Have you ever wondered what makes a personal trainer website successful? It's tempting to believe that the design is the most important thing, or the navigation, or even the position of the sign up forms on your site. Heck, that's what most designers want you to believe.
However, potential leads who land on your website are typically on a fact finding mission and while the design does give a great first impression, our job as the website designer is to invite them to find those pieces of information quickly and easily.
User experience > Design
If you want to create a successful website for your fitness business, it's imperative that you identify YOUR client needs, preferences and design your website pages based on how THEY consume information and what THEIR next logical step would be when landing on any of the pages of your personal training website. Or in other words...
Design a website based on what your clients need to see, not on what you want to see.
With that in mind, we identified four essential ingredients that make a successful fitness websites and summed them up as "the 4 C's". Here they are.
User experience > Design
If you want to create a successful website for your fitness business, it's imperative that you identify YOUR client needs, preferences and design your website pages based on how THEY consume information and what THEIR next logical step would be when landing on any of the pages of your personal training website. Or in other words...
Design a website based on what your clients need to see, not on what you want to see.
With that in mind, we identified four essential ingredients that make a successful fitness websites and summed them up as "the 4 C's". Here they are.
1. Competence
Competence is the number one factor in the hierarchy of success of your fitness website. If you want to move forward in your fitness business, you need to show you that you can do what you say you can do. You need to show that you can get the results you will ultimately promise a client you can get them.
Being competent isn’t enough though. You also need to get got good at proving you're competent. Personal trainers that fail to show they're qualified, experiences and results based, even if they are, end up as a negative statistic.
Competence is displayed on your personal trainer website in many ways. In order of value:
1st Party Written Testimonials
These are testimonials that have been added directly to your site and are probably the least valuable form of proof because they can be so easily faked.
3rd Party Written Testimonials
If you can embed testimonials from a third party site like Facebook and TrustPilot, the association with that third party increases the authenticity of the testimonial.
Check out these embedded Facebook reviews we added to our clients website to bump up their competence score.
Being competent isn’t enough though. You also need to get got good at proving you're competent. Personal trainers that fail to show they're qualified, experiences and results based, even if they are, end up as a negative statistic.
Competence is displayed on your personal trainer website in many ways. In order of value:
1st Party Written Testimonials
These are testimonials that have been added directly to your site and are probably the least valuable form of proof because they can be so easily faked.
3rd Party Written Testimonials
If you can embed testimonials from a third party site like Facebook and TrustPilot, the association with that third party increases the authenticity of the testimonial.
Check out these embedded Facebook reviews we added to our clients website to bump up their competence score.
Image Testimonials
Probably the most used form of testimonials and for good reason. A before and after image shows what you can do, but it still doesn’t hold the most value.
We used the images testimonials from this personal trainer to create a whole page of eye opening before and after shots along with 1st party testimonials.
Video Testimonials
A video of a real person talking about their experience with you is the most reliable type of testimonial you can get, especially when the video is well made.
We embedded several YouTube videos on to this personal trainer website to really showcase their client testimonials.
Your job, as the owner and marketer of your fitness business, is to make sure you have a system in place to collect these testimonials.
The more competence you can show, the less of the other C's you need.
2. Convenience
Have you ever shopped at a more expensive store because they were either closer or on route between destinations? Or stopped at a service station and purchased a massively overpriced sandwich? People pay for convenience, so it’s important to showcase how convenient your business is on your website.
Are you located in the right place? Do you clearly state your location throughout your site? Do you offer on-site parking? Is it easy to find? Is your facility located centrally or out of town? Be sure to list your location in the main headers of your website, add a contact page to your navigation menu and show your position on a map.
This is how we set up a typical Contact page for our Managed Website clients:
If you're an online personal trainer, do you use technology your clients are familiar with? Can they access their workouts easily? Can they log their nutrition without disrupting their meal? Screenshots or video of how your app works can help potential clients to see how convenient your online personal training services are.
While convenience is important, people will still travel further and spend more time downloading your app, the more competence you can show.
3. Cost
Whether we like it or not, personal training is still considered a luxury item, so the price is one of the main deciding factors when choosing a personal trainer.
Be sure to list your prices on your website or you run the risk of not being considered by a potential client as they create a list of potential personal trainers to hire.
If you can't list a price, consider adding a price range so that potential clients know what to expect when signing up with you.
Be sure to list your prices on your website or you run the risk of not being considered by a potential client as they create a list of potential personal trainers to hire.
If you can't list a price, consider adding a price range so that potential clients know what to expect when signing up with you.
RELATED: 5 Reasons to List Your Prices on Your Personal Trainer Website
If you’re not sure what you would charge someone because you need to know more about them, state a “from” price to make sure you get on that list. Remember, people don’t like feeling as though they’re being sold the highest rate based on what they can afford, so transparency is key.
If you want to charge more, people will pay more for competence and convenience.
4. Character
People buy into people. That's the foundation of buying and selling in any industry for small businesses. Until you have a widely recognisable brand, like Beachbody or The Body Coach, many of your prospective clients will put their money where they feel they can relate to the trainer, to their clients and their company values.
The easiest way to add character to your website is through your website copy and your About page. While the purpose of the other pages of your website may limit how much information and in what form you can present, your bio and About page is your playground to be personable and relatable for your visitors.
RELATED: How to Create a Personal Trainer About Page
Here's one we designed for one of our clients. Notice how although the logos make the trainer look authoritative, the actual content is focused on how he can help the client.
The easiest way to add character to your website is through your website copy and your About page. While the purpose of the other pages of your website may limit how much information and in what form you can present, your bio and About page is your playground to be personable and relatable for your visitors.
RELATED: How to Create a Personal Trainer About Page
Here's one we designed for one of our clients. Notice how although the logos make the trainer look authoritative, the actual content is focused on how he can help the client.
It's the best place to open up, share your story, and share the philosophy and methods of your fitness business. If you can tie it in with your client's success stories, you can strengthen the competence you demonstrate in your testimonials and generate an even higher level of trust in your services.
Bringing It All Together
A good website designer will have the experience and knowledge to be able to piece together your 4 C's to create a beautiful personal trainer website with evidence based user experience at it's core.
