As a fitness professional, your website is the home for your array of services, products, and other business offerings. This is where prospective clients and other internet users can learn more about you and get social proof of your expertise. It is an essential element in your online presence, digital marketing, and branding.
That is why it's important to make sure it is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and well-designed. Building your website is an important business and brand consideration you have to put lots of care into.
This article will share everything you need to know about creating a fitness website that works. We'll explain the different options for website design, share six platforms you can use, and highlight gym website design examples we love.
Ways to Build Your Fitness or Personal Training Website
Choosing a platform to build and design your fitness website can sometimes feel like a struggle. It's hard to know what factors are important when making a decision. All design platforms are probably much the same … aren't they?
Well actually, some offer a lot more options than others.
For example, a website builder provides everything you could need to launch a new fitness website. From website-building tools to hosting, domain registration, customizable templates, and customer support, it can help manage all the confusing bits. It will even handle your secure sockets layer encryption (SSL), a security technology that encrypts your website link to your server.
But, in exchange for this easy interface, you may have to give up some control over certain aspects of your site.
By contrast, a content management system (CMS) will provide much more flexibility in how you use it. The site's appearance is entirely customizable, you can even edit the underlying code, and have free choice over your hosting. However, that means you have more responsibility for setting up and running your site.
Other options for designing your website include hiring a web developer or designer. Or, you could even tackle coding the platform yourself.
Well actually, some offer a lot more options than others.
For example, a website builder provides everything you could need to launch a new fitness website. From website-building tools to hosting, domain registration, customizable templates, and customer support, it can help manage all the confusing bits. It will even handle your secure sockets layer encryption (SSL), a security technology that encrypts your website link to your server.
But, in exchange for this easy interface, you may have to give up some control over certain aspects of your site.
By contrast, a content management system (CMS) will provide much more flexibility in how you use it. The site's appearance is entirely customizable, you can even edit the underlying code, and have free choice over your hosting. However, that means you have more responsibility for setting up and running your site.
Other options for designing your website include hiring a web developer or designer. Or, you could even tackle coding the platform yourself.
6 Platforms for Fitness Industry Website Design & Development
Here are six of the best fitness website design options you can use to aid your website-building and design process:
1. My Personal Trainer Website
My Personal Trainer Website is an agency dedicated to creating the best fitness website designs and marketing strategies for fitness businesses. When you work with their team, you can get comprehensive support in various areas of your site management. And they've had notable experience building hundreds of fitness websites.
If you're looking for a more hands-off approach to creating your website, this is the option for you. They'll handle the site branding and design, taking care of all the visual elements of your website. Their team understands the fitness industry and how to make platforms clients will love and navigate with ease.
They also have extensive knowledge and marketing expertise to help you turn your website into a valuable portal for lead generation. Get them to develop high-quality website content, handle your search engine optimization, and enhance your fitness and gym membership sales.
2. Institute For Personal Trainers
Institute for Personal Trainers (IPT) is a comprehensive branding software that can help you manage various aspects of your digital identity. Using the system, you can create a clean design and usable fitness site as well as oversee multiple marketing tasks.
For your website, you get a wide range of customizable templates and themes so you can easily create a website that perfectly fits your brand and style. Drag-and-drop site components for convenient development. And, if you need help, work with an AI assistant that can support this design process.
IPT's platform also allows for easy integration with third-party tools and software. This gives you the freedom to use the tools you prefer while still enjoying the benefits of an all-in-one platform. You get a high degree of flexibility for customizing your website, enhancing marketing efforts, and managing your business operations.
A fantastic example of the platform's marketing and website management prowess is its powerful blogging feature. This feature allows personal trainers to create and publish blog posts on their website. But it is more than just a way to share content.
It can also be integrated with the platform's funnel builder to create high-quality lead magnets that help attract potential customers.
The IPT also prides itself on providing exceptional customer support to its users. With 24/7 email support available to all users, personal trainers can rest assured that any questions or concerns they have will be promptly addressed by a knowledgeable and helpful support team.
3. Squarespace
Straightforward and highly stylized, Squarespace is one of the easier design platforms to use because of its highly structured drag-and-drop design methods. It is a little restrictive on your overall design freedom as you are still working within pre-made templates.
However, it does make it easy to get a stunning website up and running quickly. Plus, integration with Zapier gives some customization options beyond their in-house features.
The blogging options for Squarespace are excellent. They include post tagging, categories, keeping drafts automatically, comments, and customizable URLs. If blog content is a priority, Squarespace is one of the best options, offering an impressive level of collaboration with their “teams” capability. This blog feature allows you to share the blogging responsibility with a dedicated team of content writers.
