Filling in the Registration Form correctly...
Practice or Business Name...
The name shown at the very top of your listing (in the top panel)
is what people see first, and should be the name you generally work
under as a therapist. This can be either the name of your practice,
or your own name, if you use that instead.
Practitioner
First & Last Name...
Please always include your full name
(not just a first name) in your listing, where it asks for the Practitioner's
Name. (Using your first name only, on the website, is not generally
a good idea, as it doesn't look professional and could invite interest
of the wrong sort, especially if you offer a therapy like Massage.)
If you're submitting details for a Clinic
or Group Practice (of more than two practitioners),
please put the word 'Various' here, and include
a contact name - perhaps that of the practice manager, proprietor
or owner, if applicable. If you're in a partnership
with just one other practitioner, you can include both your names
here, if you wish.
Contact details...
Any land line or mobile phone numbers
you include on the main part of the form, will be displayed on the
website. Please make sure you enter these correctly. If you feel uncomfortable
having your landline number displayed on the site, don't include it
on that part of the form, but please add it to your details at the
end, along with an alternative email address if you have one. These
extra details will be for our use only, in case we need an alternative
method of contacting you when your listing is due for renewal, and
we're unable to reach you by your primary email address. Please be
assured that we never pass on these additional details to third parties,
or use them for unsolicited marketing purposes.
Please ensure that your email address is entered
correctly, especially the last part. It's quite common for people
to mistakenly put down ".com" when the address actually
ends in ".co.uk", or vice versa.
Remember to use the address that you normally use for business enquiries,
if applicable. However, don't forget to let us know if you
change it, so that we can update your listing, and are still
able to contact you easily. We will normally use this as your primary
email address, but if you'd prefer us to contact you using an alternative
or personal one, please let us know.
Our Anti spam policy...
Internet marketing companies regularly harvest email addresses from
directories such as this, which can result in an increase in unsolicited
emails (spam) being sent to your address. As an anti spam measure,
we no longer display email addresses linked (where people
can just click on the address to contact you). We also replace the
'@' sign in each address with 'AT'.
Genuine people who wish to contact you by email then just have to
copy and paste the address into their mail program, and replace the
AT with the correct sign. This is quite easy to do
and there is an explanation of how to do it on every page.
This means you can safely display your email address
on our website, without receiving a lot of unwanted mail as a result.
If you have your own website, please enter the url
correctly. We automatically create a direct link to
it from our site, via the website address in your listing. If you're
in the process of having a website made for you, please wait until
it goes 'live', before including the address. You can send it to us
later and we'll add it to your details.
Area of practice...
You can include the towns here, where your
main practice is based, and any other towns you operate
from, if applicable. If you offer a mobile service,
include some of the places you have clients in, or are willing to
visit as part of your service.
When selecting the Area, please choose one
only - this should be the area where your practice is based, or where
you mainly work from.
Qualifications /Memberships /Registrations...
There's no limit to how many you wish to include, but they
should be relevant to the therapies you're practising,
and you must have evidence of them to show clients if required. Registrations
and memberships of regulating organisations must be still valid. If
a membership /registration shown in your listing expires while your
details are still on our website, and is not renewed, please let us
know so we can remove it.
In order to be listed on our website, you need to have the appropriate
level of Insurance cover to practise the therapies
you're offering.
Practice Address...
This can either be your own practice address, or the name of a clinic
or therapy centre you work from. Please remember that this address
will be displayed on the website, so if it is also your home address,
and you don't want it to be on display for public viewing, please
don't include it.
About Yourself and your Practice... this is the part
where you can tell people how good you are at what you do!
The Profile shown on the right hand side of your
listing is limited to around 150 words, so please
try to keep within this limit. Over-long profiles
will be edited at our discretion. It can be useful to
write it first in another program, such as 'Microsoft Word', make
sure you're happy with it, then copy and paste it into the box on
the form.
(Don't worry too much about spelling or grammar mistakes etc. - we'll
check your wording and make any minor corrections if necessary, so
that your profile looks professional and does you justice!)
Only include information about the services you offer that are relevant
to the Therapists Directory. If you also offer Workshops,
Courses, Products or other services, you can mention these briefly.
However, please bear in mind that we do have other sections of the
site available for advertising these, which are charged for separately.
(see Advertising)
Remember that your name, qualifications, website address and where
you practise, etc. will already be shown on the left hand side of
your listing, so there's no need to use up words by repeating the
same details in the profile. However, if you practise any
additional therapies to the ones listed, or there are any
you weren't able to select, you can mention those here.
A few hints:
It's best not to include sentences such as: "I've been practising
for three years", as this type of statement has to be changed as time
passes. A suitable alternative could be "I've been practising since
2008".
Or: "I will be completing a course in Reflexology in June". If
you're studying a new therapy, and will soon be finishing the course,
please leave this information out until you have your qualifications,
then add the details to your listing then.
Likewise, including special offers like "Half price treatments in
March", a range of treatment prices, or practice opening times, is
not advisable, as you will probably need to change this information
quite frequently. Instead, you could just say "regular special offers
and discounts available, see our website for details".
Get results... We've found that practitioners who
include a list of conditions they specialise in, and how they can
help their clients feel better, attract more
interest than those who just put down a record of their
professional training or how well qualified they are.
However, new Advertising Regulations that came into
force on 1st March 2011, have changed the way complementary and alternative
health practitioners can advertise their services online. See 'Do
I have to be careful what I write in my listing?' above, for further
info.
Despite this, there are different ways of wording an advertisement,
to include conditions that can benefit from your techniques, without
breaching the guidelines - it just needs a little more creative thinking!
When you've written your profile, read it back to yourself
and imagine that you're a potential client. Are you putting yourself
across in the best possible way, so that clients will feel confident
and relaxed about approaching you? Does your personality
and experience show through in your words, and invite
people to make contact?
