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 This article is the third in a series. The first two articles covered the following topics:
- Arguments for why those in private practice could benefit by launching a web site.
- A review of Profile #1, which is a basic but effective clinical web page.
- Suggestions for web page authoring software and texts.
- A review of style points for creating an effective home page.
- A review of methods for knowing how a web site will look on other computers.
- Suggestions for basic elements to include on a private practice page.
- Internet resources for registering a domain name, for obtaining photographs, and for hosting a site.
I also stressed that launching a web site is much easier than many may imagine. For those of you who do not keep your old editions of The Independent Practitioner you can find downloadable versions of the previous articles on my web site.
In this article I will review Profile #2 and offer some additional suggestions and style points. Profile #2 subsumes everything in Profile #1; it then adds articles and pictures pertaining to the practice. In turn, the suggestions and style points regard some common themes that have been emerging as I have been offering feedback to psychologists about their web sites.
For Profile #2 you will need a digital camera, photo editing software, and Adobe Acrobat; though not absolutely necessary, I would also recommend acquiring a scanner. If you do not wish to purchase a digital camera, you could also get by with your regular camera and a decent scanner.
What is all this gear accomplishing? It allows you to place pictures of yourself and your office online and it allows you to place downloadable documents on your site. This then facilitates at least two goals. First, you offer your prospective clients more familiarity with you and your practice prior to the first contact. Such familiarity may help to reduce the hesitancy side of the ambivalence that first time clients often experience. Second, you can create a low cost method for providing your clients with your insights and knowledge on the behavioral disorders or problems in living that you treat in your practice. This educates your clients, facilitates an appreciation of your expertise and training and provides a method for you to augment your therapy sessions. For instance, I ask all of my parents, who are in the midst of a contentious divorce, to read my handout for helping children to cope with a divorce.
Digital cameras are wonderful. Ask around; those who own one will likely agree. No more buying film. No more paying your local drugstore for developing costs. Taking a bad picture doesn’t cost you a penny. You just hit the delete button. And, the quality of pictures produced by many of these cameras is phenomenal, with many of them incorporating features (i.e., landscaping) not available on many horse-and-buggy types of cameras. True, if you want to use your digital camera for personal use as well, you have to have a decent ink jet color printer, purchase photo quality paper and invest time in printing them out (then again, this could provide you with another legitimate excuse to play on the computer). For web usage purposes, you do not need a printer or photo quality paper. The pictures you produce will go directly into your web page. The steps for doing this are as follows:
- Have someone take a picture of you with the digital camera, or use the timer feature common on many cameras. A headshot will do nicely (no yawning).
- Upload the pictures from your camera to your computer. The required software and cables are usually included with the camera; make sure that you buy a camera that is compatible with your system. For what it’s worth, I like the Canon Powershot series of cameras. You can find a description of them at www.powershot.com. By the way, two reputable sources for online reviews of computer products are www.macworld.com and www.pcmag.com.
- Edit the picture with photo editing software. Many computers, digital cameras and scanners come bundled with such programs (for example, Photo Deluxe). If you’ve purchased one of these devices in the recent past, you probably have such software in hand. The entry level programs are usually fairly intuitive, but buying a book on the software will help; just type the name of the program into the search engine of such sites as www.amazon.com. Those with experience with photo editing may enjoy more elaborate programs such as Photoshop Elements or Photoshop.
- Use the HTML program (see the previous edition of this column), to “import” your pictures into your web page. Keep the number of your pictures down and their size modest. If you have too many pictures, or if they are too large, it will take your site visitor too long to load your page. “Too long” refers to the small period of time that exceeds your average Internet user’s patience. If one gets into the “too long” range, the less-than-significantly-invested visitor may click off of your site.
- Upload your page to your host site using your ftp (see the previous edition of this column).
Adobe Acrobat is a program that turns any computer file into portable document format (PDF). PDF is the format that anyone with a computer, and Acrobat Reader, can open and read. Adobe distributes Acrobat Reader for free off of its web site (www.adobe.com). If you purchase Acrobat it would also be a good idea to buy a text to help you to orient yourself. PDF with Acrobat 5: Visual QuickStart Guide by Jennifer Alspach seems to be a decent choice. The steps for putting your newsletters or articles online are as follows:
- Write the handout, article or newsletter in whatever program you wish. If you are new to newsletters, you may benefit from reading a book on effective desktop publishing. I like Web Design and Desktop Publishing for Dummies by Roger C. Parker.
