for my homepage's first screen, and which one you'd pick.
4. My credentials paragraph in three plain sentences.

Rules: invent nothing about me. No years, trainings, certifications or numbers I didn't give
you; write [FILL IN: ...] instead. No promises about what a reader will feel or achieve. Don't
call me a specialist or an expert. Don't compare me with other therapists.

Write the positioning half of brand-strategy.md, save a snapshot, and stop.

What to check: Claude asked a few questions at a time, not twenty. When it reflected your practice back to you, it sounded like your practice and not like any therapist. In the draft, look for four things: any fact about you that you didn’t supply, any sentence that tells the reader what they will get, any title, and any phrase from the thousand-websites list. Every one of those is yours to strike. The file is a draft you own, not a verdict.

Three follow-ups when a section needs work

Use these in the same session, whenever a part of the draft feels flat.

Here are five things people say in a first call, in their own words [made-up examples — never
a real client]:
1. [ ]
2. [ ]
3. [ ]
4. [ ]
5. [ ]

Write three homepage first-screen options that name the problem in those words, say who it's
for, and end with what happens when someone gets in touch. No promises, no "specialist", and
none of the phrases on your copywriting skill's ban list.

What to check: read each option aloud and run the thousand-websites test. The best one should use at least one of your made-up phrases almost word for word, and none should say what the reader will feel.

Rewrite my credentials paragraph so a stranger knows what my license lets me do and what it
doesn't, in three sentences. Spell out every set of letters. Keep any certification or training
visibly separate from the license.

What to check: every letter combination is spelled out, the state is named, and nothing appears that isn’t in practice-profile.md or something you told Claude.

Here is my approach paragraph: [paste your own paragraph about how you work — nothing about any
client]. Replace every acronym with what it means for the person in the room ("which means, for
you..."), and describe what an hour with me is like on four dimensions: who leads, how intense
it gets, past or present, and support or challenge.

What to check: the method is named once at most, each dimension is a sentence you would actually say in a first call, and nothing describes a result. If a line isn’t true of how you work, change it; Claude is guessing at your style from what you gave it.

Watch this step

Two videos on choosing a focus, starting from the problem a client is living with rather than a demographic. The third is an optional deep dive on website copy for therapists; it runs about 46 minutes, and both speakers sell their own services. It’s from an independent creator — credited below, so go give them a follow.

30:21

8:42

46:26