Module 3 · Plan the site

One button, one promise, one honest line under it

Every page on your site asks a visitor to do one thing. This lesson decides what that thing is, the honest line that sits under the button, and what you tell people happens after they press it. By the end, site-map.md is finished, with the final words for every page.

One offer: a conversation

A “call to action” is the button or link that asks for the action a page is for. Many business websites offer several competing ones: a guide to download, a quiz, a newsletter. A therapy practice has exactly one offer, a conversation, and everything else on the site is information that makes the conversation easier to start.

• The same words everywhere. “Get started”, “Reach out” and “Schedule” on three different pages make a visitor wonder whether they are three different things.
• A tap-to-call link is a phone number coded so that tapping it on a phone starts the call. Some people would much rather talk than type; others find calling hard. Offering both routes, side by side, serves both.
• The same place on every page. Keeping contact routes in the same order everywhere is also an accessibility standard, and it matters most to someone who is anxious.
• A booking calendar or a short form, never both as equals. The kit’s default is the short form, built in Module 5. If you already use a practice-management platform with its own booking page, the button can go there instead and the form becomes the backup route.

The free call: say what it is, and what it isn’t

A short free phone call before the first session is the convention in US private practice, and fifteen minutes is the common length. Be clear-eyed about why you offer it: the research behind this course found no study showing that a free call increases the number of people who get in touch. It’s convention, and it does useful work: a person finds out whether you take their insurance or work with their issue before they pay for a session.

Not everyone agrees it should be free, or long. The American Psychological Association’s practice organization advises keeping these calls brief and not letting them turn into treatment by accident, and some clinicians charge for a first fit session instead. Whether you offer the call, and for how long, is your decision; the kit uses fifteen minutes because it’s the common default.

Whatever you decide, say plainly what the call is not. The model the research found is Ashley Manley Therapy’s “Clarity Call” page (checked in a browser on 12 September 2026), which says the call is “not therapy, diagnosis, crisis support or a full clinical assessment.” The kit writes your version next to the button:

Openings, with a date

Availability is the scarcest thing in this market, and it’s rarely stated. Being full is normal: in the American Psychological Association’s 2025 practitioner survey, 46% of psychologists said they had no openings for new clients (that survey covers doctoral psychologists, not every kind of clinician). So say where you stand, and date it:

The date is what makes the line believable. An undated “now accepting new clients” that has been wrong for a year is one of the fastest ways to lose a visitor’s trust, and the date also reminds you to check it.

A reply window you can keep on your worst week

Here is why the promise under the button matters. In a 2013 New York City experiment, 56% of voicemails left for 320 insured, solo-practice psychologists asking for an appointment were never returned (Kugelmass, 2016). The same study found the answer depended on who was calling.

Read it with its limits, because you will spot them: it counts calls, not therapists; it studied doctoral, solo, insured psychologists in one very busy city in 2013; each caller left a single voicemail and never tried again. And it is, first of all, a study of racial and class bias in who gets offered care. Replying to everyone within the same stated window, with the same template, is the fix that keeps your practice from losing people and the fix for that unfairness at the same time.

So choose a window you can keep when you are sick, on vacation, or seeing a full day of clients. “One business day” is the usual honest answer. Never “within the hour”, never “available 24/7”. Your contact page and thank-you page repeat it word for word:

Tell people what happens next

Fear of the process itself is one of the reasons people who want help don’t reach it. Describing the next few minutes costs you nothing and answers four questions nobody asks: who reads this, how long until I hear back, what happens then, and what if you’re not right for me? On your homepage and contact page, it looks like this:

Nothing that pressures

The person on your page may be deciding at a bad moment. Pressure tactics that are routine elsewhere on the internet are aimed, here, at someone in distress, and a visitor who spots one has learned something about you before the first call. The kit builds none of them; here is what it uses instead.

The sticky bar that follows you down a phone screen

A sticky bar is a strip of buttons pinned to the bottom of a phone screen while the visitor scrolls. The kit plans it with two buttons, “Book a free call” and “Call”, and a small line inside it: “In crisis? Call or text 988”. It hides while someone is typing in a form, and the page leaves room at the bottom so the sticky bar never covers the footer crisis block. On a computer screen the header does the same job, so the sticky bar appears on phones only.

Paste this into Claude

Go back to the Stage 2 conversation from the last lesson. If you closed it, open your project and ask Claude “where did we leave off?” first. Fill in the square brackets, then paste.

Let's plan the calls to action in site-map.md, following your web-architecture and
copywriting skills.

1. One primary button, site-wide, labelled exactly "Book a free 15-minute call", linking
   to [/contact, or my practice-management platform's booking page]. Put it in the
   header, the first screen, after the section on what an hour with me is like, and at
   the end of every page.
2. Directly under every primary button: "Free · 15 minutes · not a therapy session ·
   I reply within [one business day]".
3. Beside it, my phone number [number] as a tap-to-call link. Under that, two small
   text links: "See fees and insurance" and "What to expect".
4. The openings line for the first screen and /contact: [I'm currently taking new
   clients for (days or times) / I'm not taking new clients right now], updated
   [Month Year].
5. The what-happens-next steps for the homepage and /contact, in my voice: I read every
   message myself, I reply within [one business day], we talk for fifteen minutes, and
   if I'm not the right person I'll suggest someone who might be.
6. The sticky bar: "Book a free call" and "Call", a small line "In crisis? Call or
   text 988", hidden while someone is typing in a form, and never covering the footer
   crisis block.
7. Add none of these anywhere: pop-ups, countdowns, "limited spots" wording, chat
   widgets, testimonials, star ratings, or any promise about what someone will feel.

Show me section 3 of site-map.md before you go on.

What to check: the button says exactly “Book a free 15-minute call” everywhere it appears, and the line under it names a reply window you could keep on your worst week. The openings line has a month and year. The what-happens-next steps say who reads the message and what happens if you’re not the right fit, and promise nothing about how anyone will feel. If your profile has the Florida flag on and the call is free, you should see a TODO-COMPLIANCE marker wherever the free offer appears. Change anything that doesn’t sound like you before the next prompt.

Section 3 looks right. Now map every page in site-map.md section by section, as your
web-architecture skill describes: the purpose, the final copy, a plain-English design
instruction, and which call to action each section carries. Write every word through
your copywriting skill. Ask me for anything you don't know and leave it in [brackets]
rather than guessing. Keep every TODO-COMPLIANCE marker as it is. No client stories,
quotes or examples drawn from a real client.

When it's done, save a snapshot and summarize in plain words: the pages, the path a
visitor takes through the homepage, the notices my flags turned on, and every
[bracket] still open.

What to check: read the copy twice, the way the kit suggests: once as an anxious person deciding whether to reach out, and once as a member of your licensing board. Every sentence should describe what people commonly experience, never promise a result. Nothing about you should appear that you didn’t supply: no training, years, numbers or states. The summary’s list of open brackets is your to-do list for Module 4.

Watch this step

What the free call is for, from two clinicians. One caution for the first video: if a caller asks what therapy will cost, that question has consequences for the paperwork you owe them, and Florida expects an extra statement on free consultations. Module 6 covers both. It’s from an independent creator — credited below, so go give them a follow.

13:22

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