My new site will be a lead generator and blog site about Cork counsellor Norma Coakley. It will focus on the following target audiences: parents looking for counselling support, people looking for counselling around adoption issues, couples looking for relationship counselling, and people or organisations looking for counselling on grief or trauma. Another smaller target audience are other counsellors looking for supervision.
The domain name I have chosen is normacoakley.wordpress.com and it is free to register. WordPress.com offer free hosting for this site. My site will have the following functionality: to promote the business and get appointments. I will measure the success of my new site using the following KPIs: Phone calls, usage of the Contact Us form, email queries and website traffic.
What makes this business unique/special/different is Norma’s personal interest in mindfulness techniques – she attends several courses per year to train in the practice. I will try to express this in the website by creating a blog with her own posts about mindfulness, as well as using resources like Youtube videos to demonstrate more about mindfulness.
Three competitor sites are corkcounselling.ie, corkcounselling.com and sharonfoley.com. Of these I like corkcounselling.ie because it has a clean, professional design, the services offered are very clear, and the contact number is displayed clearly.
The style of my site will be clean, professional and approachable. Other sites that I perceive to be clean, professional and approachable are mindfulnessclinic.ie and mindfulparentingadvice.ie. For example mindfulnessclinic.ie has a clean design with good use of imagery, and feels approachable with testimonials and relatable language. It also looks professional with links to courses, resources and a blog showing they have an extensive knowledge of mindfulness. Mindfulparentingadvice.ie also has a very clean design, is easy to use, is very approachable by offering online Skype sessions, and a free 20 minute consultation. It also appears professional as there is a section with the experience and qualifications of the counsellor, as well as testimonials.
Other sites that I do not believe are clean, professional and approachable are corkcounselling.com and another Cork counselling service bridgewatercounselling.com. Both of these have a confusing and outdated design, especially Bridgewater Counselling which has major issues with the navigation. I think corkcounselling.com isn’t very approachable as it gives an overview of the issues they deal with, but they don’t expand on the different types of therapy or give an idea of what you can expect from the counselling. Bridgewater Counselling doesn’t appear very professional, while the style and content of the website is confusing to the user.
Norma Coakley Counselling 