Is Your Website Hurting Your Gym?

There an infinite number of online coaches, fitness centers, globo gyms, CrossFit boxes, and strength and conditioning specialty centers on the internet, and the competition in your neighborhood may be pretty stiff. Your business’ website is its first impression. And, there a ton of website design services out there who know you need a presence on the internet if you are to compete with your neighbors, but do they really know what its like to be a gym owner (we do!)? Are you a gym owner and you know that its time to re-evaluate your website but haven’t had the time? Is your website hurting your gym?Here are a few key items you can audit on your own to determine if your website is not helping you grow your business as it should.

Where Are Your Leads Going?

The BIGGEST mistake you can do have your leads email you. Missing a lead’s email amongst the hundred you get a day from companies who want to sell their products in your gym, companies who do sell products in your gym, the newsletters you sneakily subscribe to from your competitors just to see what they are doing, questions from existing members about their plans, pausing, when is the next 6-week challenge, etc. can mean missing the opportunity to bring in thousands of dollars into your business over time. And what happens when you miss that email? Your prospect joins another gym down the road and tells their friends that you never got back to them. Ouch.

Where Should Your Leads Go?

Your leads should go from a simple Contact Us form to your lead management system. Whether you use a lead management feature in your gym management software or a specialty company like Box Builder, this is the best way to prevent that lead from slipping through the cracks. Your lead management system should notify you right away that your lead/contact us form has been filled out. Odds are, if that person just filled out the form, they are by their computer or on their mobile device, so you know if you call them within the next few minutes, odds are they are likely to pick up…and a quick response time is an impressive first impression.

If you don’t hear from a lead within a few days, you will be able to easily find them in a lead system rather than finding them weeks later buried under pages of other emails. And don’t rely on people to call you. Playing phone tag is a waste of time for both parties, and if you are using a gym management software that has lead management functionality, they will not be in your system unless you manually enter them (and your time is most valuable on the gym floor or marketing). Only having a first name, maybe a last name, and a phone number as the only means of contact isn’t enough. Email, and maybe more info like what time is the best to contact or what their goals/interested classes are, maybe ideal for your business. Make your form easy to use. They should be able to see your contact form easily and enter in their information quickly whether they are on a laptop or a mobile device.

Are You Presenting A Clear And Easy Way To Sign Up?

As we have blogged about before, you have less than a minute to get a lead from clicking your site to clicking a call to action. Long gone are the days when people not just surfed the net but surfed a site. Creating an intriguing yet complicated to navigate site to get the clicks to improve your SEO is history, like carbs are bad history. SEO is supposed to help you gain visitors with the optimal goal of generating sales revenue. Getting people to visit your site only to bail when there’s too much going on is not. You will lose conversions because society today is a one click world. Look at how successful Amazon is – their app has taken over e-commerce because you can easily find the product you want, and one click buy it. Too many colors, too much text, pop ups and banners flying across the screen are antiquated. Relaying important information about who you are, what you sell, and why someone should join your gym should be fast and simple. The user experience should be:

• Home page – identify who you are as a gym and what you do.
• Main Menu- Tell your lead where they start their journey on your site.
• Easy to find the classes you offer with a sign up or purchase to buy on the page. Your Call To Action (ie. Sign Up here) buttons should be big buttons, not links or small colorless buttons. Big. You want Big.

If you would like to talk shop or find out more on what you can do to improve your conversion rate by effectively using your website as a sales platform, I would be more than happy to chat with you.