- Use Adobe Acrobat to transfer the file to PDF format; this is an easy and quick operation.
- Use the HTML authoring program to “import” the PDF file. The program will recognize the file as a PDF file and handle it appropriately. This takes all of one to two minutes, but tell someone who doesn’t understand the terms that you have to go use your HTML program to import your PDF files and they’ll expect you to be busy for hours!
- Upload your page to your host site using your ftp. Then, when a visitor to the web site clicks on the file it is automatically downloaded to their computer. They can then launch it with Acrobat Reader and it will look just like it did on your machine. I have to admit, sometimes it seems like magic.
Besides articles on mental health topics, you can also place your non-contractual intake forms on your site and offer new patients the chance to download them, and fill them out, prior to their arrival at your office. Wherever you place PDF files on your site, it would also be a good idea to explain that your visitor will need Acrobat Reader to read the file(s) and offer a link to where they can download the program. By the way, there are plenty of other potential uses for Acrobat. For instance, transferring your files into PDF format, prior to attaching them to e-mails, guarantees that the recipient will be able to open and read them. For those of you who don’t want to spring for the price of Adobe Acrobat, see http://createPDF.adobe.com/, a site that will create PDF files for you after you pay a small subscription fee.
A scanner is a nice addition to your web authoring desktop. With one you can transfer hard copies of pictures into a digital format suitable for editing and inclusion in your web pages. You can also use the optical character recognition (OCR) software that comes bundled with most scanners to import hard copies of text into your word processor, sparring you having to type the text in yourself. You can pick up pretty good scanner for under $200. Though it’s been a while since I researched reviews of scanners, I’ve used the consumer versions of the Umax Astra series of scanners with success; see www.umax.com for a description of these scanners.
Since launching this column I’ve received a number of requests to review psychologists’ web sites. There are a few themes that have been predominating in the feedback I have offered. I thought it might be useful to review these themes here. The most common suggestions are as follows:
- Try to keep home pages from being too busy. Even useful and insightful information won’t be consumed by your average web visitor if it is on a crowded page. Try to keep your home page to the size of a computer monitor. Also, the 6-7 rule is useful: try not to have more than six or seven category headings on your home page. I’m currently reading a delightful offering on web site usability entitled Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug that makes these points very well. This book also makes a variety of suggestions for making a web site more usable and appealing.
- I would recommend adding a search engine to sites that are more than a few pages in size. There are a number of web sites that will give you one for free. I use www.atomz.com for my site. You may be surprised at how easy it is to add this feature. The good sites will take you through the steps.
- Go to the major search engines (www.yahoo.com, www.google.com and www.altavista.com) and plug in those terms that someone might use to finde a psychologist in your region. A location name and a term would be likely. If your site does not come up on the list, or if the list is long and your site cannot be found near the top, then prospective clients will not be able to find you. Methods for getting effectively listed on search engines will be included in a future column. For now, there are web sites that will both suggest some methods for making your site more search engine friendly and list your site on the most popular search engines; www.bcentral.com is an example of one such offering (click on the icon for “search engine submission”).
- For those who provide suggestions for books or other mental health resources, consider turning the recommended book or tool into a link to a seller of that product. This way your visitor just needs to click on the title of the book to be transferred to a page that will allow her to purchase the item. (Many of these internet merchants also offer affiliate programs.) Relatedly, try to avoid underlining references when they are listed on a web page, unless they are also a link. On the Internet, underlined text says to the viewer that it is operating as a link.
- There are a few items that you want to be sure to include on every page: a link to your e-mail address, a link to your home page and a link to the major categories on your site. Also, be sure to maintain consistency in style across your pages; this helps people to know that they are still on your site and have not been transferred elsewhere.
- Remember, if you haven’t viewed your page through both Netscape and Explorer, and on both a PC and a Mac, you don’t know how the page is appearing to major segments of the Internet population. Going through such an exercise allows you the opportunity to reformat your page so that it looks like you want it to.
In the next column I will be reviewing Profiles 3a and 3b. Until then, feel free to be in touch; I’m particularly interested in receiving any suggestions or resources that you believe might help our community to launch and develop a clinical web page. (An FYI for those going to APA in August: I will be offering a workshop on web page authoring for Division 42.) Until the next time, web on!
David J. Palmiter, Jr., Ph.D., ABPP is an Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of the Psychological Services Center and Director of Psy.D. Practicum and Internships at Marywood University. He also has a private practice in Clarks Summit, PA. His e-mail address is david@palmiter.com. His home page is at www.helpingparents.net.
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