7 Keys To The Perfect Life Coaching Website
Do you have a Life Coaching website you’re proud of, gets clients and doesn’t break the bank?
If not, you’re not alone. For too many Life Coaches, your website is a source of pain, frustration, and maybe even embarrassment.
Do any of these describe you?
You built your website yourself… 5 years ago... and it looks like it. Need I say more?
You spent thousands of dollars to have a web designer build your site… but anytime you want to change so much as a headline, you have shell out even more money.
You decided to build your website using an “online website service”... like Squarespace, Wix or Weebly. You spent hours creating your site, but you quickly outgrew it and that’s when you realize that, when you stop paying the monthly fee, you lose everything you’ve created (Seriously?!?)
You have a website you love… but it doesn’t convert visitors to subscribers or prospects to clients; it doesn’t generate strategy sessions and doesn’t do anything to differentiate you and position you as the go-to-expert in your niche. In other words, it doesn’t help to grow your business in any way.
You have no website at all… because you have no idea how and where to get started.
If any of these describe you, then you’re in the right place.
Life Coaching Websites are supposed to help us…
- Facilitate the growth of our business.
- Differentiate us in the marketplace.
- Generate more clients and more money.
- Make our difference in the world.
- And impact people’s lives.
When done right, your website can, and should, be a powerful marketing tool and a key component to your online presence.
Here are the seven key characteristics of a perfect Life Coaching website.
1. CONFIDENCE
Having confidence in your website (i.e. having a website you’re proud of) AND having a website that instills confidence in your website visitors is a crucial element for the perfect life coaching website.
How do you make that happen? Let’s break that down...
Beautiful, branded, professionally designed.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Your website is often the first impression people get of you and your brand. This is NOT a time to look amateurish or outdated. That’s why it is so important to have a website that is professionally designed, modern and branded to create the look and feel that furthers your brand recognition and reputation. You can achieve this by working with a professional web designer (who specializes in coaching websites) OR start with beautiful, modern, professionally designed, ready-made websites like you’ll find in the Blue Dog Websites Coaches On Fire Collection.
Designed specifically for you as a coach.
There are certain elements you want and need to have on your website that are specific for coaching. For example, a key element that is specific to coaches, is the option to sign up for a strategy session. If you do one-on-one coaching, you want to make sure this option is available on virtually every page of your website.
Positions You.
Ultimately, you are your brand. So we want to make sure that your website positions you by placing a professional photo or video of you in the header of your homepage and throughout your website. If you don’t have professional photos, it’s time to do a professional photoshoot. Before your photoshoot, be sure to plan out the kinds of photos your need for your website - a hero shot for the homepage header, maybe some casual shots on your About page, maybe a picture of you speaking on your speaker page. Make sure your photos once again reflect your brand look and feel. Don’t leave this up to the photographer. Let them know exactly what you need.
Positions Your Unique Brand Message.
You also want your brand message to be crystal clear when someone lands on your site. This is the first signal to your website visitors if they are in the right place. Does your brand message speak to their core need or desire. That’s why I always recommend that you place your bold brand promise in the header of your website, along with your hero shot.
Client Focused Question.
A client-focused question on the home page let's prospects know that you know them and know what they need. So you might ask a question like How May I Serve You? or What Do You Need? Then follow this question with three options to click to another part of your site that answers that need. For example - You may have options like Community, Resources or Coaching. Or taking a different approach, on my personal page - pamsterling.com - the options are focused on Food, Fitness, Fun and Fulfillment. The key here is that we are connecting with your prospects needs and inviting them to take the next step.
Testimonials and Authority Icons.
Two other elements that help to position you and instill confidence in your website visitors are testimonials and authority icons. You want testimonials of your clients sharing the results they have gotten from working with you. And if you’ve been published in the Huffington Post, or have been on the Tim Ferriss Podcast, or were featured on your local news, you want to add that information as authority icons on your website.
Reliable.
The final component that gives you confidence in your website is reliability. You need to know that your website is fast, secure, mobile friendly, backed up nightly in case something ever went severely wrong, and that it is not going to crash on you when you start sending traffic to your webinar registration page.
All of these, help to give you confidence in your website and instills confidence in your website visitors.
