What should a counsellor's website include?

Counsellors are not AHPRA-registered, which surprises people who assume the rules are the same as for psychologists. They are not the same, but they are not absent either.

Here is the checklist, including the two places counselling websites go wrong that psychology websites do not.

The rebate question

Counselling sessions generally do not attract Medicare rebates the way psychologist sessions can. A good counselling website says this plainly and early, and then makes the affirmative case (often shorter waits and lower session costs than the rebated alternative).

Burying it creates awkward first-session conversations; owning it builds exactly the trust the site exists to create.

The ethics question

No AHPRA does not mean no rules. PACFA and ACA codes of ethics govern advertising conduct for their members, and many counsellors reasonably choose to avoid client testimonials entirely, both for code reasons and because counselling clients have particular confidentiality expectations. When in doubt, check your professional body's code.

Trust is built the same way as for psychologists: clarity, warmth, accuracy. We build counselling sites within these constraints as standard: The Heart of Healing case study.

Psychologist, not counsellor?

The registered-practitioner version of this checklist is here: what should a psychologist's website include.

We design for both, within the right rules for each: websites for allied health.

Mistakes counselling websites keep making

Poetry where information should be. Soft-focus creek photos and "holding space for your journey" feel right to write and say nothing to a person deciding how to spend money they are nervous about spending. Warmth and specificity are not opposites: "I help people whose anxiety is running the show, Tuesdays and Thursdays, $140 a session, first conversation free" is warm precisely because it is considerate.

Hiding the fee because there is no rebate. The visitor will find out eventually; the only question is whether they find out from you, framed honestly, or in an awkward reply email that ends the thread. Fee, rebate reality, and the case for value, together, early.

The DIY-builder look. Counselling is bought on trust, and a template site with stretched images and three fonts quietly undercuts a genuinely skilled practitioner. It is the one profession where "looks legit" is nearly the whole website brief.