Development Agency
Contact Sign in Get a project quote

Service

Specialist directory development

For operators of professional and practitioner directories, from therapists and tutors to consultants and allied health, who need person-level profiles, credential display rules, specialism taxonomies, availability, appointment requests and review moderation designed around the professions they list.

Get a project quote See the software package

The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A practitioner directory is usually built on a template meant for businesses, so a therapist's profile has a "company name" field and a "services" box, and the qualifications that searchers actually care about are typed into the description in whatever form the practitioner chooses.

  • One profile says "registered with" a professional body and quotes a number; the next says "fully qualified" and nothing else; the directory displays both the same way and the searcher cannot tell what has been stated, let alone whether anyone checked.
  • Specialisms are a free-text tag cloud, so "anxiety", "anxiety disorders" and "Anxiety" are three filters.

Where it gets harder

Availability is a sentence in the profile ("evenings and some weekends") that was true when it was written.

  • A searcher sends an enquiry through the contact form, it goes to the practitioner's email, and the directory never learns whether it was answered, which is the number a paid profile tier would be sold on.
  • Reviews, where they exist, arrive by email and are pasted in.
  • The operator cannot say how many profiles are complete, how many have a registration number on file, how many have been looked at in a year, or which specialisms searchers want and nobody offers.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom specialist directory build normally covers:

  • A practitioner profile schema per profession With structured fields for qualifications, awarding body, year, professional registration number and the body it belongs to, each displayed with the date the practitioner supplied it and a plain statement of whether the platform has checked it
  • A specialism taxonomy per profession With synonyms so searchers and practitioners meet in the same term
  • Availability as structured slots or windows With a "last updated" date the searcher can see
  • Filters for insurance acceptance Languages, location and online or in-person
  • Appointment requests forwarded to the practitioner With a status the searcher and the operator can both see, or a booking calendar where the profession suits it
  • Profile completeness scoring That tells the practitioner what is missing and lets the operator sort by completeness
  • Reviews tied to a completed appointment request where possible Moderated against a published policy, with a right of reply
  • Optional register look-ups where a profession's body offers one With the returned result and date shown alongside what the practitioner supplied

How discovery works

Discovery follows one practitioner from registration to a first appointment request with you: which professions you list and what each profile must carry, which credentials are shown and how they are worded, whether any register can be queried and what is shown when it cannot, how availability is captured and kept current, whether requests are forwarded or booked, who moderates reviews, and what a paid profile tier includes. Each answer becomes a named stage in the scope document: register, credential, enrich, publish, search, request, respond, review, renew.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Clinical or case records, payments between searcher and practitioner, and any statement that the platform has verified a practitioner beyond what a connected look-up returned. Also out of scope is any promise about search-engine placement
  • Profile and specialism pages are built crawlable with structured data, and our claim stops there

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A directory of counsellors and psychotherapists that lists qualifications against four professional bodies, offers register look-ups for two of them, forwards appointment requests with a status the operator tracks, and sells a profile tier that adds an availability calendar. That is a different build from a tutor directory with no registration bodies and instant booking, and the scope document says which is being built.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from following one practitioner from registration to first appointment request
  • A written scope document naming each stage from registration to renewal, with the credential display rules written out and what is out of scope
  • Design of the profile, the search with filters, the appointment request flow, the practitioner dashboard and the review moderation queue, on mobile for searchers and practitioners and desktop for the operator
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of existing practitioner profiles with qualifications restructured into the schema, where relevant
  • Training for the operator and moderators, with a short written guide for credential wording and review policy
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts, your list of professions and bodies, existing profile data, your review policy and any register look-ups available.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the operator, a moderator and two practitioners from different professions; the scope document, the credential display rules and the milestone plan are agreed.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of a profile, the filtered search, the request flow and the practitioner dashboard, reviewed with practitioners and a searcher.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: profile schema and taxonomy first, then registration, credentials and completeness, then search, availability and requests, then reviews, tiers and reporting.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team registers test practitioners, enters credentials, runs searches, sends requests and moderates reviews against the policy.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Credential wording, taxonomy synonyms, filters and request statuses are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Profiles migrated, request forwarding tested to addresses you control, look-ups tested against the live registers, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The directory runs on the new platform; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Professional register look-ups where a body offers one, recorded as returned with the date
  • Calendar providers for practitioner availability and bookings
  • Email and SMS providers for request forwarding, status updates and review invitations
  • Card payment providers for profile tiers
  • Video meeting providers for online appointments
  • Mapping and postcode services for location search
  • Accounting software for profile tier invoices

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A counselling directory listing against four professional bodies

The situation

A directory of counsellors and psychotherapists wanted qualifications displayed consistently across four professional bodies, two of which offer a public register that can be queried.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build because the credential wording rules and the two look-ups are specific to those bodies, and because the request status model is what the operator reports on and sells tiers against.

The scope we would propose

  • A credential block on each profile showing the body, registration number and date supplied, with a second line reading either the look-up result and the date it was returned or a plain statement that no look-up is available for that body
  • A specialism taxonomy with synonyms maintained by the operator
  • Availability windows with a visible "last updated" date and a nudge to the practitioner when it ages
  • Appointment requests with statuses the searcher, practitioner and operator all see
  • A paid tier that adds a calendar and a verified-request badge based on response history rather than any judgement about the practitioner

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of professions and how different their profile schemas and taxonomies are
  • Credential display rules and whether any register look-ups are connected
  • Availability model: windows, calendar sync or on-platform booking
  • Appointment request forwarding with statuses versus booking
  • Filters required: insurance acceptance, languages, online or in-person, location
  • Review policy, moderation workflow and tie to completed requests
  • Profile tiers and the payment provider involved
  • Volume and condition of existing profiles to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Specialist directory package

Practitioner profiles with qualifications and registration numbers shown as supplied, specialism taxonomy with synonyms, structured availability, insurance and language filters, appointment requests with statuses, completeness scoring and reviews moderated against a published policy.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Would the package do, or do we need a custom build?

An operator listing one or two professions, with credentials shown as supplied, structured availability, forwarded requests and a simple profile tier is usually covered by the specialist directory package through configuration. A custom build is the honest answer when register look-ups must be connected, when booking runs on the platform, or when several professions need different schemas and policies. Discovery is where we tell you which.

Does the directory verify qualifications?

Not by itself. Qualifications and registration numbers are displayed as supplied by the practitioner, with the date supplied, and the profile says so in plain words. Where a professional body offers a register look-up and you choose to connect it, the returned result and its date are shown next to the supplied details. The platform never states more than it has recorded.

How are appointment requests tracked?

A request is created on the platform, forwarded to the practitioner, and carries a status: sent, seen, replied, declined, or closed by the searcher. Both parties and the operator see the status, and response history feeds the operator reports and any badge you choose to show.

Can reviews be left by anyone?

You set the rule. The default ties a review to a request that reached "replied" on the platform, so a reviewer has at least made contact. Every review waits in moderation against your published policy, the practitioner can reply, and the published rating rule says exactly which reviews count.

Who owns the directory afterwards?

You do. Source code and your data, including profiles, credential records, requests, reviews and tier history, are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed.

Get a project quote for specialist directory software

Answer a few questions about your business, your current systems and what should change. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.

Get a project quote Discuss a partnership
Get a project quote

Cookies on this site. Strictly necessary cookies keep the site working. Allow first-party analytics so we can see which pages lead to enquiries. No advertising, no third-party trackers, no personal data; you can change this at any time on the cookies page.

Manage preferences