2. CONVERSIONS
A perfect Life Coaching website is a marketing tool that helps you grow your business. That means that it is working for you behind the scenes to automatically generate strategy sessions and convert visitors to subscribers and clients.
This requires built in state of the art conversion elements that facilitate the client journey and advances the sale by inviting your website visitors to take a next step.
Here are some of the state of the art conversion elements you want to include on your website...
Lead Magnet Optin above the fold on the home page.
A Lead Magnet is a free piece of valuable content you offer your website visitors in exchange for their name and email address.
To maximize the conversions for your Lead Magnet , you want this Lead Magnet Optin to be located “above the fold” on your Homepage and you want it to be a “double optin”. In other words, you want to display a button on your website that says something like - “Yes! I want to enroll more clients” and then when someone clicks on the button, you want it to display the form to submit their name and email address. As an example...
Click HERE to check out the Lead Magnet Optin on my Home page.
Having a lead magnet that actually helps facilitates the client journey and lead your prospect to the next step is critical. The last thing we want is a Lead Magnet that is a "bridge to nowhere". I created the SPARK formula as a guideline for creating a Lead Magnet that converts and facilitates the client journey.
S = Solves A Problem - Your Lead Magnet should completely solve a problem your perfect client is having.
P = Positions You - Your Lead Magnet should position you as the go-to expert and authority in your niche.
A = Advances The Sale - This is where I got it wrong at first. I create a beautiful Lead Magnet about Productivity, but it was a “bridge to nowhere”. In other words, it didn’t lead to anything I was offering. You want your Lead Magnet (and the training video that goes with it) not only solve a problem, but also widen the gap and point your prospects to the next step which may be a strategy session, or a webinar, or a program you’re offering.
R = Rapidly Consumable - Once again, don’t make the mistake I made and create a 27 page ebook. People won’t consume it. Much better to create a 1 page cheat sheet, checklist, or infographic followed by a 10-15 minute training video that unpacks it for your new subscriber and invites them into the next step.
K = Kernel of Content - Don’t try to teach the complete process of how to turn your dreams into reality. This is too big and too broad and doesn’t solve a problem. Rather, choose one small kernel of content that your prospect really cares about - Like ‘Five Questions to ask to know if your dream is right for you”. That kernel of content is bite sized and answers an actual question people have.
Strategy Session Optin on every page.
I’ve already mentioned this above, but you want a strategy session optin on every main page of your website and you want that optin button to link directly to your calendar where they can schedule an appointment. Typically I recommend using Calendly or Acuity to schedule appointments. You want to brand the name of your strategy session so that it helps to further your brand - so you might call it something like Breakthrough Session, or Freedom Session, or Discovery Session, depending on the focus of your brand. Here's an example of this type of conversion element.
Clickable side images on your blog page and posts that link to a next step action.
One piece of website “real estate” that often gets underutilized, is the sidebar on your blog page and blog posts. Rather than having things like Recent Posts, Tag Clouds, and your twitter steam in the sidebar, you want to use this space to once again, help your website visitors take the next step The way to do that is to have clickable images in the sidebar that invite visitors to register for your webinar, sign up for your Lead Magnet, book a Strategy Session, sign up for your program, or join your Facebook Group.
Here are examples of my clickable side images. You'll also find them in the sidebar on this page :)
Content Upgrades on your blog posts.
Content Upgrades are a piece of valuable content, specifically related to your blog post, that your website visitor can sign-up for. This could be as simple as a transcript of the post, or an infographic summarizing the content, or a checklist or a worksheet. It’s similar to a lead magnet, but it is specific to the content of your blog post.
As an example, check out this content upgrade for this blog post - and grab your FREE Home Page Template while you're at it :)
FREE TEMPLATE
The Perfect Home Page Template
Create the perfect positioning and converting Home Page for your website using this FREE template and training video.
3. CONTROL
A perfect Life Coaching website is one where you are empowered to take control to make whatever changes you want, whenever you want to make them.
I’ve seen too many coaches pay thousands of dollars for a custom website, only to have their website “held hostage” by a web designer, forbidding them to make any changes to the site, and then charging them hundreds of dollars to simply change a headline. No joke. This is a crime in my opinion.
