Is Showit right for your practice website?

Ask three practice owners which website platform to use and you’ll hear WordPress, Squarespace, and something your nephew set up in 2017. I design in Showit, and I like it a lot. But I’d never recommend Showit for practice websites without first asking what the site needs to do and who will keep it updated after launch.

So here’s a plain look at where it works well for health and wellness practices, and where I’d slow down before choosing it.

What Showit is, in practice terms

Showit is a drag-and-drop website builder made for custom design. Instead of pouring your content into a theme’s fixed layout, a designer can place text, photos, and shapes wherever the brand calls for them.

For an established practice, that freedom is useful. Your site can look like your practice instead of every other site built on the same template. If you’ve noticed that so many therapy and wellness websites look the same, templates are a big part of the reason.

That control also takes discipline. A custom layout doesn’t make a site easy to use on its own. Someone still has to decide what a nervous new client needs to see first, how she finds the right clinician, and where the booking button goes.

Where Showit for practice websites works well

In my experience, Showit is a strong fit when a practice wants a site that feels custom, explains its care clearly, and doesn’t need heavy back-end features.

That covers a lot of practice websites, which is why Showit is our default. Group therapy practices with a team page and specialty pages. PT and pelvic health clinics with condition pages and a clear first-visit explanation. Med spas, chiropractors, nutritionists, and functional medicine practices that need to look as established as their reputation.

Showit also handles mobile well. The editor lets a designer lay out desktop and mobile separately. So the phone version gets arranged for a phone instead of squished from the desktop design. That matters because many new clients first look you up on their phones, often right after a referral. It does mean the mobile version needs real design attention, which we build into every project.

How blogging works on Showit

If blogging is part of your plan, this is the piece people find most confusing. Showit’s own pricing page sums it up: Showit handles the design, WordPress handles the blog. You design the blog layouts in Showit, then write and publish posts in WordPress.

For most practice websites on Showit, that’s a good setup. Your blog looks like the rest of the brand, and you still get WordPress’s familiar editor for writing. Showit’s Advanced Blog plan also includes a migration from an existing WordPress or Squarespace blog, according to the same page. Before you count on that, I’d still review your current posts, URLs, and plugins, and plan redirects for anything that moves.

Not sure a blog is worth the effort? Read is blogging worth it for a wellness practice?

SEO on Showit: the platform is only part of it

Showit gives practice websites the basics they need: page titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, and image descriptions. Those are enough to build a well-structured site.

What they won’t do is make a vague services page rank, or turn an unclear offer into booked consults. The structure of the site, the words on each page, local signals like your Google Business Profile, and the content you publish over time still do most of the work. That’s true on any platform. I go deeper in SEO for wellness practices.

When I’d look past Showit for practice websites

Showit isn’t the right answer for every project. I’d slow down if:

• You sell a lot of products. Showit supports buy buttons and third-party tools, but it isn’t a full store. When we built the site for Tonic, an at-home blood testing brand, Shopify was the better fit because the business runs on ecommerce.
• Your site needs complex features. Patient portals, custom calculators, or deep integrations usually belong in a different setup, or inside your EHR.
• You need clinical intake on the website itself. For anything involving health information, I’d keep intake inside your EHR or a form tool your compliance advisor has approved, and link to it from the site.
• Nobody on your team will touch it. Any site needs someone who can update a bio or change office hours. If no one can, plan for ongoing support.

Most practice websites link out to an EHR or scheduling tool for booking anyway, so this list rarely rules Showit out. But it’s worth checking before you commit.

Can your team update a Showit site?

Usually, yes. Swapping a photo, editing a bio, or updating hours doesn’t require code. Still, drag-and-drop means it’s possible to nudge something on desktop and break the layout on mobile without noticing.

A well-built site is organized so your team can make the updates your practice actually needs, like adding a new clinician, without redesigning a page. Before launch, ask your designer to walk you through those tasks. In our projects, website training is part of launch, so your office manager isn’t guessing.

The platform comes last

Here’s the order I’d decide things in. First, what should your practice be known for? Then, what does a new client need to understand before she books? Then, what should the brand look and sound like? The platform should serve those answers, rather than shaping them.

That’s how we build in the Complete Brand. Strategy, visual identity, and copy come first. Then we design and build a custom Showit site for desktop and mobile, with technical SEO setup, testing, and training. When we rebuilt Olive Branch Therapy Group, a two-office therapy practice with a growing team, the site was organized around one question: who can help me, and where do I begin? Showit made it possible to design that experience, but the strategy decided what it needed to be.

If you’re comparing designers as well as platforms, read how to choose a web designer for your practice. And if the site is only one piece of a bigger gap, start with when your practice’s reputation has outgrown its website.

Choose the platform around your practice

Showit for practice websites is a good fit more often than not, especially when the brand matters and the site’s main job is to help the right person book. But the platform should follow the plan, not lead it.

If you’d like help figuring out what your site needs before anyone opens a design file, apply to work with Liberty Type. We’ll look at your practice and recommend the right path, platform included.