The Ultimate Personal Trainers Website
The Internet can play a huge role in growing your personal training business. You must have an online presence, if you want to market your personal training business to it’s full potential. Often the first thing people do before purchasing anything is ‘Google it’.
Your website should be a powerful tool to:
- Help find prospective clients.
- Educate prospects and clients about the programs and services you provide.
Perhaps you focus on clients who want to lose weight, perhaps you prefer those that want to build muscle. Whatever it is you prefer, a great place to communicate and demonstrate your marketing message is your website. When your prospects visit your website before contacting you, they are already ‘pre-qualified’ because they know what your business is about. This will save you time and resources following up on people who are simply not suited to you as a personal trainer.
Creating a website shouldn’t be a once off project that you complete and never touch again. Websites that evolve and are regularly updated outperform stagnant websites. The search engines love fresh content so it’s important to give serious consideration to what you want to do with your website.
You should discuss with a professional web designer your intentions and what they would recommend. Even if you have a web designer, you should understand the fundamentals of what makes an exceptional website, so you can effectively work with them to produce the best possible outcome in a cost effective manner.
Here are some vital characteristics of good websites to consider:
Visuals and Graphics
The colour scheme and other design elements of your website are some of the strongest ways to communicate your identity as a brand. From a technical perspective, the files should be saved so they are clear without loading too slowly. The more compressed an image is, the faster it will load but more of the quality will be lost. Slow loading sites run the risk of losing visitors’ interest even before they have seen a page. In years gone by it was a balancing act between quality and file size. These days almost everyone is on broadband so you shouldn’t need to sacrifice too much quality for speed. Before and after shots are powerful for any personal trainer’s website. For prospective customers to see what results they can expect is powerful. It also helps to support these images with some details of who the person is, how quickly they achieved the results and what it has meant to their lives.
Technical Structure
Compatibility and easy maintenance are two aspects of web development that are often overlooked. There are many web browsers out there so it’s important your website displays correctly with all kinds of browsers and platforms. The use of style-sheet coding and templates is the best way to go because it creates consistency throughout your entire website. This might sound a little ‘techy’ however your programmer should understand the lingo. If they don’t, run for the hills. In simple terms, the style sheets and templates are pre-defined styles that ensure the look and feel of your website is the same on every page. They also allow for easier enhancements and updating of the web pages in future.
Clear Information
Simple and user-friendly navigation prevents confusion and allows people to quickly find the information they are looking for. Structure your website content and navigation in the most logical sequence for your personal training business. Brief, informative and useful content in an easy-to-read format will convert more prospects into clients. However, the more content you have, the more likely you will attract additional traffic from the search engines. As mentioned previously, search engines love fresh, unique content. How do you get the best of both worlds? Simple! Have a blog section in your website. Blogs tend to be less formal and allow for interaction in the comments section. Best of all, they give the Search Engines what they are looking for, fresh content.
Details of the services you provide should be straightforward, professional and easy for prospects to understand. Your Blog can be more conversational and informal. Do not use jargon when describing your programs and other offerings unless you are focusing on a specific niche that understands and appreciates the lingo.
