I am impressed though that you have decided not to “bite your nose off to spite your face” and are looking forward to your new client. I hope that pans out for you. And, given the situation, I would do exactly as you have done – keep the client and the Good Therapy account active for another year. I hope you’ll let us know how the relationship with Good Therapy works for you later this year!

One other thing that happened was that I was charged the full yearly fee when I wanted the monthly fee. I logged in before my trial expired and it said monthly status, active 1/1/12. I wrote when I was charged by the year and sent a screenshot showing that my account SAID I was on the monthly payment plan. They replied with, “The screen shot you sent to me is for our updated payment page which automatically selects the monthly billing option and lets you fill out the information below, it is not an indication of what you signed up for. ” So they show you an OPTION with a date in red that looks like it was active. But that’s NOT what you are signed up for. To get to your actual payment plan, you must have to go through the wardrobe to Narnia. They did give me an option to call if I want to change to monthly payments. If this client pans out, I’ll give them the benefit of my business for one year.
If I have this much trouble with the usability of the site, I wonder what many of those tech-phobic professionals must feel!

I want to second Tamara in thanking you for coming to join us here. I think that a pinpoint function would be a great idea, especially for those of us in more rural zip codes. I would add that the ability to list one or two “nearby zip codes” would be another great feature.

My Lakewood office is a new addition because I actually chose to move to a more centralized location so that the money I have invested in directories has a better chance of paying off. I’m glad that the searches for the exact zip codes returned favorable results, I just wish that searches for nearby zip codes would function more like they do on other directories.

My concern was about searching the nearby zip codes to my office, because the likelihood of someone searching your exact zip code when you border a populated area is small. The search of a zip code that borders my own was the search I referenced when saying that I appeared on the seventh page, and it is the same search that I compared to other directories where I came up in the 2nd and 3rd pages using the same criteria with other listings. It is this search that I wrote about and received the form letter reiterating what I already knew – that the zip codes were a static measurement. However, no one addressed the fact that my listing was after other listings that were farther than mine.

The cherry on the cake was what I perceived to be a lack of personalized attention to my inquiries because those dry, form letter responses did not make me feel like my concerns were being understood or addressed. I would expect to be on the first or second page for searches in my own zip code. But, for searches in a neighboring zip, why would I be on the 7th page on Good Therapy, and the 2nd or 3rd for Psychology Today, Network Therapy, or Theravive?

I would also love your comments on the rationale behind showing therapists in London when searching via the Browse Location with a radius of 25 miles for a therapist in Lakewood, Colorado. I am now in the listing for Lakewood because I literally just moved to Lakewood, but I’m sure that other Denverites who are not exactly in Lakewood expect to appear in Lakewood search results when someone browses because they may be two miles away. The response I had gotten was that results are randomized to be fair to all, but I still find this strange to include therapists from overseas.

Thank you for joining the conversation, Jenn. I’m looking forward to chatting more about this so that we can all truly understand some of the rationale behind the unique difficulties many of us are encountering with Good Therapy.

Kat

I also appreciate you taking time to explain how member can access their statistics concerning searches. And, I hope, at some point, that you will actually consider sending monthly emails with that same information to those of us that subscribe to Good Therapy.

We asked someone who had never used our search function before to give it a spin. Here is what we found out. If a person punches in his or her zip code and searches the surrounding 25-mile area, then indeed, many therapists from surrounding zip codes may show up, depending on how densely populated those areas are. However, if the search is restricted to a smaller radius, such as 3 miles, the list is shortened considerably. In either case, results were ordered by the distance from zip code.

When we punched in the zip code of Ms. Mindenhall’s office in Lakewood, there was only one page of search results, and her name was at the top of the list. For her Golden office, the zip-code search showed her as second on the list.

When people search even more broadly, such as only by city (which may include many different zip codes), then yes, there are many results for a highly populated area, and those results are shown in a random order that changes anytime a user visits the page, in order to be fair to everyone.

The experience of our person new to searching Good Therapy did point to one attribute we hope to make available to our users in the future: a map that would show where everyone falls within a zip code, with little red stars pinpointing their locations, so that people could have a visual of where therapists are located within a search area. We will be looking at ways to improve our search function in the future.

We do offer all of our members a summary of their profile statistics through the member area of our website. This feature allows them to see at a glance how many people are searching for their zip code, clicking on their profile page, out-clicking to their website, sending them emails, clicking to see their phone number, and more.

We are always looking for ways to improve, and feedback from our subscribers is most welcome. We strive to be a trusted resource for all mental health professionals, as well as their clients.

Sincerely,

Jenn Feldmann
Director of Web Development
GoodTherapy.org