Best Fitness Website Tips from a Copywriter

A website is one of the greatest marketing tools you have as a fitness business owner. However, not all websites are created equal. If it’s missing vital features, it could end up hurting your business. I work on Zen Planner’s website team as a copywriter, so I get the opportunity to work with fitness business websites every day. If you are building a site or thinking about building one, here are some best fitness website tips I can offer you.

Layout:

Your website will be the first experience many prospective members have with your fitness business. It must make a good impression, as this can be a make or break for them coming in to check out a class.

• Keep it simple! Clean and easy to navigate designs will stand out and look more professional than a cluttered screen. Make sure you are using a well-organized and simple layout.
• If you already have photos, use them to determine your design. Do they have any trends such as background/accent colors, landscape versus portrait, etc.? Need photos? Determine the look and feel you are going for and pick pictures based on that.

Get your checklist, 10 Things Your Gym Website Must Have

Pictures and Visual Aids:

The next thing people will look at is your visual content. In most cases this will be photos of you and your facility which will help define the personality of your business. They are the best way to show the persona of your business and allow you to stand out. I highly recommend investing in high-quality pictures. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring an expensive photographer, but make sure you have pictures that accurately depict your business.

• Your pictures need good lighting that looks natural. Try to avoid unwanted heavy shadows, washed out photos, unnatural skin tones, flat or low lit colors and unwanted blur.
• Make sure your pictures are big enough to be blown up on a screen without pixelating. It’s always easier to size down a photo than to try and work with one that is too small.
• Stock photos can be a good alternative if you are building a website or need to freshen up your old site. However, stock photos are provided to the masses so they might not be able to truly show what your business offers or match your branding. Keep in mind that whoever if building your site does not have unlimited stock photos. These images are purchased for use so choices might be pared down based on the client base they serve.
• Make sure you have a clean logo design. Similar to the layout, you don’t want something busy and hard to recognize. If you have to explain it, it probably won’t work well. Choose colors for your logo that are universal and pleasing across multiple mediums, shirts, web, etc. so that you have cohesive branding.
• When placing your logo on your site, allocate space for the logo and space for the photos. Treat them as their own separate entity. If you want your logo included in a photo it tends to be a cleaner and more authentic look to photograph clients in front of the logo or wearing apparel with the logo versus super imposing the logo over the photo.

Content:

Now that you have a good visual display to keep visitors on your site, it’s time to pull them in with your content.

• Provide enough content to explain the basic W’s (who, what, when, where, why) but again, keep it simple. You want your personality to shine through but also want to get to the point and answer the questions people are asking. If it’s too long, people will not read it.
• What makes you different from your competition? With the internet, if a client isn’t finding what they want on one site, they can easily search for someone else. It’s important that you quickly get to the point of what you can offer that others cannot.
• Make it easy for patrons to get to the bottom of questions. Provide a way to contact you with additional questions that might arise.

Embeds:

Embeds are way to make it easy for clients to contact you, sign up and find your business, as well as step up the professionalism of your business. More and more people are avoiding picking up their phones and looking sign up or get what they need online.

• Look for embeds that integrate well with your software. All embeds with Zen Planner connect directly to the backend so you are up-to-date on all changes.
• No matter what software you are using, general embeds I recommend are:
  • Contact Us form
  • Google Map
  • Sign Up form for memberships/services/ free trails and appointments (if offered)
  • If you do workout tracking, include daily workouts and results for members to keep them engaged and coming back to your site.

Your website will be the first experience many prospective members have with your fitness business. It must make a good impression, as this can be a make or break for them coming in to check out a class.

Time:

No matter who is building your site, understand that it takes time to build one. Things that need to happen when building a site include:

• Obtaining content; written, logos and photos
• Allocating server space with whoever is hosting your site
• When building a site with Zen Planner we partition our database for your new site
• Build the framework including theme installation, page framework and customization, navigation setup, link embeds to the proper channels
• Route DNS. Zen Planner sites go through Cloud Flare and are set up with an SSL for proper security of your site and protection for your clients.
• Once your site is up, time to maintain your site should also be factored into your business plan. This includes domain updates, backing up your site, watching for outages, testing website speed, software and security updates, content changes and updates, ongoing search engine optimization and the list goes on.

If you are setting up a site with Zen Planner, we help you address these issues to get you the best site for your fitness business. Please reach out to us with any questions if you are interested in learning more!

Interested in learning exactly what your fitness website needs? Get your copy of our free checklist, 10 Things Your Gym Website Must Have.