And don’t be fooled by online website services like Squarespace, or Wix, or Weebly, or even online landing page services like Lead Pages or Instapage. You don’t OWN these sites. You may put in hundreds of hours designing and perfecting your site and/or landing pages, but once you stop paying the monthly fee… you lose everything you’ve created. Part of having control means that you OWN your website and can take it with you wherever you go.
Having control of your website is key.
4. CUSTOMIZABLE
A fourth key characteristic of a perfect Life Coaching website, is that it is completely customizable. I know that some Life Coaching certification programs give you a pre-built website, but most that I’ve seen are pretty limited in the changes you can make, and frankly, most look pretty outdated to me.
You want a website that enables you to customize it in any way you want - colors, images, fonts, headlines, add a video if you want, add a new page, add a new blog post, show a gallery of quote cards, add a button, easily link to your email service provider.
You should be able to do all of this… and it should be EASY.
With the website front-end Page Builder tools that are available today, there’s no reason that making changes to your website shouldn’t be as simple and easy as adding content to a Word document. Drag. Drop. Add content. Save. Done.
5. CAPACITY
Having a website that has the capacity to grow with your business is critical. That means you want a Life Coaching Website that has the ability to add unlimited optin pages, sales pages, courses, memberships, e-commerce, and easily integrate with all your other applications. Your website should be optimized for speed, fully responsive, mobile friendly and SEO ready.
You don’t want to have to jury rig this one.
That’s why I always, unequivocally, recommend that you have a website built on WordPress. It is simply the most powerful website platform available. Wordpress powers companies like CNN, NASA, The New York Time, and E-bay. The capacity is clearly there. But at the same time, with the tools now available inside of WordPress, it’s also accessible for people like you and me.
Bottom line, you want a website built on WordPress.
Here are just a few of the Fortune 500 Companies using WordPress.
6. CONNECTION
Having spent WAY too many hours in the old days trying to figure things out on my own, I can tell you that one of the all important keys to a perfect Life Coaching website, is support.
You shouldn’t have to do this on your own. You want to have a support team that you can reach out to when you have questions, so that you can get answers quickly. You shouldn’t have to submit an email and then wait for 48 hours to hear back from someone. You want a support team that you can reach immediately via chat or phone and get answers to your questions.
None of us should feel like we have to become the expert, but we DO want to make sure we have experts on our team who are there to answer our questions when we need help.
7. COST EFFECTIVE
Here’s the truth… having a beautiful, powerful, easy to use, client-getting, mobile friendly Life Coaching Website, shouldn’t break the bank. And with the tools that are available today, building a website has never been more cost effective. Gone are the days where having a beautiful website has to cost thousands of dollars.
This is another reason why I love the Blue Dog Websites Coaches On Fire Collection. In addition to being beautiful, professionally designed, ready-made, coach-specific, client-getting, WordPress websites, they are super affordable. A ready-made website is just $399 AND, check this out, that includes design upgrades for LIFE. That's right, if you want to switch to another website design, you can do so at anytime, as long as you remain a Blue Dog member. It's a game changer in my opinion and why I am so proud to be partnering with Blue Dog on this collection.
So there you go, the 7 Keys To Creating The Perfect Life Coaching Website
Confidence - You want to feel confidence in your website and you want a website that instills confidence in your website visitors.
Conversions - You want a website with multiple state-of-the-art conversion elements that help facilitate the client journey.
Control - You want a website that you OWN.
Customizable - You want a website that is easily customizable.
Capacity - You want a WordPress website. Period.
Connection - You want a support team available who can answer your questions.
Cost Effective - You should be able to get a beautiful website with everything I've talked about for less than $1000.
Implementing these strategies will ensure that your Life Coaching Website becomes a dynamic marketing powerhouse, working FOR you to grow your coaching business, rather than a static, boring "online brochure".
What's one action step you will take today to implement just one of these strategies?
Here's to creating a website you're proud of, gets client and doesn't break the bank.
Pam :)
FREE TEMPLATE
The Perfect Home Page Template
Create the perfect positioning and converting Home Page for your website using this FREE template and training video