Facelift for Fancher Psychology
Dr. Rachel Fancher from Fancher Psychology came to Maker Bee Consulting looking for SEO Services to improve the performance of her website in the digital space.
After reviewing the site, I (Branden, Owner of Maker Bee Consulting) knew there was an opportunity to optimize her search engine performance and improve the user experience and encourage more conversions.
The Goal
Update the Fancher Psychology brand presence and website to attract and retain a younger audience in the Chicago/Skokie area. Create a website optimized for search engine performance (SEO) and migrate any existing content from the old site to the new site. Ensure the new site is user-friendly for the Fancher Psychology staff.
The Method
Maker Bee Consulting contracted with logo design professional Derius Aguirre to develop a logo and color scheme that would inform the rest of the design strategy around Dr. Fancher’s new site. Derius worked closely with Dr. Fancher to create a collection of simple logos representing her brand and providing her clients with the correct outward perception.
After the logo creation, I ran with the color and logo theme and mocked up a few ideas in Squarespace for Dr. Fancher to consider. Maker Bee prefers mocking up a live website for web design clients so they can genuinely feel the site instead of viewing it as a one-dimensional photo.
Once the template was picked, Branden got to work.
Phase I
I developed the sitewide template and color scheme, picked a font, and developed the “Core Pages” such as /home, /services, /about, /contact, and /blog. At this point, I sent the site back to Dr. Fancher for review and made any required tweaks.
Phase II
It’s off to the races! Now that the client approved the template and direction, it was page-a-palooza. Dr. Fancher’s original site had fewer than ten pages, with around ten blog posts. There was an immediate SEO opportunity to increase that page count, creating pages for each of the services her practice offers. Pillar pages were created to direct users around the site to different services (/services would lead to /anxiety-therapy, /depression-therapy for example). The content was migrated from the old blog to the new blog, and photos were added.
In the end, we developed 25 pages linked to each other and kept the users moving down the website’s journey.
The Result
Logo Refresh
Old Logo
New Logo
Dr. Fancher’s old logo worked well for its purpose, but the logos needed to be refreshed to match more modern aesthetic and softer edges aligned with relaxing, therapeutic themes.
We kept the core theme of the previous color scheme to ensure that there was some brand cohesion while softening and fading the colors a bit. The fonts received more professional treatment, with a serif font as the primary logo font and a thin san-serif for the secondary.
Home Page
Click on the images to see the site in action!
The relevant information is there, but there are few opportunities for potential clients to link and learn more information. Most of the CTAs and buttons led to a contact page instead of growing trust by sharing more information.
There was a lot of opportunity with the home page to act as a “town square” for the site, leading users along the journey and giving them more opportunities to navigate to what seemed the most interesting and important to them. This page was fully revamped to bring information to the surface, while leaving just enough behind the curtain to encourage navigation.
About
Yes, I know this is a Staff page. But the fact that Fancher Psychology was missing a classic about page meant there was a huge opportunity to tell the story and inform the potential clients about the practice’s culture, encouraging not only clients but the right clients.
The new about page gives a general overview of the practice’s methodology and services, increasing internal linking while also providing useful information for the user.
Services
There was a lot of information on the Services page, so much so that it became a wall of text that was a little intimidating to jump into. There was a lot of whitespace around the actual services, and not a clear designation that the top section was about their approach.
This is arguably the most important second-level page and needed a lot of information and structure to help clients decide what is right for them. We treated it more like a navigation page, where you can learn more on the surface about the different kinds of services, and then dive in further.
Blog
There was a ton of opportunity with this page, which had been neglected over the past few years. The Instagram widget was no longer used, and the posts were only on the right side without any description.
This is a standard Squarespace layout, but brought a lot of benefit to the blog landing page. The posts are laid out with descriptions and dates so that users know what they’re clicking into. The alternating images help break up the flow and differentiate the posts from one another.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Question pages have some of the highest SEO value, but are often overlooked as a utility page. This one accomplishes all of the check marks for a successful FAQ page, and was the most well built page on the site.
We cleaned the FAQs up a lot, focusing on making the information as easy as possible to find and read. We took away the accordions from the last page, and added a contact button at the bottom.
Conclusion
This was an incredibly fulfilling project for me. Dr. Fancher and her team want to focus on a younger demographic — those college-aged or just post-college entering a world of financial instability, national unrest, global conflict, and looming insecurity. If this site can help reach those who may need help but don’t know they do, then this site and project have been a rousing success.
See the full site at fancherpsychology.com
