If you have a website for your personal training business, it’s likely that you prioritise getting traffic to that site. Promoting your website so that new people can visit and learn about your personal training services.
Yet, many trainers neglect a simple strategy to improve the long term sustainable growth of their businesses: getting the most out of the traffic they already have. This is what Conversion Rate Optimisation is all about.
What Is Conversion Rate?
If you “convert” a visitor to your personal training site, they do the action that you’re asking for. That might be a different call to action on different pages on the same website - there’s a lot of potential throughout your website and each area should be optimised for conversions.
This might include downloading a lead magnet, allowing you to get their email address. It might be booking a call with you, identifying them as a potential client. It could be participating in a free challenge that you’re running. The goal of a personal training website is to eventually convert visitors into paying clients.
For example, reducing the number of form fields in a form to less than 5 fields based on the latest user experience research would be Conversion Rate Optimisation.
This might include downloading a lead magnet, allowing you to get their email address. It might be booking a call with you, identifying them as a potential client. It could be participating in a free challenge that you’re running. The goal of a personal training website is to eventually convert visitors into paying clients.
For example, reducing the number of form fields in a form to less than 5 fields based on the latest user experience research would be Conversion Rate Optimisation.
To calculate the percentage for your fitness website, take the number of leads you get, divide that by the total number of visitors to the website, then multiply by 100. The number you’re left with is your conversion rate.
Conversion rate optimisation is a process that aims to increase the percentage of people that take the given action on your website. A high conversion rate is a good indicator of a well-designed website.
It also improves the standard of leads, improves revenue, and helps a personal training business to grow better by getting more value out of existing clients.
How to Improve Your Website's Conversion Rate
There are four main areas on most personal training websites which have the potential to be areas of high conversion.
Homepage
This is a prime candidate for optimisation as it’s the first online contact a visitor has with your personal training services. It’s the page they land on when visiting for the first time, and your goal might be to reduce the “bounce rate” (visitors leaving) and encourage them to explore the rest of your website from here.
You might consider improving conversion rates on this page by giving them the information they are looking for about your services. A section about What You Do linking to your Services page, one about you and your business, leading to the About page, a call-to-action for a low-barrier offer, like a free consultation and a Company Mission that encourages the visitor to get in touch.
Check out what we did for one of our Managed Website clients, Coach Steve-O:
You might consider improving conversion rates on this page by giving them the information they are looking for about your services. A section about What You Do linking to your Services page, one about you and your business, leading to the About page, a call-to-action for a low-barrier offer, like a free consultation and a Company Mission that encourages the visitor to get in touch.
Check out what we did for one of our Managed Website clients, Coach Steve-O:
Services Page
This is the page where you’d outline who you serve and your personal training packages. You might choose to display your prices on this page and this can be a make or break point for many visitors for your website.
You could consider price presentation on this page (weekly vs. monthly charges for your personal training services, or pay as you go vs. packages).
You could consider price presentation on this page (weekly vs. monthly charges for your personal training services, or pay as you go vs. packages).
If you choose not to display your prices, your call to action could be encouraging people to reach out for a quote based on their specific circumstances.
Blog Page
A personal trainer’s blog is a vital part of their website. It’s a place where you can display your expertise across a range of topics that are relevant to your audience.
Thoughtful, well-written articles, regularly updated and can be searched by topic are a strong converter to turn visitors into leads. You might consider a call to action in each article you write, encouraging people to book a call with you.
Thoughtful, well-written articles, regularly updated and can be searched by topic are a strong converter to turn visitors into leads. You might consider a call to action in each article you write, encouraging people to book a call with you.
Landing Pages
A landing page is designed with one action in mind. It may be a place where you invite visitors to download a specific resource they’ll find useful (called a lead magnet) in exchange for their email address.
You might optimise this page so that it shows snippets of what people will get when they download the free resource - demonstrating the value of the free gift through images or testimonials.
Is CRO Right for Your Personal Training Business?
If you have a website, and you’re getting traffic to it, conversion rates will be something to consider. Simply put, you want to make the most out of each visitor to help them to become a client of yours. If people are on a personal training website looking for help, naturally we should be making the process as easy as possible for them to become a client so that we can start helping them to realise their fitness goals.
How to Optimise Your Personal Training Website
A good first step is always to assess your current conversion rate. You can use the formula above to perform this calculation: leads/visitors x 100 = the percentage of visitors you convert.
You know from this that if you want to create more new clients each month from your website, you need to either increase traffic (which can be time consuming and expensive) or you can get more leads out of your existing traffic by optimising your website.
You know from this that if you want to create more new clients each month from your website, you need to either increase traffic (which can be time consuming and expensive) or you can get more leads out of your existing traffic by optimising your website.
Include a Call-to-Action
This is so simple we often don’t even think to do it. If you want your visitor to perform an action, ask them to do it. You can include a relevant CTA at the end of a blog post. But when clients might not read all the way to the end, it can really reduce the effectiveness of that call.
Instead, including the call to action higher up, or throughout the article, can boost the conversions massively. If you have a free offer that your blog readers can benefit from, you can also include it in your blog header.
Instead, including the call to action higher up, or throughout the article, can boost the conversions massively. If you have a free offer that your blog readers can benefit from, you can also include it in your blog header.
Experiment with Your Site
Running tests on what works for your audience and what doesn’t is really the only way to truly know what your audience enjoys. What’s effective for one personal trainer may not work for you and your audience, so play around with your calls to action and your formatting to figure out something that’s right for your personal training business.
Run Regular Tests on Pages
This can help you to identify some of the best content on your site. This content can then be optimised further and promoted on social media. Identify blog posts with the best levels of traffic but low conversion rates - it’s often something simple like not including a call to action that’s the problem! If you have blog content that does convert well, consider optimising it for Search Engines (SEO) to get even more traffic to it.
Retargeting
Retargeting works by tracking people who visit your website and showing them adverts for your site elsewhere around the web. It’s a particularly powerful option if you retarget people who have visited your highest converted web pages.
There are a couple of steps if you’re considering CRO as a strategy on your personal trainer website:
There are a couple of steps if you’re considering CRO as a strategy on your personal trainer website:
- Assess: Take a look at your website metrics and calculate your current conversion rate using the formulas above.
- Experiment: There are plenty of optimisation strategies and you may not need to use them all- just pick one that feels easy to start with.
- Isolate: Work on one page of your website at a time so you don’t feel overwhelmed.
- Adjust: As you get more familiar with your data, you can modify your strategy based on what works for your site.
