Alyssa Hamel, LICSW Custom Website Design
Why she chose to hire a Web designer
Alyssa, a Therapist based in Exeter, NH, is no stranger to owning a website or Squarespace. In addition to her work as a therapist, she is also a talented candle maker, and she built a Squarespace website to support that business during the pandemic years. Thus, she knows the time and effort that go into building and maintaining a website.
Early in 2025, she decided she was ready to launch a site for her therapy practice. This time around, confident she could maintain her website once it was launched, but with a thriving practice and a busy family at home, she wanted to hand over the heavy lifting of designing and building her website to a professional.
The Branding
Because Alyssa runs an independent practice, she is the face of her brand, and she wanted it to reflect the personal nature of her work. Her clients are looking for someone they can connect with who makes them feel safe and comfortable; her website has to support that. Words she used to describe her brand were:
Brand Values:
Supportive
Peaceful
Safe
Hopeful
Brand Personality:
Calm
Comforting
Simple
Genuine
The goal for her website was to serve as an authentic, welcoming invitation to get to know her and her approach. She wanted to keep it clean, simple, and inviting—no need for a logo. With this in mind, using her words as my guide, I got to work!
Color Palette
I developed her color palette using her key descriptors, the palette inspiration photos she provided, and additional information gathered through the branding questionnaire. The theme for her palette was rooted in the peace and comfort provided by nature. The warmth of the sun, the joy of flowers. She wanted a natural but slightly rustic feel to the palette. When considering the rustic nature, I leaned towards a warm and cozy feel instead of a darker palette that might be too harsh.
The final palette, shown below, evokes fields of flowers and wild grasses but has a surprise accent color of orange. This orange is inspired by the rising and setting sun. It can be used occasionally to strategically highlight text, buttons, or other elements. This palette also compliments the professional portrait photographs used throughout her site.
Before presenting any palette to a client I ensure that it meets accessibility standards in terms of proper contrast between text and background, and I provide the client with a listing of all the pairings in their palette that meet theses standards so they can refer to it when maintaining their site going forward.
Fonts
When asked if she preferred a particular style of font, Alyssa responded, ‘Surprise me!’
This response can both thrill and stress a designer! I was thrilled.
I gathered my notes from my talks with Alyssa, her branding questionnaire, and my work with previous therapist clients and began pulling together my favorite pairs of fonts.
My goal is to balance the needs of the profession, the person, and the website visitor. The fonts need to enhance, not distract, and be readable on a wide variety of device screens.
I prepared two font pairings for Alyssa, combining a Serif font for the headings and a Sans-serif font for the body text.
She liked both pairs but was immediately drawn to Ivy Presto Display and Soleil. Ivy is a strong, professional, and classic style balanced by Soleil's clean, light, easy-to-read lines.
The Website
With the branding complete and armed with absolutely stunning portrait photos Alyssa provided, I moved on to the design and build of the website.
Early on, we decided that I would fully build the main pages of her site (Home, About, Services, Contact) and provide ‘templated’ pages for future content she would be adding: An events page and a shop. She would add and update content to these when she was ready to launch them.
The Structure:
The requirements for the website were straightforward.
Home page: A welcoming introduction to her practice, her approach, a little bit about her, and an invitation to visitors to learn more about working with her.
Services page: A page to cover the therapy services offered and her focus areas in more detail, along with FAQs and a call-to-action (CTA) to contact her for consultation.
About page: A page to share more details about her background, qualifications, and history.
Contact page: A standard contact page allowing visitors to contact her directly.
Events page: A simple page to provide information and registration for local events she hosts that she can update whenever she plans an event or workshop.
Shop page: A basic store front that she can update when she releases new products, such as workbooks.
Basic SEO setup: Implemented best practices at the site and page level (settings, on-page structure, image optimization, etc.)
The Design:
The main factors influencing the design were:
As with all my designs, the customer journey must be clear and easy to follow.
Strategic use of images. There were distinct groupings of the photos of Alyssa that I wanted to use cohesively.
Subtle use of design elements to highlight the site content without being distracting.
Consistency across all pages. Calm, safe, welcoming, warm.
Elements used to achieve the design:
Color theme: The site's main pages utilize the two shades of sage as the primary background. Alternating sections in some cases to help engage and move the visitors’ eyes along the journey. On the Therapy Services page, I used the paler pink shade as a single background. This makes the page stand out and signals this uniqueness to the viewer. Dark blue is used as the footer's background to anchor the site.
Scrolling element: On the Therapy Services page, I added a scrolling effect for her areas of expertise, as shown in the clip below. This adds a nice visual element that eases the delivery of what would otherwise be a very text-heavy section. At the end of that section, I also incorporated an accordion block to hold a long list of all the areas of focus she has expertise in.
Photography: Alyssa provided stunning professional photographs of her set in various settings, from nature to her office. These photos are essential to helping the visitor connect with Alyssa as a person and generate a sense of who she is and how she approaches her work. I selected and grouped the photos to enhance the primary message of each page. In selected sections, I also incorporated subtle background images to add warmth and texture while highlighting the natural element of the design.
How does Alyssa feel about her experience?
"I chose to work with you because I believe in your talent and the beautiful websites you create. Your professionalism, expertise, and attention to detail transformed my vision into reality. Since launching the site, I've experienced more groundedness in my areas of focus and have already seen an increase in referrals and attention to my work. I'm truly grateful and so happy with my website!" - Alyssa
See full images of the core pages of her site below!
Home
About
Therapy Services