Other Squarespace features include optimization for mobile devices, eCommerce store management, and font and color scheme customization.
4. Weebly
Weebly is another website-building platform that uses a drag-and-drop functionality for site creation. You can adapt their pre-existing templates by moving and adding elements to make your ideal website. With 100 add-ons to change the functionality of the site, there are various ways to customize your fitness website.
But, I have to say, this is not the most flexible option for building your website.
Weebly does have other features that can benefit your fitness business operations, however. For one, you can integrate third-party apps to supplement their solution and help customize the website. Run your fitness store and sales using the system's eCommerce functionality. You can also embed videos, your Google Maps address, contact forms, and more.
For blogging, Weebly offers a decent range of tools and features. Some of the more advanced options are the sharing and scheduling features, customer interaction metrics and insight analysis, social media sharing, and comment management.
Effortless drag-and-drop templates make it easy to create and publish articles.
5. WordPress
WordPress offers the most flexibility of the design platforms listed here. It gives you extensive control over your customization and most people can design their site with basic or limited technical skills.
However, the more you want to customize your site beyond basic functionalities, the more you have to invest in learning the system.
Open-source content management systems like WordPress are a bit more involved to set up but do give you complete freedom in use. You can use your choice of a hosting provider (WordPress.com will do this but you can select from a huge range). You can also choose to purchase a custom domain and then sort out the SSL certificate separately.
You've only got to do this once when you first start setting things up, and then you can manage all your content from your WordPress. Like other systems on this list, WordPress also offers your dashboard with a drag-and-drop structure that'll feel familiar.
WordPress also has fantastic blogging features that make it easy to create, schedule, and edit blogs on your website. You get total control over your blog and can even enhance your content marketing using add-ons for your fitness SEO and more.
However, the more you want to customize your site beyond basic functionalities, the more you have to invest in learning the system.
Open-source content management systems like WordPress are a bit more involved to set up but do give you complete freedom in use. You can use your choice of a hosting provider (WordPress.com will do this but you can select from a huge range). You can also choose to purchase a custom domain and then sort out the SSL certificate separately.
You've only got to do this once when you first start setting things up, and then you can manage all your content from your WordPress. Like other systems on this list, WordPress also offers your dashboard with a drag-and-drop structure that'll feel familiar.
WordPress also has fantastic blogging features that make it easy to create, schedule, and edit blogs on your website. You get total control over your blog and can even enhance your content marketing using add-ons for your fitness SEO and more.
6. Wix
Wix is a well-known and popular option for fitness businesses wanting to design their websites. The system is easy to customize and has a convenient user experience that makes your site-building a breeze.
In addition to building your website, Wix gives you several features that you can use to manage the fitness site and your business goals. This includes client scheduling and appointment tools, e-commerce and payment functions, and third-party integrations.
Like Squarespace, Wix integrates with Zapier which can give you additional flexibility with the existing templates. However, Wix's system can feel a little clunky with lots of clicks needed for navigation in some templates.
Plus, although Wix blogs are beautiful, they can be restrictive. You can't easily change templates, although there are about 500 to choose from initially, and the customization options are limited. If blogging is the main focus of your fitness website, there are better options available.
What to Look for in a Personal Training Website Builder
When selecting the best fitness website designer for your business, there are several characteristics to consider.
Flexible Customization Options
An important factor to consider in a website builder is its customization capability. You want a platform that enables you to create an attractive site and showcase your approach to fitness. It should be beautiful and sleek, and enable you to make design decisions on color, font, adding high-quality images, and more.
Depending on your technical capabilities, you may want to prioritize particular customization features. For easy creation, consider a website builder offering built-in hosting that's suitable for users of any experience level. Look for platforms with pre-designed templates and themes, drag-and-drop style building, and an automatic code editor.
Other customization elements to factor into your decision are integrations and add-ons. Having access to other systems can expand what you can do with your chosen solution and make personalization easier. Choose a website with convenient plugins and third-party integrations.
Depending on your technical capabilities, you may want to prioritize particular customization features. For easy creation, consider a website builder offering built-in hosting that's suitable for users of any experience level. Look for platforms with pre-designed templates and themes, drag-and-drop style building, and an automatic code editor.
Other customization elements to factor into your decision are integrations and add-ons. Having access to other systems can expand what you can do with your chosen solution and make personalization easier. Choose a website with convenient plugins and third-party integrations.
Ease of Use
For beginners with low-tech skill levels, this is probably one of the most important considerations. Your website needs to work hard for you as the shopfront of your personal training business. It should present minimal challenges to the client user experience. To achieve this, ensure that the site builder:
Not only should your gym website program build a site with a responsive design for your average client, but it should also make life easy for you. Avoid picking a solution that will present technical and other challenges to you. It should be easy to manage setting up your website and even simpler to adapt as a business marketing tool.
