The Client:

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a personalized form of psychotherapy that helps people recognize and change their emotional reactions to certain situations, and has been clinically proven to help treat a wide variety of mental health conditions.

Founded by Dr. Aaron T. Beck, the creator of CBT, and his daughter, Dr. Judith S. Beck, the Beck Institute (BI) is a non-profit organization regarded as one of the leading international authorities for CBT information, resources, and research.

Beck Institute continues to research the most effective CBT techniques, trains mental health professionals and organizations on those methodologies, and provides certifications for those that meet their standards. They also provide information and resources for the public on CBT, in addition to treating clients at their in-house clinic.

The Challenge:

COVID-19 sparked an increased appreciation of the importance of mental health across the country and the world, and interest in CBT skyrocketed, accordingly. This included both a general interest in CBT as well as its methodology as practiced by mental health professionals.

As demand for CBT information and resources increased, Beck Institute needed a more robust digital presence to reach two distinct audiences – mental health practitioners and individual consumers. Practitioners were interested in certification and training while consumers wanted to understand how they could apply CBT to their own lives, and were looking for specific mental health treatment.

The Solutions:

Two Audiences, Two Websites: After extensive stakeholder and user interviews, and an in-depth heuristic analysis, we recognized the best way to reach Beck Institute’s dual audiences was by creating two websites and architecting respective content strategies for each. That meant refreshing Beck Institute’s B2B site, while simultaneously standing up a consumer-facing website to reach individuals interested in CBT and enable them to connect with Beck-certified therapists.

These efforts were rooted in what we find the best and most effective way to develop products and strategies:

• User Research: We conducted in-depth user surveys and interviews with site visitors to understand their visual, content, and functional needs and uncover their current perspective of Beck Institute in the marketplace. With quantitative and qualitative data in hand, we were able to create distinct audience personas to inform our marketing and content strategies.
• Brand Refresh: Beck Institute’s brand leaned toward the clinical, and lacked any consumer-facing brand elements. Coinciding with a style guide refresh, we updated the main Beck Institute site design while developing a unique look within their style guide for the consumer site, Beck Institute Cares. These modern styles included updates to the color palette, typography, use of imagery, and iconography while making sure to integrate existing elements.
• Content Strategy: With the goals of stakeholders and perspectives of end users in mind, and the refreshed brand as a North Star, we developed a content strategy that began with a critical review of Beck’s properties and data, as well as those of Beck’s direct and aspirational competitors. That comprised a thorough analysis of the messaging, tonality, alignment, and overall best-practices used on websites, social media channels, and digital marketing collateral. Next, we audited the traffic and engagement metrics to understand how different audiences were engaging across various channels. Finally, we analyzed SEO traffic and keywords among Beck, competitors, and the mental health space in general to identify areas to improve performance, and new areas that were both relevant and feasible to target through structured content creation.
• Seamless Information Architecture (IA): Navigational elements were a major pain point for stakeholders and site users: high-priority items were lost, content was out of place, and natural user journeys weren’t supported. We created two separate site structures to align with top use cases for their professional and consumer audience groups.
• Responsive Design & Development: With a strategy and navigation in hand, we created responsive designs for the two websites. Using these designs, our team of developers executed the development of the sites, ensuring the highest level of accessibility and functionality across a range of devices, browsers, and operating systems.
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration: Working with BI and Salesforce, we assisted with the integration and styling of Salesforce Commerce Cloud to create user profile pages and an integrated ecommerce experience.

Results:

The new Beck Institute website offers a refreshed digital brand with the ability to tout its reputation as the leaders of CBT research and training to its global audience. High-revenue and in-demand services are easy to find, and practitioners have intuitive, streamlined learning paths.

The new Beck Institute Cares site offers comprehensive information on CBT, and is purposefully structured and well-positioned to meet individuals seeking information about CBT and CBT services where they are, both digitally and geographically, from general awareness all the way through booking an appointment with a certified therapist.

The end result is more than just two beautiful websites, but access to information and tools that can improve lives for millions of people around the world.