We all know that many clients are checking us out on smartphones. And, their smartphone experience affects the decision to become a client. Some of the questions that the Big Data Brains at TherapyEverywhere have been working on are:
- How do clients use a smartphone to research your practice?
- When (at what stage in the decision cycle do they use a smartphone)?
- How often do clients decide to book an appointment when on a smartphone?
If you knew the answer to these questions, you would know how important being smartphone friendly is for initial encounters with potential clients, and how important it is to enable clients to contact you directly from their smartphone. You would also know how the smartphone experience is helping, or hurting, your practice.
What do we know about how people start the journey to your practice?
Google has shared lots of information about the purchase journey — how people research a product or service.
What people do after hearing about you for the very first time?
What do potential clients do after hearing for the first time about you? At the very initial encounter, at the “Zero Moment Of Truth” (ZMOT), the single most popular reaction is to look at your website or to search for you. Of course, if you web presence is done correctly, your site will come up at the top of the search results. And smartphone users tend to look at your website or to search for you more often than non-smartphone users.
Do potential clients search for you more than once?
It turns out that most potential clients will search for you more than once. When the potential client is in the initial stages, appearing on search results helps the client learn about your product or service. In the intermediate stages, coming up on search results can reinforces the initial encounter. Finally, when the client is ready to book an appointment, how you fare on search can convert the visitor to a client.
What the Google data tells us (for one purchase group) about how and when search affects the path from potential to actual clients is that search can be more important for the intermediate stages. In the case of a therapist, even if the initial encounter was driven by a referral from Psychology Today or a personal referral, the potential client is likely to search for you in the next part of the process. The search experience has a strong influence on the outcome.
- Search occurs in 25% of initial encounters on the purchase path.
- Search occurs in 50% of encounters in the intermediate stages.
- Search occurs in 25% of final encounters on the purchase path.
What does this mean for the decision to become a client in your practice?
Investing in making your practice website fun and accessible from smartphones and search engines can payoff. Done correctly, you can see more than a jump in site visitors. You can trigger an increase in repeat site visitors and an increase in site visitors converting to appointments.
Use Google Analytics, Facebook conversion pixels, and other metrics to discover what is happening on your site.
If you need help, click here to arrange a free consultation with Therapy Everywhere. We would love to help.