How many people who visited your site last month booked an NSI?
Most gym owners have no idea.
But if I asked 500 gym owners, “Who has a great website?” almost all of them would put up their hands. Here’s why most of them are wrong.
Your website should not be judged on its art.
The purpose of a website is to convert your lead traffic to in-person consultations.
Your website’s purpose is not to showcase your creativity. It’s not to list your options or tell your prices or share your schedule or brag about your equipment. It’s not even to show your coaches’ bios. Prospects don’t care about any of that stuff, even though you do. People care about themselves. Your website should tell them how you’re going to solve their problem.
Think of your website as a boat in the middle of the ocean. You bring fish to the boat using paid ads, word-of-mouth, Affinity marketing, and all of your other attraction media. Then the boat brings the fish to dock. Then you eat.
Any messaging, pictures or videos on your website that don’t serve that purpose? They’re extra weight. Sometimes they sink the boat.
Your site should give just enough information to lead a client to book a No-Sweat Intro. That includes a few testimonials, and a description of how you’ll solve their problem. That’s it.
In fact, our head of marketing, John Franklin, argues that most gym websites shouldn’t even list their programs. Listing “CrossFit, BootCamp, CrossFit Lite, SweatRx…” and other options actually stops a prospective client from clicking through, because the site is asking them to figure out what they need before they decide. That’s backward. A client should ask her coach what to do.
Clients aren’t interested in your “playground”. No one’s googling “best gym community in Middleton”. Cut your website back to the bare bones; say less; tell them how you’ll solve their specific problem. Then forge elite fitness with constantly varied functional programming in a supportive community that feels like a sport.
Good websites are more science than art. If you’re not tracking data from your site, how can you know if it’s good?
