Golden Touch

Project overview

Golden Touch is Lisa Mills’s practice in Whitecliffs, West Canterbury. She offers counselling and creative therapies, spiritual counselling, Reiki, yoga classes and pregnancy and breast casting — thirty-five years of work across a genuinely unusual range of modalities.

Lisa and I have worked together for a few years. I host and maintain her existing site, so this is not a first meeting: it is a client coming back because the business has moved on and the website has not.

The challenge

The old site had served her well, but it was showing its age. Long blocks of text sat at the same visual level with little to break them up, so a visitor had to read carefully to work out which of Lisa’s therapies was the one they needed.

That matters more here than on most sites. Someone looking for a counsellor is often anxious, and frequently browsing late at night. Anything that asks them to work harder is a reason to close the tab.

There was also no way to book. Every first contact had to be a phone call or an email — which is a lot to ask of someone at exactly the moment they feel least like asking.

My approach

I started with the audience rather than the design: who actually comes to Lisa, what they are dealing with, and what they need to see before they feel safe making contact.

That shaped everything else. The new site is calmer, warmer and slower — generous space, softer imagery, and one idea at a time instead of everything competing at once. It should feel like her practice does.

Alongside that, we set clear goals for what the site is for. Not a brochure: a way for the right person to find her, understand which therapy suits them, and take the first step without a phone call.

Key decisions

Decision	Why it mattered
Design around the audience	Understanding who Lisa works with, and how they arrive, decided the tone before a single page was designed.
Online booking	The old site had none. Letting someone choose a time themselves removes the hardest step for an anxious first-time client.
A page per therapy	Lisa offers several genuinely different things. Each deserves room to be explained properly, and each can then be found on its own terms in search.
Calmer, more premium feel	The practice is warm and unhurried. The site should be too — space and restraint do more here than a busier design would.
Search built in from the start	The old site accumulated its structure over years. Building fresh meant search could shape the page structure rather than being retrofitted.
Local visibility	Most of Lisa’s clients are in Canterbury. The Google Business Profile work targets exactly the people close enough to see her.

What I built

• A full rebuild, designed around who Lisa actually works with
• Online booking so clients can choose a time themselves
• A page for each therapy, explained properly and findable on its own
• A calmer, more premium design that matches the practice
• Clear structure that replaces the old walls of text
• Search optimisation built into the structure rather than added afterwards
• Ongoing Google Business Profile work to improve local visibility

Where it stands

The new site is built and going live shortly, so there are no numbers to report yet — and I would rather say that than estimate some.

What has already changed is Lisa’s time. The site answers the questions she was previously fielding one at a time, so the conversations she has are with people who already understand what she offers and have chosen the therapy they want.

After launch, the focus moves to visibility: making sure the therapy pages are found by the people searching for them, and continuing the local profile work so Golden Touch shows up properly for Canterbury searches.