Pregnancy and childbirth make some of the best moments in a family's memory. In such a special time in life, it is crucial to take expert help to make the transition as smooth as possible for every family member. Doulas play the highly important role of guiding parents and siblings through the various physical and mental challenges that come along with the new family member.
Despite the scientifically proven benefits of hiring a doula, a vast majority of people are unaware of this concept. Even if they have heard of doula services and it’s benefits, it is a big task to find the right doula according to their needs. If you are a doula, it is a part of your job to make it easy for your potential clients to find you. The best way to do it is by launching a website. Though social media gives you an online presence, it can never build trust and confidence as a website does.
How can a website help your doula biz?
As soon as you receive your certification, you are ready to launch your doula career. But, what they don’t teach at the training is how to market your service and get more doula jobs. A professional doula website can help you with the marketing part in the following ways.
- Whenever a family is expecting, not just the mother but the entire family starts googling what to do and what not to do. A doula website helps you to get found by these families. A professionally made doula website with the right keywords and other SEO components will secure your business a high rank in search engines.
- For a hesitant mother who is weighing in different options for labor support, a doula website can provide all the details that will help her to make the right choice for her and her family. You can present your case of how your services can greatly improve the overall experience of the family through your doula website.
- When designed right, a doula website can reflect your way of working. Your care, understanding, and knowledge will be conveyed to potential clients via the medium of a website. In short, websites work as digital doula business cards.
Groundwork before designing a doula website
A systematic approach is required to build an effective doula website. Sit down, take a pen and paper, and jot down what you expect your website to do for you. To start with, answer these questions.
- Who is the target audience of your website? Do you provide specialized services for niche groups such as first-time mothers, single mothers, or families from a particular community? Clarity regarding the target audience will help you in designing your website and writing web copy.
- What do you want your website visitors to do on your website? Do you want them to call you for further inquiry? Or, would you prefer them to fill up a contact form so that you can contact them when you are available? Decide what would be the ‘Call To Action’ on your website.
- List down all the features that you want to add to your website. For example, you may want to integrate your social media profiles or add a blog section. Browse through various doula websites on the internet for inspiration before deciding how your website should look.
- Think through the details of your doula website design. Do you want your website to look professional and modern, or would you prefer a homely and caring theme? Depending on your target customers, modify the layout and design. Design your doula logo beforehand so that you can add it to your website later on.
- Estimate how much time, effort, and money you are ready to spend on your website. If you are just starting your career, you may not have the budget to hire a software developer. Free DIY website building platforms can be of great help here. There are several options available in the market. Before zeroing in on a platform, spend some time exploring them, check whether they offer the features that you want, and their pricing.
What goes into making a successful doula website
We have listed here some features that are common to most of the successful doula websites on the internet.
- Bio
Unlike other businesses, doulas provide a very personal service at a time when the customer is in an emotionally vulnerable state. It takes huge trust to hire someone for playing such an important role. To build this trust, you need to open up to your potential customers and tell them about your background, working style, motivation, and values.
- Testimonials
Assuring words or recommendations from a new mother can greatly influence other expecting mothers. Request your happy customers to share a few words of appreciation for your testimonials section. You can also take positive reviews you might have got on your social media pages, and display them on your website’s testimonials.
- Contact
Make it as easy as possible for prospective customers to contact you. Display your contact information such as email and phone numbers in a prominent place on your website. A contact form where the user can share their details will be the right choice if you prefer to know a little about your prospective clients before talking to them. If you are someone who spends a lot of time online, you can even add an online chat facility.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
- Blog
One of the most important SEO strategies is to update your website content regularly. Search engine algorithms rank recently updated websites higher than older websites. Give your doula website an edge over others by adding regular content to your website in the form of blog articles.
- E-material
Today, people prefer online learning over face-to-face classes. You can attract the right kind of traffic to your website by providing pregnancy-related digital products such as ‘What to expect’ books and ‘How to’ guides. You can also earn some extra revenue by making some material available for a fee. Make sure your website builder supports online payment transactions if you want to go for this.
- Images and videos
Your landing page should have images of happy mothers, or even better - happy families. This would be bait for any expecting mother and will encourage her to look at the details of your webpage. You can also add some informational videos about pregnancy, labor, and birthing on your website. When you incorporate these, ensure that your website can handle the heavy files without compromising loading speed.
How to write a compelling copy for your doula website
Get ready for a shocking revelation - your website users are not going to read the text on your website. Rather, they are going to skim through it, while quickly scrolling. When you write your website copy, make sure you highlight all the necessary details such that they will be found by your users while skimming. You can use bold text, doula images, buttons, links, or anything else to get your user’s attention to what you are trying to convey.
Keep the tonality calm and reassuring. Most mothers expect the same from their doulas so show in your web copy also. Write about your experience, certifications, and other professional qualifications. In case you work with a birthing center or support home birth, enumerating the facilities you provide will help your customers to get an understanding of what they are signing up for. Remember to add the details of your doctors on call in case of any complication.
Keep SEO in mind while writing your web copy. Find the right keywords and distribute them throughout your website. For example, if you are a doula working in New York, then you would want to be found every time a user searches with keywords such as ‘pregnant New York’, ‘doulas near me’, ‘labor support New York’, etc. Use these words generously in your write-up as well as your webpage title, meta description, and URL.
Doula website examples
- Nieuw Licht
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
This website belongs to the doula Fleur, who is running her doula practice ‘Nieuw Licht, meaning ‘New Light’ in Amsterdam. The website has all the details that an expecting mother would want to know before hiring a doula. A picture of herself as a new mother with her baby helps her clients to relate to her immediately.
- Hypnobirthing
Image from Strikingly user’s website
This website is about a specific type of doula service called ‘hypnobirthing’. The website does well at explaining this relatively new topic to its readers. The calming background and prominent CTA make this website a source of inspiration for anyone who wants to build their doula website.
- Doula Kate
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
This website is run by Kate, a certified doula practicing in the East Bay area. A unique feature that you can find on this website is a list of external information sources and backup doulas to fill in if Kate is in an emergency call elsewhere. This can greatly help in alleviating the anxiety of expecting mothers.
Launch your doula biz with Strikingly
Strikingly has been built with small businesses in mind. This is your place to experiment, design, and create websites with zero technical know-how and monetary investment. All you need to spend for publishing your doula website is thirty minutes of your time. Get started now!