- makes your coaching website easy to navigate
- simplifies menu options
- has legible and clear fonts
- works efficiently on mobile devices
- has minimal downtime
- doesn't have a slow loading speed
Not only should your gym website program build a site with a responsive design for your average client, but it should also make life easy for you. Avoid picking a solution that will present technical and other challenges to you. It should be easy to manage setting up your website and even simpler to adapt as a business marketing tool.
Blogging Features
Blogs are vital marketing tools for your fitness business model. By creating blog posts, fitness professionals provide valuable content that can help them reach their target audience. Your online fitness coaching website is the best place to share your blog content, of course.
This makes it essential to use a fitness or gym website design creator that has advanced blogging capabilities.
Look for blogging features like blog creation, scheduling, editing, publishing, and categorization. You should also be able to add high-quality photos, videos, links, and other components to your blogs.
This makes it essential to use a fitness or gym website design creator that has advanced blogging capabilities.
Look for blogging features like blog creation, scheduling, editing, publishing, and categorization. You should also be able to add high-quality photos, videos, links, and other components to your blogs.
Other Business Features
Additional builder features you prioritize will depend on what you want to do with your website. In what other ways do you want to use the website for your business? It can be a valuable tool to manage fitness plans, sell trial memberships, and connect with prospective clients.
Business features you might look for include:
To help you identify must-have business features for your organization, determine your business goals and needs first. Clarify all the functions you would like the system to have and how you would like your website to operate within your business's structure. Once you know this, you can pick the system with the features that will best aid you in meeting your goals.
Business features you might look for include:
- Booking and appointment scheduling
- E-commerce and sales facilities
- Client communication and contact forms
- Metric analysis and data insights
- Advanced marketing capabilities including search engine optimization
To help you identify must-have business features for your organization, determine your business goals and needs first. Clarify all the functions you would like the system to have and how you would like your website to operate within your business's structure. Once you know this, you can pick the system with the features that will best aid you in meeting your goals.
Pricing
Your budget is a key determiner of the website builder you can opt for. Some systems like WordPress or Wix have free plans that you can use. However, you may not have access to some advanced features with the free version.
For paid plans, think about costs in the long and short term. Consider immediate website building costs as well as how much it would be for you to maintain the site using that platform.
For paid plans, think about costs in the long and short term. Consider immediate website building costs as well as how much it would be for you to maintain the site using that platform.
Support
Learning to manage your website takes work and as your website grows, your needs will likely change with it. Having support from users, designers, developers and a dedicated customer support team that can help answer your questions can save you time and stress.
Choose a platform with comprehensive customer support channels like chat systems, email support, and more. Also look for support resources like FAQ pages, how-to guides, and assistance guides.
Choose a platform with comprehensive customer support channels like chat systems, email support, and more. Also look for support resources like FAQ pages, how-to guides, and assistance guides.
What Makes the Best Fitness or Gym Website Designs?
So you've got a platform in mind. But what makes for a good fitness website design? There are five key characteristics to consider:
- Visual appeal: Clean, sophisticated design with high-quality visuals like photos, graphics, and full-width videos.
- Brand cohesion: Your website should communicate a harmonious, distinct, and strong brand personality.
- Usability: Provide a simple user experience with pages and simple menus that are easy to navigate and comprehend.
- Accessibility: Ensure your site is accessible to all users. Make sure your font is legible. Try to incorporate audio-search features. Make the site accessible and responsive on mobile and other devices.
- SEO: Integrate search engine optimized design and website approaches to make your platform more visible online, improve online presence, and rank higher to searcher.
Conclusion
Whether you run fitness centers, offer fitness classes, or sell fitness products, websites are a great way to connect with existing and prospective clients. Building your fitness website can be an exciting undertaking with the right platform. It's a wonderful opportunity to consolidate your branding and think about what you want your digital marketing to say about you.
Choosing the right platform to design your site impacts how much time you spend managing it. It also impacts the kind of service you can offer and how well you can connect with prospective clients. A usable, clean, and efficient website is an exceptional method to generate high-quality leads.
It's time to find a partner in your website management process from creation to maintenance. We've got you covered!
Choosing the right platform to design your site impacts how much time you spend managing it. It also impacts the kind of service you can offer and how well you can connect with prospective clients. A usable, clean, and efficient website is an exceptional method to generate high-quality leads.
It's time to find a partner in your website management process from creation to maintenance. We've got you covered!
