A Massage Clinic Site Written as One Long Wall of Text

The site

A massage therapy clinic with four registered massage therapists, in a suite upstairs from a pharmacy on a suburban shopping street.

Its home page is one block of text, close to a thousand words, in a single size of type from top to bottom. Below the logo there are no headings, no lists and no photographs.

It opens with the founder's story, moves through a philosophy of care, mentions six kinds of massage in passing, and reaches insurance about halfway down.

There are no prices anywhere on the site. The phone number for bookings is in the last sentence of the last paragraph, as plain text.

The inference a visitor makes

Someone looking for a massage therapist arrives with a short list of questions: do you treat my problem, what does it cost, do you bill my insurance, and when can I come in.

They look for answers by scanning for headings and numbers. A page with neither gives them nowhere to land, and the first screen is about the founder rather than about them.

The inference is that the answers are not here, or will take effort to dig out. On a phone, a thousand words is a long grey scroll, and many people try the next clinic instead.

Some infer something worse: that a clinic which cannot organise its own page may not run its appointment book much better.

What visitors came for

• The treatments, each named and briefly explained.
• Prices for each length of session.
• Direct billing, and which insurers the clinic bills.
• The therapists, and what each one focuses on.
• Availability, and how to book.
• Where it is, with parking and the entrance.

The third decides more first bookings than owners tend to expect. Many people with extended health coverage choose a clinic that bills the insurer directly, and this page mentions it once, mid-paragraph.

No headings means no way in

Headings are how people read on screens. They scan down the page, stop at the heading that matches their question, and read only that part.

Without them, the only way to find the paragraph about insurance is to read everything above it. Few people will, and nobody squeezing in a search between appointments.

Headings also tell search engines what each part of the page covers, which gives them a clearer picture of what the clinic actually offers.

The missing prices

Clinics leave prices off for understandable reasons: they vary by therapist and length, and some owners worry about looking expensive.

But visitors assume the worst when a price is missing, or phone to ask, which costs the front desk time. A short list of prices for thirty, forty-five, sixty and ninety minutes answers it.

If prices differ by therapist, show the range and say why. Visitors accept a difference they can understand.

The number in the last line

The booking number appears once, at the very end, as plain text. On a phone it is not a link, so a visitor who finds it has to copy it or remember it.

The people ready to book are the least willing to search for how. Put the number in every page's header, where a tap on a phone dials it, beside an online booking button if there is one.

The address belongs there too, or one tap away, with the floor and the entrance. A door to the stairs beside a pharmacy is easy to walk past.

One size of type for everything

Even where the text changes subject, nothing on the screen signals it, because every line is the same size and weight.

Headings need to be clearly larger or bolder than the text around them, with more space above each heading than below it, so each one visibly belongs to what follows.

Short paragraphs help as much as headings. Three sentences with space around them get read; a block of twelve gets skipped.

The founder's story belongs further down

The story is not the problem. It is genuine, it explains why the clinic exists, and some visitors do want to know who they are trusting with their care.

The problem is its position. It fills the first screen, where a visitor decides whether to stay, and answers a question most of them have not asked yet.

On an about page, with a line or two of it on the home page, it does its work for the people who go looking for it.

A worked example

The clinic kept almost all of its words. What changed was their order and their shape.

The home page now opens with one sentence saying what the clinic is and where, then the phone number, which dials with a tap on a phone, and a button for online booking.

Below that come short sections under plain headings: treatments, prices, direct billing, the therapists, and location and parking. Each is two or three short paragraphs or a brief list.

Prices are set out by session length, with a line explaining that two therapists with additional training charge more for certain treatments.

Direct billing has its own heading, naming the insurers the clinic bills and what to bring to a first appointment.

The founder's story moved to an about page, linked from her photograph near the foot of the home page.

The counter-case within the site

Some long text is worth keeping. A visitor researching a particular condition, or a treatment they have never had, will read a long page about it, if they can find it.

That page should stand on its own, linked from the treatments section, with headings of its own. Length is fine where the reader has chosen it.

And a clinic booked solid for weeks may reasonably say so near the top, rather than inviting bookings it cannot take.

On the home page, though: short sections under plain headings, prices and billing in view, and the booking number at the top.

What to change

1. Put the phone number at the top, tappable.
2. Add a booking button beside it.
3. Break the text into sections under headings.
4. Publish prices by session length.
5. Give direct billing its own heading.
6. Move the founder's story to an about page.
7. Keep paragraphs to three sentences or fewer.

Step three makes every other change possible. Once the page has headings, prices, billing and the therapists each have a place, and a visitor can find any of them in seconds.

Type that makes a page hard to read is the problem in a tutor site written in capital letters.

Frequently asked questions

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