The job of coaches is to share their knowledge and train others in a specific skill area. That is why they have become so important in this modern age. Employees, freelancers and teams use the services of coaches in order to sharpen their skills or develop new skills.
In the digital age, it has become very easy to learn a new skill.
If you are a coach, why not create your own coaching website? In this article, I’ll show you how to create a coaching website.
The advantages of a coaching website
Having a coaching website offers key benefits to coaches of all persuasions. Here I have summarized the most important points:
- A coaching website serves as a digital business card
Your website contains the most important information about your coaching business. It is indexed by search engines so that you can be found by your potential/future customers. Your site address is used on printed materials and social media.
- The website generates inbound leads and customers.
Interested people find your homepage and write you in order to book a session or ask questions. This aspect is operational as soon as the coaching website is live.
- You can gain subscribers for your newsletter
Even in the age of social media, newsletters are among the best marketing channels. If you publish unique content on your site, through a blog for example, interested people will subscribe to the newsletter. This allows you to directly target a potential customer base to advertise your new offerings.
- You can promote and sell information products through your website
In addition to personal coaching services, informational products can equally be sold on the website. Such products (video courses or a PDF brochure) are created once and distributed over the long term. This opens up a passive source of income. In addition, it allows the coach to generate gains beyond their limited working hours.
We also offer website building guides for many other industries:
- Create a hairdresser website.
- Create a photographer’s website.
- Create a website for a medical office
- Create a dentist website.
- Create a real estate website
- Create a website for a restaurant.
- Create a craftsman website.
Offer coaching sessions on your website during the COVID-19 pandemic
With the coronavirus crisis, many industries have come to a standstill.
What if it was time for you to review your coaching methods?
Indeed, your clients can still enjoy your sessions, even during confinement. As a coach, you can continue to generate income by offering your coaching services by videoconference. Added to this is the sale of informational products that complement your program.
How to create a coaching website: which path is right for me?
There are several ways to create a coaching website and they differ in three key areas:
- Control in the design and optimization
- The effort in creation
- The cost of creation
The three areas are not independent of each other but interrelated: increased control leads to greater efforts and therefore higher costs. On the other hand, less effort reduces costs and results in a less well-optimized site.
A successful website must have several dimensions attached to it:
- Design
- Content
- SEO
- Performance
Since effort is limited, a website is always a compromise. For beginners, it is almost impossible to follow and evaluate the different aspects correctly. This is why it is useful to consult experts.
In the table below, I have summarized the different ways to create a coaching website for you.
| Advantages | Disadvantages | Difficulty | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website creation tool | Quick creation; maintenance included | Little control; can be difficult to optimize | Weak | Cheap |
| Website design service | Professional support; maintenance included | Operating costs | Weak | Medium |
| Content Management System (CMS) | Solid base for long term use; good level of control; themes and plugins available for free | Can be difficult to optimize; may incur running costs for maintenance | Medium/High | Cheap |
| Agencies & Freelancers | Support by professionals; perfection | High costs | Very little | Expensive |
Create a coaching website with a website builder
The easiest and fastest way to design your own coaching website is to use a website builder. It allows you to create individual pages easily and no programming knowledge is required.
Depending on the tool used, this approach will result in a more or less optimized site.
Although the customization options are limited, this method is perfect if you want to get your site online quickly.
Build a Coaching Website with a Professional Web Design Service
Professional web design services go beyond the website builder tool. These are also based on a prefabricated model.
However, the development of the coaching website is entrusted to experts. They bring valuable experience to the project and implement the most important optimizations.
Simplifying the process saves costs but comes at the expense of customization.
Create a coaching website with a content management system
If you want to have full control of your coaching website, using a Content Management System (CMS) is a good idea. Installed on a server, it can be entirely self-managed.
WordPress has established itself as the standard among many CMS. You will find a wide range of themes, plugins and specialists to help you build and maintain your site in the WordPress ecosystem.
In addition to WordPress, there are many other content management systems that are suitable for building a coaching website. It can therefore be interesting to compare the different CMS. For example, the free software “Grav” is an interesting alternative. It is a “Flat File CMS” which does not need a database, making it faster and safer. Grav works anywhere you can install WordPress and is especially suitable for small websites.
