February 4, 2012

Six Mixed Messages Personal Trainers Websites Must Avoid

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

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?

    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?

    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

    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

    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.

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Is WordPress The Solution To Your Website Woes?

It is MyFitGeek – Tim Goodwin here. Have you been literally tearing you hair out over your bootcamp or personal training website? If you have seen a picture of me lately you’ll have seen I have none left on my head :o ) squeak!

This morning I was going out of my mind with the 12 days of fitness website, that I am helping Dax Moy with this year…

Something wasn’t right, it displayed fine on FireFox browser but it was all over the place in Internet Explorer…

Anyway, it made think about one of the questions I got last week about WordPress and using it as the basis for a website. I have had in the past wordpress site for an information product I had.

Whilst the site looked good and and maintained a common look throughout, I did get frustrated by the lack of control I had with it. Despite being a geek, I don’t care to understand EVERY coding language out there and PHP (which WordPress is based on) is particularly geekie and ugly.

Anyway, before I get off topic, I believe WordPress to be one of the most accessible ways for fitness professionals to create and maintain control over their sites, although it does have its limitations…

To get it set up you DO need a geek to install and set up a few “plugins” to make it work most effectively for you. For example you’ll need a plugin to improve your control over the Search Engine optimisation stuff I talked about in a previous BLOG post

http://myfitgeek.com/blog/33/are-you-focussing-on-the-wrong-search-terms/

You’ll need to have a theme designed and coded by a competent designer/developer, as the themes you get for nothing are in general quite poor.

Saying all that, once it is set up, editing and adding pages as well as maintaining a BLOG is really very simple. Editing pages is just like using a WYSIWYG editor, and now WordPress can add in things like videos, audio and other media with relative ease.

This BLOG is based on WordPress… and I am in the process of finding the right developer to design and code the full MyFitGeek website based on WordPress, hopefully it will look way cooler than this shabby template.

It is not the ultimate solution, but it may be the right solution if you want more control, without the need to get heavy in to the techie coding stuff. Sounds like the ideal solution for many fitness professionals??

Do you have a WordPress web site now, how do you find using it? Is this something you would like to have for your website solution? Leave me a comment below…

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