Six Mixed Messages Personal Trainers Websites Must Avoid

Written by Fit Geek on December 30, 2008

Have you visited a website that just didn’t feel right?

More than likely you have visited one today, they are everywhere.

The site probably looked alright, reasonable graphics, easy enough to navigate, but you just sat there wondering what you were looking at, and you just didn’t get a warm fuzzy feeling from it, so you simply clicked the back button.

ahhh so cute

When someone visits your site you have about 5 -10 seconds to get your message across to the visitor. It is either what THEY were looking for or NOT what they were looking for. It is really important that in that 5 – 10 seconds that you tell them exactly what they are going to get from your site!

That last sentence is actually really important so re-read it!

This means you cannot be sending mixed signals, or mixed messages.

1. One site that springs to mind is for a local Gym here in Luxembourg. Believe it or not this gym is called “PainWorld”. First of not a great name, unless you where selling hardcore training programs for guys and girls looking to start sweating testosterone at every session. When I last checked they were trying to run a Pilates class… Big mixed message.
   

   Maybe not the image for pilates?

2. Many sites for PTs I have visited over the last few months have been of the generic/boring brochure variety… see my free report for info on this… The problem is whilst your stunning picture of your gratuitous six pack may be the envy of your friends, and bragging rights in the pub, it sends a mixed message to the clients attracted by your post pregnancy service.
   

   The face of post-pregnancy personal training?

3. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter, whilst fantastic tools for making great connections, posting pictures of your drunken weekend antics next to “Read my fat reducing facts report”
   

   Tis a good job Steven Gerrard is not on Facebook as a Personal Trainer

4. The psychology of web design has probably been done better elsewhere, but one of my biggest pet hates is the issue of colours. The dark blues and blacks for the main colour of the background may look “cool”, they not only make the site difficult to read but also do not inspire the same level of trust. Look at pretty much every large corporation who is online; Yahoo, Google, Amazon, etc etc they all have a white background.
5. Clutter is another pet hate! All these sites with so many flashing knobs, bells and whistles, feeds from here, BLOGS, Adverts, Articles, galleries, Links to this and that. And that is just on the front page. Every part of the page is vying for your attention that none of it actually does, it is just noise. The message is indecision and disorganised.
   

   The Million Dollar Webpage - aka Clutter

6. Being all things to all men (and women): We do personal training, bootcamp, pilates, muscle building, tone butt, belly and thighs, over 50s workouts, marathon training, nutritional advice, life coaching blah blah blah. Urm I don’t want a generalist, I want the specialist. Stop hedging your bets and market to the one group you want to work with.

Mixed messages will put off potential clients, make it a black and white choice for your website visitor!

They either want what you are offering or they don’t.

Five Dollars An hour

Written by Fit Geek on December 29, 2008

I have just released my new and controversial report on the state of bootcamps and personal trainers businesses and their websites.

If you want to provide some feedback please do so here.

If you are not on the MyFitGeek Priority Notification list go to the following web page and you can get access to the report from there.

http://www.MyFitGeek.com

Doing Things Differently – Getting Offline

Written by Fit Geek on December 29, 2008

We often get consumed by the technology…  ME more than most, and I get seduced by the power of email autoresponders and sending out “free” broadcast messages to my lists.

One of the things I am going to try is going back to some more traditional “direct-marketing” principles. You know using real postage and send sales letters to my list.

I think, no scrub that, I know that our prospects perception of email is that of apprehension and it takes a lot of effort to build trust and rapport with our prospects. At least with mailing the level of trust ( in my opinion ) is higher.

Problem is the only names and addresses I have are from current and previous clients. So I have spent 20 minutes or so this afternoon creating a web form to collect name and addresse, the client gets sent to this form after filling out the email auto-responder box.

There is just some simple files that are needed to be uploaded to your server and a simple form added to a web page.  A seasoned web developer should be able to do this for 10 dollars…

Stop hiding behind your email autoresponder and start really communicating with your prospects.

Should Your Website Cost You This Much?

Written by Fit Geek on December 10, 2008

It is MyFitGeek, Tim Goodwin here again. I was shocked when my friend Paul told me how much he paid for his website to be built.

When I saw his site I felt really sorry for the guy, it was really not very good, and to make matters worse he had no ability to change it!

He was stuck with it!

1500 British Pounds, which at the time, was about 3000 US dollars for a 7 page website that looked C**P and couldn’t be found on by the search engines.

I understand why Paul had gone down this route to get his site built.

FEAR.

Fear of the unknown, fear of not having control, fear of being screwed, fear of ending up with a bad site. The route he took, he thought, was the ’safe’ option.

It was a local business with an impressive portfolio with some big name businesses on their books, it was the ’safe’ option in Paul’s eyes, but it turned out to be not a great choice.

Today, I had an email from a personal trainer wanting my opinion on the quote he had got for his new website… without going in to the details the quote was in the same ballpark as Paul’s site. My advise was simple, say thanks but no thanks, then walk away.

To give you an idea of what sites SHOULD cost, I am currently managing a project for a new website, it is highly complex with many different aspects. Getting a quote for this site in the developed world would stretch in to 5,000 dollars and more!

I am getting the site done for just 1000 dollars.

One of the fears is dealing with developers or businesses that are not within our locality. What we think are large projects are not to expert teams of developers in India, Pakistan or Eastern European countries. They are simply bread and butter projects to these guys.

As Fitness Professionals we should be taking advantage of the best developers in the world at a price that is much more realistic to our budgets…

It is my opinion you are more likely to be screwed by the guy in your high street, rather the Indian developer trying to make a better living for himself and his family.

Outsource, outsource, outsource.

What is your biggest fear with hiring a developer who is not in the same country, or even the same continent as you? Tell me drop me a comment on this BLOG.

Bootcamp Trainer With The Artistic Talent of a Blind Hedgehog

Written by Fit Geek on December 9, 2008

I am not much of a graphic designer. In fact I have the artistic talents of a blind hedgehog trapped in a paper bag. I suck when it comes to colours, designing logos, photo editing and drawing.

This is why in general I will outsource any graphic elements I need for my websites, flyers and posters.

However I do still use graphics tools. Why?

Like the HTML editing stuff I was talking about yesterday, you don’t need to be a graphic genius to edit and adapt graphics.

I never start from a blank canvas, and neither should you.

When getting graphics created for your website or flyers, always ask the designer to provide the final result in PSD format, as well as JPG or GIF.

PSD is PhotoShop Design format, which is a fairly universal image file format used by designers. It can be a “layered” image file which means each element of the image can be edited. It allows you the ability to change the text, move or remove layers and change fonts, colours etc without having to completely redesign the image.

You’ll need a tool such as Adobe PhotoShop or CorelDraw to do this editing, but these tools will become an important part of your toolkit. Saving you time and money in the long run, for getting minor changes made to graphics.

So the next time you are getting your graphics, logos, flyers or posters created by a graphic designer, make sure you ask for a “layered PSD file” as part of the delivered package.

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Photo editing is a different aspect entirely and something I cover in more detail in the new Group Training Success System program. Including how to do high quality photo editing with a freely available tool