Using a CMS to build your own coaching website can seem like a breeze. However, there are risks.
Certainly, it is possible to get started quickly, but we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the process. This is because the approach of cobbling together a website out of a dozen plugins doesn’t work that well in practice. Although it is possible for beginners to create a website with a CMS, it may not perform as well as expected due to a lack of optimization.
It is sometimes very frustrating to find that, despite your best efforts, your site does not perform as well as you expected.
Create a website for coaching with an agency or a freelancer
Do you want a personalized coaching website?
Then entrust the development of your website to a team of experts. They help meet the highest standards of site optimization and create a unique design. However, the high effort and expertise required translates is synonymous to high costs.
Depending on the requirements, a CMS can also be used for this variant. Another interesting alternative to WordPress is “Craft CMS”. This solution is particularly well suited for multilingual coaching websites.
Using a Static Site Generator (SSG) can also be an alternative. Of all the approaches, SSGs tend to provide the best performance at the finished site level.
What pages are needed for a coaching website?
When creating your coaching website, you must ensure that you have all the necessary pages, no more and no less. You have to guide visitors intelligently through the different pages.
For this purpose, so-called call-to-action (or CTAs) are used. They facilitate navigation for the visitor and encourage him to discover more. More pages mean more complexity.
Experience has shown that the following basic page framework works well for a coaching website. You can also set individual pages as entries in the main menu. The most important entries should be placed at the beginning and end:
- Home page (accessible in the menu via the logo)
- Services (first entry in main menu)
- About page
- Blog (optional)
- Contact form
- Booking (as a button in the menu)
Less important links can be placed at the bottom of the page (footer). These include links to the privacy policy, legal notices, etc.
Home page
The homepage serves as the foundation for your coaching website. Here you will find a brief overview of the different sections of the site.
With a well-placed call-to-action (CTA) elements, you can easily guide the site visitor.
It is equally important to have an attractive teaser with a photo at the top of the page. Also, feel free to place reviews and ratings from your customers further down the homepage.
Services page
After the homepage, this is the most important page, because it is where you present your services. Focus on how your customers benefit from your trainings. It’s also a good idea to include some testimonials from satisfied customers. Do not forget to integrate a CTA to facilitate the booking of services.
For particularly popular and/or lucrative services, create landing pages. These are highly optimized pages focused on a specific offer. By choosing specific keywords, you bring interested visitors to the homepage of your coaching website. It then becomes easy for your customers to take advantage of your offer and this contributes to the optimization of the conversion rate. In this way, landing pages can become the engine of your business.
Landing pages are also great for selling informational products. Create a PDF brochure or video course and offer it as a digital product at a reasonable price. Prices usually range between $20 and $50. If your informational product offers great added value, you may make a substantial inflow of money through it.
“About” page
Coaches are in personal contact with their clients. It is therefore important that your website reflects your experience and seriousness. You want to inspire confidence in the visitor.
Highlight your qualifications with an “About” page.
What else could make a visitor want to become a customer?
To reflect your personality, you can reveal details of your private life here. If you are into sports or play in a band, mention it.
Blog
This section of the site is optional because maintaining a blog requires a lot of effort. However, it opens up interesting possibilities for content marketing.
You can post articles on relevant topics, as well as showcase interesting collaborations and projects. Consider including a form that allows visitors to sign up for your newsletter. You can increase the conversion rate by offering the visitor an informational product in exchange for their email address.
Contact page
Basically, you have two ways to present your contact information on your coaching website:
- Visible at all times at the bottom of the page.
- Placed on a specific contact page.
There are several advantages to using a separate contact page. For example, the page may be hidden from search engines. This basic measure helps protect your personal contact information from web crawlers.
Additionally, page visit can be set as a conversion goal. This makes it easier to optimize your site from a marketing perspective.
You should always include the following contact details:
- Physical address: this builds trust and demonstrates your seriousness. If you allow indexing of the contact page, it is advisable to use microdata to perform local SEO.
- Phone number: enter the number through which your customers can reach you. If you prefer to be contacted by Messenger, equally let them know. Place your telephone number as a link with the “protocol” ‚tel:’ so that it can be directly called.
