These coaching website tips will help you gauge if your site is performing optimally or if it's time to invest in your business with a new website.
Your website is the most powerful marketing piece you can have for your coaching business. It plays a vital role in whether clients book your services or buy your online course. This valuable piece of marketing is a living document that needs to be maintained to ensure it’s helping, not hindering, your coaching business. If your website isn't pulling its weight, you're leaving money on the table.
How do you know when it's time for a new website? This is a question that I get asked a lot. As a business owner, it can sometimes be difficult to know whether you truly, really need a new website. Do you just have shiny object syndrome or is not having an up-to-date website actually hurting your coaching business?
Is your website leaving money on the table? Let's find out
It's Confusing and Difficult to Navigate
There is no such thing as a confused buyer. And you only have 7 seconds To make an impact and capture your potential client’s attention before they decide to move on.
Navigation
I’m an advocate of less really being more here. If your top navigation is overwhelming or confusing, it could make or break the level of engagement you have on your website. It's important to keep in mind that your navigation impacts search engine ranking, bounce rate, conversion rate, and overall the user experience, or client experience as they engage with your website.
A good test for this would be to put yourself in the shoes of your website users. Are you able to easily discern what call to action you should be taking on each page? Is your navigation uncluttered and easy to use? Bonus points are totes mcgoats given if you use a service like UserTesting.com. (They offer a free trial to submit your website for real world feedback to help create an excellent user experience.)
Why is this new website worthy?
Adjusting navigation changes your site structure. This often requires important steps on the back end of your website, like creating 301 redirects, to make sure Google understands that changes have been made and where it can find the new location of those pages.
New website tip:
Prioritize the most important navigation to your top navigation bar. Those extra links that you removed can now go into your footer, a junk drawer or catch-all for website goodness.
Helpful marketing keywords & their meanings:
- Bounce rate — percentage of single-page visits
- Conversion rate — how often a website visitor books your services, buys your online course, or signs up for your email list
- User experience — the overall experience your visitor has while using your website.
Messaging
The copy you have on your website plays an important role as well. If your messaging doesn't immediately address your ideal client’s struggles, how working with you solves those problems, and if you aren’t painting a crystal clear picture for them of what life looks like after working with you, this is a missed opportunity.
Another instance where messaging can create a poor user experience is when you have sooooo much text on your site. Just keepin’ it real here, but we humans have a very limited attention span and are prone to skimming. A text-heavy site greets your visitor with an impending wall of text, causing them to space out, and either miss that important call to action you want them to take or to jump ship and completely abandon your site altogether.
Why is this new website worthy?
It’s a pain in the boo-tay to try to cram new content into confined spaces. Imagine trying to fit into those freshly washed jeans after putting on holiday+pandemic weight. Yeah. That painful. New copy means a new layout is needed to break up text into digestible, bite-size bits that flow easily into leading your potential client down a path toward working with you.
New website tip:
You don’t have to put eeeeeverything on your website. Nobody wants to be greeted by a wall of text, it’s important to break text up so it’s easier to read. Oftentimes, coaches are far too wordy and use technical jargon or acronyms that mean nothing to their potential client. The ultimate goal is to tell a story with your ideal client as the focus and journey they can expect to embark on when working with you.
Helpful marketing keywords & their meanings:
- Copy — The words or text on your website
- Call to action — The action you want your dream client to take, typically a big, beefy button that they can’t miss
It's Not Mobile-Friendly
Woof. This is a biggie. According to Statista.com, “Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 50.81 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017.” Dang, y’all. That doesn’t even include tablets!
If your website loads ri-donk-u-lously sloooow on mobile or it’s a teeny-tiny version of itself on your phone, you’re asking a lot of your visitors. Maybe they’ll remember to look at your site on their laptop/desktop. Maybe they won’t think it’s worth the effort. That’s not a risk your coaching business needs to take.
Why is this new website worthy?
Not having a mobile responsive website is definitely hurting your business. You're essentially preventing half of all web traffic from learning about your online coaching goodness.
Helpful marketing keywords & their meanings:
- Mobile responsive — same thing as mobile friendly. If your website is kind to folks using their phones, *cough* make it simple to use *cough*, it’s mobile responsive.
