A counselor’s expert review of why prospective clients drop off before their first session
A sliding-scale counseling nonprofit in Manhattan converted 1.25% of its 4,000 monthly visitors into sessions, leaving a 79-session gap every month. In one week, I mapped the intake journey the way a prospective client walks it, rebuilt the information architecture around what people compare when choosing a therapist, and prototyped a homepage leadership used to redirect its budget.
- Research question
- How might the site answer what prospective clients weigh before they book, so more of 4,000 monthly visitors reach a first session?
- Role
- Solo UX researcher and designer
- Timeline
- 1 week
- Methods
- Lean UX
Expert review (heuristic evaluation)
Journey mapping
Competitive analysis
AI-assisted site mapping - Tools
- Claude Cowork
Claude Code
FigJam
Framer - Deliverables
- IA diagram
Prototype
Research plan - Validation
- Design iterations and future studies run on web analytics signals
01 · Context
Six years on staff,
one week on the clock
I worked as a counselor at this practice for six years, so I came in knowing its sliding-scale model, its referral patterns, and the EHR intake form new clients land on after clicking submit. Leadership needed a diagnosis fast, on a tight budget, and on Squarespace so staff could keep editing the site themselves.
02 · Approach
Lean UX:
build small, then measure with web analytics
With limited time, I ran it as Lean UX: state the problem, write down what I believed about prospective clients, rank those beliefs by risk, and build the smallest version of the site that could test them, starting from established conversion and usability principles. The risk: my assumptions go untested until launch. The guard: web analytics on the intake funnel, laid out in the research plan below.
03 · Assumptions
What clients compare
before they book
My working assumptions came from years of intake conversations: clients weigh price, schedule, and whether this person will understand them when choosing a counselor. The current site made all three hard to find, and then handed them off to a portal nobody had told them about.
Riskiest assumption, from the clinical side
An unexplained handoff between the website and the EHR is where a hesitant client closes the tab.
I’ll know the interstitial works when the 1.25% visitor-to-session rate climbs.
Assumption-based current state, drawn from expert review.
04 · Redesign (MVP)
An IA built around
five client questions
For the MVP, I cut the sitemap from 32 pages to 18 and ordered the homepage to answer five questions in sequence: What will this cost me? When could I start? Who will I see? What is the next step? How do I start?
01Pricing sat in an accordion.
Cost is the first thing the homepage answers: $70 to $250 on a sliding scale, floor first.
02Openings sat in a matrix, and 48 counselor bios had no filters.
A dated openings calendar, and counselor filters for focus, language, approach and format.
03The intake button opened a third-party EHR portal in a new tab with no explanation.
An interstitial now explains the move to the intake portal, so clients expect the new screen before it loads.
05 · Impact
Budget moved
to the website
Leadership shifted budget from general ad campaigns to website work and started funding user research on the practice’s technology. I handed off a post-launch research plan with it: funnel analytics and drop-off analysis at the portal boundary.
06 · Limitations
What I’d measure first
Knowing the practice and its business model helped jump start the project, however, that same familiarity can also be a risk, since assumptions that feel normal to an insider are what user research exists to catch. The order of those five questions is my best clinical guess, and it’s the first thing I’d check in the analytics. Site map, user paths, and implementing a more progressive disclosure conversion pipeline would be additional areas for study.
Contact Information
Have a research question?Let's talk.
Open to UX research roles and consulting, especially in healthcare and behavioral health tech.
thornton.coen@gmail.comCopy