- Email address or form: You must always provide an email address, even if you prefer to use an email form. Make it easy for the visitor to use their preferred way to contact you.
In addition to the contact page, it’s good to include some contact information at the bottom of your coaching website. If you are present on social networks, create a link to your different profiles. This makes it easier for potential customers to connect and share your content. Additionally, profiles serve as social proof and can open up relationship opportunities.
Also place links to the following pages at the bottom of your site:
- Legal notice, privacy policy and, where applicable, general conditions
- Newsletter subscription
- Booking page
Booking page
This is where your visitors can book your services.
The question here is whether you want to publicly display your prices because it is often better to make an individual offer to a customer. However, you can equally give a price range or show prices for certain services.
If you offer one-on-one sessions or a free initial consultation, you should consider including a scheduling service. Thus, potential customers can easily take an appointment.
If you offer coaching via video conferencing, be available on multiple channels or video conferencing software. Be flexible and meet the customer where they are. Overall, the goal is to make the booking process as smooth and easy as possible. Create a sober page so as not to distract the visitor: this has been proven to increase conversion rates.
How to create an online coaching website: step by step
Follow the steps below to create your online coaching website:
- Choosing the right domain name for your coaching website
- Determine the design of your coaching website
- Prepare and integrate content for your online presence.
- Optimize, publish and promote coaching website when going live
Choosing the right domain name for your coaching website
Choosing the right domain name depends on your own preferences and how you work. You can use your own name as the domain and thus focus on your brand. On the other hand, it may be worth mentioning your coaching field; this makes it easier to find you in search engines. In any case, keep an eye on the competition and try to stand out.
There are also many things to consider when choosing a top-level domain (TLD). If you want to cover your local market, a domain ending in .your_area is a good choice. In order to position yourself internationally, a .com domain makes more sense. You should still register both to avoid confusion and protect your trademark. An interesting alternative is registering a .coach domain.
If you already own a domain, you should definitely keep it. When your new coaching website goes live, create a redirect from the old domain to the new one to maintain your current search engine rankings. Make sure you have a valid SSL certificate for the new domain. It is recommended to use HTTPS on your entire site from the start.
Domaine Check
Choose the right design.
The design of your coaching website should be based on your company’s graphic charter. It should include at least three elements:
- Logo
- Font
- Color scheme
Prefer a sober design in order to inspire confidence.
You will equally need a professionally created logo in SVG vector format. If your graphic designer decides to use an open-source font, use it for your website. Blue, green and orange are colors that will reinforce the emotional branding of your brand.
Finally, in order for your site to displays correctly on all devices, opt for a responsive website.
Prepare and integrate content for your coaching website..
For a coach, it is particularly important to show his personality and seriousness in order to gain the trust of potential clients. So, you can use photos with your already acquired customers and share short and concise texts.
Consider optimizing your images for Google. Videos are also great for personalizing your content, but they require a bit more effort.
When describing your offer, emphasize its benefits to customers.
Another interesting solution is the creation of landing pages for personalized services. Optimize them with specific keywords to attract customers through search engines.
Any professional website needs legal and regulation notices such as: privacy policy, legal notices and, general conditions of sale. It is strongly recommended to call upon specialists to write and regularly update these texts. Of course, you may incur serious warnings if the changes in the legal requirements are not respected.
Optimize, publish and promote your coaching website
Before you upload your coaching website, make sure it is error-free.
Also, configure “Google Analytics” (or similar software) and “Google Search Console”. This will allow you to monitor your site from the start so you can act quickly if action is needed.
You will equally need to regularly check the performance of your new site and optimize the loading time.
In order to promote your coaching site, list it in online business directories. This can help you get valuable backlinks. If you offer local services, it will be a good idea to be referenced on Google Maps. Thus, you strengthen your local SEO and increase the chances of attracting new customers from your neighborhood.
Finally, promote your coaching website online and on social media. If you have a profile for your coaching business, send an invitation to your followers to come check out your new site. It is also advisable to share your new address in professional networks such as LinkedIn and Xing. Join specific groups where your expertise is sought. Take part in the discussions that take place there. This will give you more opportunities to share a link to your brand new website.