3 Costly Mistakes On Your Fitness Website

There’s a stat about customer buying trends that should have you a bit worried. Especially if your fitness website isn’t up to date. What is it?

Your customers are making 60% of their buying decisions before ever interacting with you! 

If you’re not adding great content and clearly communicating your message to potential customers online it’s 100% guaranteed that you’re losing leads and revenue in the process.

Your customers are making 60% of their buying decisions before ever  interacting with you.

Not being tech savvy is no longer an excuse! There are too many options for you to quickly and easily put up a great looking fitness website that has all the elements you need to get more clients.

Each week there are at least 3-4 requests in my mailbox asking me to review a sales page or look over a new website for someone.

Here are the common mistakes to avoid that are costing you customers (and maybe more!).

Mistake #1: Your website sells to everyone.

It should be extremely clear who your ideal client is, and what you can do for them on your website.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. If I was looking for [RESULT YOU GIVE YOUR CLIENTS] what would I need to see immediately to get my attention?
2. Is it clear what actions I can take, and where they will take me?
3. Does the headline on my main page and the images speak directly to my ideal client?
4. What is the objective or call to action for each page? What is the next step I want them to take?

Once you’ve combed through your site in the eyes of your Ideal Client, go get some feedback from your leads. Ask your list to review your site and give you some insight on what’s clear and what’s confusing. (It’s always so much harder to see from an inside perspective.)

You’ll be surprised how much you will learn from listening to what they want and need.

The time this can be a challenge is if you have multiple core offers such as fat-loss personal training and sports performance. Or group training vs. personal training.

If that’s the case take the extra steps on your homepage to make it clear to the reader where they go for more information and how I know which one is right for me.  That can be done with pictures and a small amount of copy.

For example appeal to group environment with images of the type of culture and community you have in your gym and the types of people you generally have in the groups. Then have a picture of personal training with a client working with a trainer. Our brains process images 60,000 times faster than it can read text, so having compelling images is a must.

Our brains process images 60,000 times faster than it can process text, so having compelling images will improve your user experience.

Another relatively easy ways to let your site visitors know if you can help people like them is to add key testimonials to your front page describing specific results.  Usually 1-3 testimonials will get the job done. Need some help with testimonials? Check out our Free Killer Testimonial template.

Mistake #2: The site talks more about the business than the customer.

This is a mistake you see all the time!  The site is built around the personality of the trainer or the business owner instead of focusing on the needs and wants of the reader (more importantly the ideal client).

We’ve all been on that date with that person that talked about themselves the entire time and never showed an interest in us. Don’t be that person online. 😉

Sure, there is some validity to adding your own story, especially if you have accomplished what your ideal client wants to accomplish. It’s definitely important to establish your credibility and authority.

However, that can be done other ways. To get and keep your reader’s attention make sure you focus on the solutions they are looking for at various stages in their journey.

Here’s a quick post to help you organize your content:
https://frnation.com/the-5-step-fitness-sales-funnel/

If you post enough great content your audience will recognize you as a credible authority. You can also use banners on your site that don’t up a lot of room to show where you’ve been published or places you’ve spoken.

When you write out your bio, turn it into a story. A story for you, your business and your brand will carry more weight than your list of credentials and accomplishments. Stories engage people and give you a platform to add some purpose to what you do without seeming cheesy.

Mistake #3: There are ZERO obvious next steps for the visitor.

Each page of your fitness website needs to have an objective or purpose. In the marketing world, we call this a call to action. You are essentially giving visitors an opportunity to take action.

There are NO EXCEPTIONS!

Here are some examples of objectives:

• Click to another page (so they spend more time on your site)
• Opt in/give you more info (so you can send them email marketing)
• Buy something (generates revenue)
• Inform and take the next step (so you can build more credibility, and keep them in the pipeline)

The majority of readers (if not all) are skimming and reading your site quickly.  Make your calls to action stand out, and make them glaringly obvious. Be explicit in your instructions as well.

The majority of readers (if not all) are skimming your site.

To make your calls to action stand out, here are some rules to follow:

• Add big buttons with words that promote actions (Buy Now, Get Instant Access, Download Now, Watch Video, etc.)
• Try and make your call to action as close to what they are actually doing. If they are watching a video, use “Watch Video Now” rather than a generic “Click Here.” (Plus on average about 50% of your audience is reading on smart phones so they are actually “tapping.”)
• Don’t use underlines unless it’s a hyperlink, people are trained to click on underlined words or text on websites.
• If you want someone to do something, you need to tell them specifically. If they are watching a video, use “Watch Video Now” rather than a generic “Click Here.” (example: Read more about fat loss nutrition by clicking over to this post LINK)
• Use bold and different color text to make call to actions stand out.
• Don’t confuse your readers with images that look like videos, and other items that promote a click but don’t actually have a hyperlink.

Following these simple rules will help lead your audience down the path to the next step.

Summary

There are millions of things you can test and optimize on a fitness website to improve conversions. But, before you get into the details make sure you get the basics down. Getting the basics right will help you stand out from 99% of your competition, and help you get more clients.

That other 1% probably isn’t worth messing with for your business.

Here’s the 3 mistakes you can easily avoid with a few simple actions:

• Selling to everyone
• Talking more about yourself than the customer
• No clear call to actions 

With these tips, you can start to comb through the main pages of your site to see what you can clean up and change right away to get more leads and clients.