Clients, not looks
A coaching or therapy client is worth a package, or a course of sessions, or in many practices months of work. One client covers a lot of website. If a custom site books a few more first sessions a month than a template, it has paid its extra cost quickly and keeps paying. If it does not, the template was fine. Here is how to tell which you are.
The template
A wellness theme or builder layout with your photo, a paragraph about your philosophy, a testimonials page and a link to your scheduler.
Cost: hundreds to low thousands.
Good at: existing; looking calm.
Weak at: describing anyone in particular (one Services page for every situation you work with); stating a price (the template's answer is "book a free call"); presenting credentials so they can be checked; explaining what happens in a session; copy checked against the claims rules; booking embedded with intake rather than a link away; speed on a phone.
The custom build
Built around how clients choose: a page per situation or issue in the client's words; what changes, stated honestly; credentials and accreditation with what each covers; session and package prices; the discovery call or first session booked from Acuity, Calendly, Paperbell or Practice Better, embedded with intake; online and in-person explained; copy within the rules for your country; fast on a phone; structured data; tracking; everything in your name.
Cost: mid four figures, fixed.
Good at: appearing for the specific searches, reassuring the specific client, and booking them without a sales call.
Weak at: the invoice, and two to three weeks of build.
Where the extra clients come from
Situation pages. "Life coach for career change at forty", "hypnotherapy for fear of flying", "postnatal doula [town]". Separate searches by people in separate situations. A page each ranks and reassures; a bullet list on a Services page does neither. This is the largest difference, and it is the one the life coaches sub-page is built around.
Prices on the page. The client who can afford you books with confidence. The client who cannot does not book a call you both regret. The template's "book a free call to find out" loses the first and attracts the second.
Credentials that can be checked. Coaching is unregulated in most countries and clients know it. Accreditation body and level, training hours, professional memberships, insurance, laid out plainly and linked to the register where one exists, do more than a page of philosophy.
The what-happens page. For a hypnotherapist it is the most read page on the site. For a therapist it is how sessions work. For a doula it is what you do and do not do. The template does not have one.
Booking with intake. Embedded booking that captures the client's situation and, where relevant, health information in the tool's own flow means the first session starts on time and you arrive prepared.
Speed. Clients read at night on a phone.
The arithmetic
A coach with a template site getting 200 visits a month, converting 2 percent to discovery calls, half becoming clients: two new clients a month.
A custom site ranking for five situations, with prices stated, credentials checkable and booking embedded, might reach 400 visits at 5 percent: ten calls, perhaps five clients. Even at a third of that uplift, the additional clients in the first quarter, each worth a package or a course of sessions, exceed the price difference between the builds, and the difference recurs monthly.
When the template is right
- A practitioner full from referral with a waiting list.
- A practice inside a larger organisation that brings the clients.
- A coach in the first months, still deciding who they work with.
When the template is a leak
- Every enquiry starts with "what do you charge".
- Discovery calls are full of people who are not a fit.
- You work with three or four distinct situations and the site names none of them.
- The site takes over three seconds on a phone.
- You are not sure the copy would survive a complaint to the advertising regulator.
- Booking is a link to a scheduler with no intake, and you spend the first ten minutes of every session finding out why they came.
Deciding
Three numbers: monthly visits, monthly discovery calls or first sessions from the site, and the value of a client. Under 3 percent conversion or over three seconds: a custom build pays back in a few clients. Fast and converting: keep it and add situation pages and prices.
Our coaching practice websites are custom builds at a fixed price, with situation pages, prices, credentials, embedded booking with intake and compliant copy included, because that is the version that books the first session.