It Takes Practice Counselling Services
From a DIY Wix site to the busiest intake month in the practice’s history.
How a strategic WordPress rebuild gave It Takes Practice, a group psychology practice in Red Deer, Alberta, a website that finally matches the quality of its care.
Dr. Sheri Thibeau and her team of registered psychologists at It Takes Practice offer counselling for teens, adults, couples and families, plus psychological assessments for children, teens and adults. They help people understand themselves and practise new, more effective ways of handling the hard parts of life.
The Challenge
It Takes Practice was growing, but its website wasn’t keeping up. In 2024 Sheri hired an outside developer to redesign the site.
She asked for WordPress and was handed a Wix build instead, which left her team with a site that was hard to update, hard to grow and hard to optimize. The copy dated back to Sheri’s DIY days and read in a patchwork of voices.
Even the logo was misunderstood: the neuron at the heart of the brand, a nod to the neuroplasticity behind the name “It Takes Practice,” was regularly mistaken for a dandelion.
Private Practice Elevation was already running SEO for the practice, and our team kept hitting the limits of the Wix platform.
Meanwhile, Sheri had big plans: more clinicians, new group therapy programs for teens, adults and couples, and eventually online courses.
She wanted to compete with the larger group practices in the Red Deer area, and she needed a website that could carry that growth instead of holding it back.
Project Goals:
Together with Sheri, we set out to:
- Move off Wix to a flexible WordPress platform the practice could grow on, without another redesign.
- Replace DIY copy with warm, strategic messaging that connects with people looking for support and helps them rank in search.
- Give the brand a clear identity rooted in the meaning behind “It Takes Practice.”
- Make it simple for the right people to take the next step, whether that’s booking a free consultation or a local physician sending a referral.
- Build a structure that supports long-term SEO growth and makes room for new clinicians, group programs and future offerings.
Before:
After:
Our Approach
We built the brand around the name.
The practice’s name was chosen to reflect brain development and the idea that change comes from gentle, repeated practice, not from “trying harder.” We made that story the backbone of the design: a calm, nature-inspired green palette, organic shapes and subtle neuron-like motifs that echo growth and renewal. Sheri asked for a site that felt hopeful, calm and trustworthy, “warm, not clinical,” so we kept the pacing unhurried and the layouts easy to scan. When Sheri saw the first design prototype, she approved it on the spot.
We rewrote the site for the people it’s meant to reach.
Our copywriter worked with Sheri’s team to write 12 core pages from scratch. The new homepage opens with “Support for the hard parts of being human” and speaks directly to visitors who are “functioning, but tired,” so someone who has never been to therapy feels understood before they read a single service description.
We made reaching out feel easy.
On the old site, the floating side contact button reached just three people in a whole year. We gave “Book a Consultation” a permanent place in the header and added a simple three-step “What happens when you reach out” section that explains exactly how the practice’s office manager guides new clients to the right therapist. We also rebuilt the Doctor Referral Form for the local physicians who partner with the practice.
We set up the site for long-term SEO.
Each service and each type of psychological assessment (ADHD, autism, cognitive, academic, vocational and more) got its own focused page, acting as pillar content for the ongoing SEO plan. We migrated the existing blog so the content our SEO team had been building kept its authority, and we recommended keeping future online courses on a dedicated course platform so the website stays fast, lean and focused on bringing in clients. After launch, we added an Accessibility in Practice Program page for clients who need reduced-cost counselling and cleaned up duplicate US-spelling pages so Google sends visitors to one clear version of each service.
The Results (So Far)
This is a snapshot of the first few months. With the SEO plan continuing, we expect the results to keep building from here.
Google search
| Metric | Before (2025) | After (2026) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clicks from Google | 512 | 579 | +13% |
| Search impressions | 19,079 | 20,286 | +6% |
| Click-through rate | 2.68% | 2.85% | +0.17 points |
| Average Google position | 24.3 | 13.3 | 11 positions higher |
Website engagement
| Metric | Before launch | After launch | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contact page visits | 152 | 289 | +90% |
| Contact page visits per 100 sessions | 9.9 | 25.9 | 2.6x |
| Engagement rate | 54.9% | 63.7% | +8.8 points |
The momentum is continuing: in the most recent 30 days, the site’s average Google position improved again to 11.4, with new clicks from searches like “counselling red deer,” “adhd assessment red deer” and “autism assessment red deer.”
Sources: Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4, It Takes Practice Counselling Services. Intake and referral results reported by the practice.
Conclusion
It Takes Practice came to us with a website that was working against the practice: the wrong platform, a patchwork of copy and a brand story that visitors didn’t understand.
Today the site reflects the care, expertise and warmth that Sheri’s team brings to every session. It’s ranking higher, turning more visitors into inquiries and, most importantly, bringing real people through the door. And because it’s built on a flexible foundation, it’s ready for the next chapter as the practice grows its team, launches new group programs and expands its reach.
“The old Wix site felt very limited and clunky, our brand was not represented well and the contact process was not clear. This made it hard to showcase our services and clinicians effectively. I saw little improvement in referrals or online traffic compared to the DIY site I created in 2019, which was disappointing. We continued to run into issues and knew it was time to make a change so the website could function as I needed, and SEO services could be utilized to their fullest potential.
PPE worked closely with me through every step of creating the new website, ensuring the final product beautifully represented my brand, team, and services. Since launching the new WordPress website, my team feels much more confident sending clients to the site, and we’ve noticed a real increase in high-quality referrals coming in through the forms. We have received a lot of positive feedback regarding the design, ease of use, and information provided. Our referrals are now driven mainly through the website, and we are experiencing a large increase in clients reaching out and booking consultations. This is exactly what I needed the website to do, allowing the amazing clinicians at ITP to focus on providing high-quality care.
If a colleague asked about working with PPE, I would tell them that I am extremely happy with the high quality of service, support, and ease of working with Daniel and his amazing team. It has been a clear, highly organized process supported by people who worked hard to understand my needs. I have loved every step of this journey and will forever remain a PPE client.”
Sheri Thibeau
Owner, It Takes Practice Counselling Services
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