A successful fitness website is one of the best assets a personal trainer could have. Your personal trainer website is working for you 24 hours a day to bring in leads, and give prospective clients a glimpse into what it’s like to be trained by you. It’s a central location where people spend time considering which of your services is best for them, and a place that your prospective clients can get their burning questions answered, even when you are asleep!
However, many fitness websites are badly designed and don't serve the purpose they should, and that can do more harm to your business than no website at all. Some websites are so difficult to navigate that they get buried on Google or making absolutely the wrong first impression if they ever get seen at all. So here’s a checklist to make sure that you’re not making those mistakes that might damage your ability to generate leads from your website.
1. Above The Fold
This is a term that used to relate to newspapers, but now gets used to describe the layout of a website home page. Is the name of your business and the services you provide immediately obvious to anyone landing on the site without them needing to scroll down?
Things which are hidden below the fold need to be scrolled to be read. This means people might miss some of your personal training services as they are not prominently displayed. This is a simple design feature that might have an impact on how long someone stays on your website.
Things which are hidden below the fold need to be scrolled to be read. This means people might miss some of your personal training services as they are not prominently displayed. This is a simple design feature that might have an impact on how long someone stays on your website.
How to Fix It
Make sure that what you do and who you do it for is clearly listed above the fold and add a call to action that invites the website visitor to take their next logical step.
2. Speed
Not quick enough loading time is a common mistake with fitness websites. Recent statistics suggest that 47% of visitors to a website expect it to load in 2 seconds or less. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you’ll lose a staggering 40% of visitors.
Some of the standard features of fitness websites that can cause loading speeds to slow down are to have too many and or too big size videos or images to load on the page. There can also be issues with website code that is inefficient. If you want to check your fitness website’s loading speed, you can use this Insights Page from Google.
How to Fix It
Your page speed is almost certainly being mostly impacted by image size. Head on over to TinyPNG.com and shrink the size of your images and re-upload them to your website.
3. Responsiveness
How well the website performs on mobile devices compared with desktop computers is described as responsiveness. Mobile browsing now accounts for over half of all online traffic. To reflect this, Google will be using mobile-first indexing from September 2020 - which means they will prioritise the ranking of the mobile version of all sites.
 Desktop Version |  Mobile Version |
Visitors to your personal trainer website shouldn’t have to pinch or zoom or struggle to scroll around your site. Your website should respond instantly, offering an optimised browsing experience regardless of the device the visitor is using to access it. If you’re not sure if your personal trainer website is mobile-friendly, you can check here.
How to Fix It
If you haven't already, be sure to build your personal trainer website on a responsive platform. Most designer platforms like Weebly and Squarespace are already responsive but for Wordpress, you might need to get any relevant plugins.
4. Intuitiveness
A website is considered to be intuitive when the user experience is positive. The visitor to the site feels like what they need to do is obvious and they aren't pushed into doing things that don't make sense in that moment. They don’t get confused and navigate away from your pages without taking the desired action (e.g. reading testimonials, booking a call, signing up for your email list).
Your website is likely to be designed around left to right and top to bottom navigation. Putting the most important things you want your visitor to see on the top left will be a good way to make the most of the time they spend on your site. Each page on your website could include one single, clear call to action. Don’t be tempted to give too many instructions in case your visitor gets confused and navigates away.
How to To Fix It
Ensuring your website is intuitive involves following standard design practices. While it seems like a natural step to want to stand out in some way, your website is not the best place to do this. Website visitors expect to see certain things in certain places to get around easily.
Your website is likely to be designed around left to right and top to bottom navigation. Putting the most important things you want your visitor to see on the top left will be a good way to make the most of the time they spend on your site. Each page on your website could include one single, clear call to action. Don’t be tempted to give too many instructions in case your visitor gets confused and navigates away.
How to To Fix It
Ensuring your website is intuitive involves following standard design practices. While it seems like a natural step to want to stand out in some way, your website is not the best place to do this. Website visitors expect to see certain things in certain places to get around easily.
5. Simple Navigattion
When people land on your personal trainer website, don’t make them work too hard in moving through the site. Make the content easy to read, make the next steps obvious and easy. Make sure every page of your website has a navigation menu so they don’t lose their place. Don’t overload them with loads of options on each page because if the visitor gets confused, they will simply leave.
How to Fix It
Ensure your main navigation is simple to understand and points to the main services of your business so that users can clearly state what you do and how to get in touch.
6. Readability
This relates mostly to your typography, but it’s more than keeping your choice of font simple and not too curly. It also includes a high contrast colour palette (if in doubt, white background with black text is fine) and making sure that mobile browsers are able to zoom in on what you’ve written so that your written content scales well.
How to Fix It
If any website content isn't legible, consider placing the content inside a colour box to help it contrast with the text.
7. Scannability
While some visitors to your site will read everything - top to bottom, left to right - most will skim read, looking for specific information they’re looking for. That means making it easy for people to scan through and search quickly for what they want.
How to Fix It
There are a few things you can do to help people to consume your content.
- Using sub-headings
- Short paragraphs with plenty of white space
- Bold formatting for important points
- Bullet points
8. Content Legibility
If you’re the only person writing the copy on your website, take your time to read through it carefully and make sure it’s free from mistakes. It can help to improve the flow of your writing to read it out loud. If you’re checking for typos, running a spell check before publishing is a must.
How to Fix It
If you can, get a friend to help you out with proofreading to make sure your writing is free from basic mistakes. Even better; you could hire a professional copywriter to help you keep your writing clear and error-free, and save you a lot of time.
How to Fix It
If you can, get a friend to help you out with proofreading to make sure your writing is free from basic mistakes. Even better; you could hire a professional copywriter to help you keep your writing clear and error-free, and save you a lot of time.
9. Contact Info
This is one of the most important parts of your website as it tells a visitor how they can get hold of you. Make this page as good as you can and present it on every single page because it will be the last page visitors see before they are converted into paying clients.
How to Fix It
At the very least, consider a phone number and an email address. If you are based in a physical gym location, add a map so people can find your facility. You may also want to include your social media information so people can get a deeper look at what you do for your clients.
At the very least, consider a phone number and an email address. If you are based in a physical gym location, add a map so people can find your facility. You may also want to include your social media information so people can get a deeper look at what you do for your clients.
10. Annoying Marketing Trends
Website visitors are annoyed by exactly the same features you are annoyed by when visiting other websites. The list isn’t limited to:
How to Fix It
If a marketing or design trend like pop ups really annoys you, it will likely be something that annoys your website visitors too so don't use it. Pop ups do have their place but mainly for larger, high traffic websites that are selling low value products. You're a low traffic site selling high value services.
- Pop up menus which get in the way of things your visitor is trying to read, or that appear when they move to navigate away from the page.
- Videos or sounds which autoplay. Aside from making web pages load more slowly, the sudden noise is intrusive.
- Anything which may compromise the integrity of the site’s safety, such as ads or Flash player.
How to Fix It
If a marketing or design trend like pop ups really annoys you, it will likely be something that annoys your website visitors too so don't use it. Pop ups do have their place but mainly for larger, high traffic websites that are selling low value products. You're a low traffic site selling high value services.
Wrapping Up
Designing your own fitness website might seem like a confusing minefield at times. There’s often a lot to learn, and while this can be rewarding, it isn’t always where you want to put your efforts into your fitness business.
There are fitness website design services which will design, build and maintain your website for you - including the content marketing if you feel like your efforts are better spent elsewhere in your business.
There are fitness website design services which will design, build and maintain your website for you - including the content marketing if you feel like your efforts are better spent elsewhere in your business.
