coaching websites health coach website design

HOW TO CREATE A (ALMOST FREE) COACHING WEBSITE THAT CONVERTS CLIENTS

This is your definitive guide to creating your very own coaching website that will be cheap and easy to implement. Plus it will get you more clients in the door.

I'm going to say it....It's no easy feat creating a website when you have little to no experience online. The long list of things you need to get through is insane, not to mention having no experience means pulling your hair out and taking about 10 weeks longer than you anticipate.

That is exactly why I created this easy to follow, step-by-step process for you to get your coaching business online, fast!

This is the perfect process for any coach: health coach, fitness, PT, wellness, business mentor, life coach, EFT, naturopath, strategy coach and everyone in between.

The logic remains the same and so does the process, making it the perfect way to get started (or start fresh!)

Ready to begin?

 

STEP 1: SECURE YOUR DOMAIN

Think of your domain as the address to your business online. It is the URL/website link address unique to your business so that people can't get to you. Mine, for instance, is www.kyliemalcolm.com. The key thing with a domain is to try and keep it short but to the point and you'll have a great starting point.

This is a great tool from Bluehost to search for your own domain name (or a new one if you need a refresh!). Simply type in the potential name and it will tell you if it's available. Easy!

 

STEP 2: GET YOUR HOSTING PLAN & PLATFORM

Think of your website hosting as your home. So your domain is the address and your hosting is the physical home for your virtual business. It's where your website physically lives.

Without a doubt, the best hosting platform is WordPress.org. This means you will need a home for the site to live with a website hosting company. I absolutely love Bluehost for hosting. They give you a free SSL certificate (which you need to secure your site!) and their plans start so cheaply at around 2.95 per month! Oh and if you buy a minimum of 1 year hosting, you get a domain for free. Yes really!

STEP 3: CREATE YOUR BRAND AND LOGO

I might be a little crazy for saying this, given my profession, but to start out, all you need is a simple text logo. Nothing fancy. I wish someone had told me that early on when I started my own business. The biggest reason is that your business WILL change. It WILL evolve. You WILL switch focus. It's just the name of the coaching game.

Just go with a simple text logo or nice font with an icon to keep it clean to get started. As you grow your coaching business and start to really hone in on what you want to do, then you can start to invest in business marketing materials such as logo design and client avatar based content and branding.

You can always use CANVA to create a really simple, yet effective logo that's free. They have some great templates you can use.

When it comes to the branding side of things, you can accentuate your business with a pop of color or some texture with a nice pattern background image to really boost your visual look and appeal. You can get some fantastic free ones here.

 

STEP 4: DECIDE ON A WORDPRESS THEME & START DESIGNING YOUR WEBSITE

This is where the hair pulling and crazy long hours get spent. Trying to decipher the right theme, plugins and content combination to create the perfect coaching website is probably the biggest time-waster for any DIY coach. While it literally only takes 3 minutes to install WordPress on your hosting account, there are over 3000+ FREE WEBSITE THEMES for WordPress alone as of this article.

That makes it terribly difficult to choose right? 

Wrong

Lucky for you I have created a FREE DIY WEBSITE for coaches. All you need to do is come with a hosting plan and domain (did we mention Bluehost rocks!>), we give you the rest to DIY to coaching website amazingness (tutorials included!). The free theme we love is Astra but it only works exceptionally well with a set of specific plugins, making your coaching site super easy to use and exceptionally fun to create.

Oh, and it comes loaded with all the page content already designed. All you need to do is change the content. 

See, I told you it was almost free! So far, the only expense is your cheap hosting plan with Bluehost that comes with a free domain if you purchase a year!

 

STEP 5: OPTIMIZE FOR CLIENT CONVERSION

This is where most coaches fall short in creating a business online. A website essentially does one of two things for you:

  1. Is social proof of who you are and what you do. A brochure essentially, for people to reach out to you
  2. Gets you clients and gets you paid, making it an asset to your business

When it comes to turning visitors into trusting fans that want to buy from you, you FIRST NEED to have an email list with a free offer that is going to solve one key problem for them.

This is where I urge you to look deep within your business to determine what is that very first step you take clients through that brings success. That is what your free offer should be, only on a smaller scale. 

Once you have a great list building free offer on your site, the next step is to make sure you have fantastic CALL TO ACTIONS at the end of each page to guide the visitor to take the next step.

If you grab the free website offer, you'll notice that the website template is designed exactly that way to optimize your site for conversion.

 

After you've done all this, all that is left to do is launch your website and start marketing your business. 

Remember that there is literally no right or wrong way to go about getting your coaching business online. There is only the right way for you.

Having designed hundreds and hundreds of websites for coaches, I've come to understand the secret formula to creating a successful coaching website: And that is to keep it simple, don't overwhelm, create content and copy that is to the point and drive as much traffic as you can to your site to monitor the analytics. 

Don't forget, if you need an affordable website with a payment plan, we have a range of template websites waiting for you right now HERE.

 

Now, go get your online presence started. The world needs your coaching abilities and you need to be online for them to find you!