Designing Websites for Hypnotherapists
This is the Griffen Mill design guide to designing websites for hypnotherapists, part of our website design guide series. Over the years, the individual designers within Griffen Mill have created websites for a huge number of hypnotherapists, via our key client WebHealer. As one of the therapies that are usually referred to as complementary, a hypnotherapy website must, in our opinion, convey a professional and health oriented identity, yet avoid coming across as too clinical. The designer must be mindful of the target audience and provide a calm and inviting appeal. This very often lends itself to the use of soft natural colours as opposed to bold and bright ones.
Guide Structure
This guide, like most in this series, has the following key sections.
- Typical design requirements for hypnotherapy websites
- Choosing colour for hypnotherapy websites
- Shape and related aesthetic decisions
- Images and photographs for hypnotherapy websites
This guide continues with section one, and you may use the above links to read more about later sections, which will go into more detail. In each case, the approach used to communicate our ideas leans towards examples, such as examples of images useful for a hypnotherapy website or palettes that often appeal to therapists.
Typical design requirements for hypnotherapy websites
Although each hypnotherapist will have their individual preferences in terms of style, colour palette and imagery, certain common traits appear more often in hypnotherapy website design. Very often, the client is aiming at a professional and calming appeal, using a cool colour palette that uses natural tones, such as blue or green. When done well this will help evoke a sense of security and comfort.
When choosing the colour palette, the designer should be mindful of the images used and the tones used within them, so often there will be natural tones to complement. To help with a harmonious colour scheme, the photographs used can involve a composition that includes the range of colours in the palette, or one that emphasises one natural colour that complements the overall scheme e.g. a helping hand.
Finally, shapewise a hypnotherapy website will tend to have gentle flowing edges, as opposed to the geometric layouts commonly used within counselling website designs. The designer should be mindful though that a human, inviting and welcoming appeal is important as well as a professional image.
Jacquie Whur's hypnotherapy website is based on a standard WebHealer design, but customised by one of WebHealer's approved designers to show her own "Core You" logo at the top of the page. The customisation subtly uses different fonts for both page titles and headings, and the main heading nicely contrasts greens and reds, from opposite ends of the colour spectrum. She has maintained a theme of both soft and vibrant greens through the rest of the website, to match a nature based feature image of leaf and water, which is echoed with some similar nature based images on some of the inner pages. Observations and comments made on March 16, 2016 - the website may have been updated since then. www.coreyouhypnotherapy.co.uk
Elizabeth Butler's counselling website has a unique design provided for her by a WebHealer Business Partner. The designer has made good use of a series of natural tree blossom images as a theme throughout the website, and the muted green shades of these images are echoed in the greens of the text and design elements of the website. This use of image and colour gives a sense of consistent branding throughout the website, and also allows Elizabeth's friendly and welcoming portrait image to really stand out and connect with a website visitor. These observations and comments were made on May 20th 2016 – the website may have been updated since then. www.elizabethbutlercounselling.com
The mobile responsive design of Gill Matthews website has been created by one of our Gold level designers. It has a clean fresh layout and the faded edging to the images on her pages, give the overall site a soft and gentle feel which is ideal for a hypnotherapy and life coaching website and the image of herself at the top of the Home page instils a sense of familiarity between the potential client and the therapist. The abstract heading area gives a definitive branding style which has been incorporated throughout the website with consistent use of colours and would also be suitable for other marketing material such as business cards and headed paper. Consistency throughout a website is very important as it means the reader can focus on the content rather than taking in new design elements. These observations and comments were made on April 4th 2016 – the website may have been updated since then. www.hypnotherapist-lifecoach.co.uk
The website for New Bridge Therapy is a mobile responsive design from WebHealer, that they have further customised themselves. The feature image of a vibrant green leaf hovering above a pool of water gives an energetic yet calm feel to the site and their chosen colour scheme of greys and blues enhances this. Clare has then chosen some other images for her counselling and hypnotherapy site which tie in with this natural theme giving a consistent style and flavour to her website. These observations and comments were made on December 9th, 2015 - the website may have been updated since then. www.new-bridge-therapy.co.uk
Stephen Husbands' hypnotherapy website uses a standard WebHealer mobile friendly design, which includes a calming "water drop" image and soothing brown/orange colours matched to this image. In addition Stephen has included included several images, including one of himself and also the Hypnotherapy Association logo, to reassure website visitors of his professionalism. Observations and comments made on 20th September 2017 - the website may have been updated since then. www.relaxtochange.com
On 13 February 2011 Carole Murray relaunched their website www.HypnoticResources.co.uk after an A La Carte redesign by our designer Megan. The client was looking for a professional design, slightly understated, but with a preference for curves and organic flow. See full press release