Visitors Aren’t Engaging
The biggest indicator here is whether people are downloading your freebie to join your email list, booking your services, or buying your products or online course.
Google Analytics is the all-seeing sage to consult to tell if your website is pulling its weight. What stats are worth looking at? Average session duration, bounce rate, and conversion rate.
Why is this new website worthy?
There are so many factors that impact your website analytics. Everything from site load time, site speed, user experience, messaging, visuals… this list goes on. This is a clear sign that your website isn’t pulling its weight and needs to be addressed.
Helpful marketing keywords & their meanings:
- Average Session Duration — average length of all website visitors combined
Your Website Isn’t Providing Leads or Clients for You
“Silly goose! That’s the same as ‘visitors aren’t engaging’.” Au contraire, mon friend! Does your website even have a way to gather leads? Do you offer a freebie for visitors to download so they can join your email list and establish a path to getting to know/like/trust you? Do you have a way for interested clients to get the ball rolling and book your services or buy your course/product?
Why is this new website worthy?
Your time and gift is far too valuable to not be helping clients. Automate the process of generating leads and booking clients with your website so that you can focus your attention on your clients instead of worrying about manual grind of prospecting in those Facebook groups. It’s fine to get scrappy when you’re first starting out, but that’s not sustainable long term.
Making content updates is painful
There's a big difference between being forced to hire a developer to make your website updates (because it’s excruciatingly difficult) or choosing to hire a developer (because you’d rather spend your time in your zone of genius). Or maybe you haven’t touched your website in ages because you’d rather have a root canal than edit or add updates. If you have to hire NASA to go into your website’s backend every time you want to add a blog post, edit text, or swap out an image, it's time for a new website.
Content Management Systems or CMSs make it super simple to publish a new blog post or upload new images. This puts you back in charge of your website and totes mcgoats in control of the content that goes on it, making it easy-peasy to maintain. So no need to take out a 2nd mortgage on your house to hire that rocket scientist to update your homepage header image.
Webflow (the platform I use to build all my coaching client websites) has made it super easy for me to create multiple content collections for my clients, something that WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace don’t allow. On a recent website design for one of my clients, they not only have the ability to add new blog content, they can also easily add new team members (or remove them), new reviews and testimonials, and even new top bar content for announcements or freebies.
Why is this new website worthy?
Keeping her website up to date and add a new blog content is an excellent source of boosting your website SEO. If you're not able to do this easily, this is a huge hindrance to your business.
Helpful marketing keywords & their meanings:
- Website backend — Think of this as the guts of your website or the wizard behind the curtain that makes it work
- Content Management Systems or CMSs — Think of this as the bucket that holds your information, typically blog posts, and helps you to create, edit, and publish new content
- Top bar content — you know when you go to a website and you have that persistent bar at the top of the page that either tells you about cookies and how much you should enjoy them or download that freebie? Or maybe a notification that changes have come to this particular business? This top bar is helpful in grabbing your visitor’s eye to alert them to important info.
Your branding and/or business strategy has changed and outgrown what's on your website
This is the most common reason I see for needing a new website. You’re ready to level-up, raise your rates, start a group program, and attract high-end clients. But your website doesn’t convey the same high-end look and feel as the high quality service you provide and you’re embarrassed to give out your URL. You’re definitely leaving money on the table and creating a vast disconnect with your target audience by having an inconsistent brand.
If the following have changed, it’s time for new site:
- Services offered have changed
- Your skill level improved
- Prices increased
- Audience (ideal client) has changed
Why is this new website worthy?
Leaving money on the table is a big deal. But also, it’s difficult to be taken seriously as a high-end coach with a website that doesn’t represent you in that manner. The disconnect this causes in potential clients only puts doubt in their minds, and they’ll move on to a more professional looking coach.
🎵 And you may ask yourself... 🎵
((queue the Talking Heads))
Next Steps:
Some food for thought: It’s entirely possible for you to fix the website issues that ail you. But if more than three of the aforementioned issues resonate with you, it’s likely time to stop plugging holes on a sinking ship and invest in a new website that will help propel your business toward profits. After all, investing in your business is absolutely an investment in yourself. Your website should be your greatest asset and your best advocate, not an embarrassment that you’re afraid for clients to find. It’s time to stop leaving money on the table.
