Top Five Must-Haves on Your Coaching Website
You’ve probably run into me at The Coaches Support Group on LinkedIn, run my EG Sebastian, or over at the Coaches Helping Coaches Group on Facebook by Emma Louise Elsey.
One thing I LOVE to do with my coaching tribe is to gather that wisdom of the crowd (Wikipedia) — like that lifeline request you see on the tv game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
I ask folks what they think are top “must-haves” when it comes to the coach’s website. And then tally up the results. Below are the top things mentioned, along with a highlight of the top 5 must-haves on coach websites.
So, over the years, I like to tally up what people say and then see which ones surface at the top. Below is the list of must-haves, followed by a handful of the top ones.
Top must-haves for coaching websites:
- A vision for the content, structure (6)
- A great designer to create your vision (1)
- A good domain name (1)
- Good hosting (1)
- Appearance, eye-catching, nice colors to reflect you (3)
- Authenticity and integrity, honesty (3)
- Reflects my personality, style, and approach (2)
- The site must be alive with new content (1)
- Having the ability to admin routine tasks on site (1)
- An email capture page or an opt-in box (5)
- An autoresponder (1)
- Clean layout (1)
- User-friendly (1)
- Shopping carts (1)
- Fill in forms (1)
- Website tracking (1)
- A great bio (1)
- Great giveaway (4)
- Client attraction plan/sales conversion plan (6)
- Search engine optimization (1)
- A powerful message that talks to the audience (4)
- Creativity (1)
- Clear, concise mission statement (1)
- Photos people can relate to (1)
- Segment the people/audience/ you are targeting (2)
- Brand strategy (1)
Here are the top four:
- having a powerful message that attracts,
- a plan for bringing people to your site,
- getting them onto a list,
- inviting visitors to take a step towards becoming your client (sales)
As a website designer for coaches, **
I put my top must-have along with design tips, content formulas, and more in a big PDF called The Coaching Website Guide.
What are your top website must haves?
What are you finding most vital for your site? What areas can you improve upon? Anything you’d add or remove from this list?
I’d love to hear from you! Comment below.
I’m a relatively new coach just starting out. For me, despite being my brand, I am going to wait until I have worked with more people to see who I attract and can best help before I start to brand. I have a 3 year plan to get really clear on my ideal target market.
To me, branding comes when you have a lot of clarity and success stories and have determined who you most enjoy working with and who gets the most benefits from your coaching.
I would like to add to this list, and what I see is the most important, is the BENEFITS. The website it not about me, it is all about what the client is going to get, what benefits they will obtain from my services. All of the content must come from the client’s perspective, and not mine. I can think of a million ways I would love my website to be, for me, but in reality, it’s about my clients and what I have to offer them, what appeals and is attractive to them.
It’s great to see that the items most mentioned do reflect the client’s needs. The content and value offered are the most important aspects to a website in my opinion.
Hey Heidi. I think all we can do is decide on our actions, do them, and learn. ;D
It takes a little guts to submit yourself to someone else’s program/plan, especially if it feels uncomfortable.
I know when I did the very difficult task of focusing on a niche, that it was hard to do. However, having taken the leap, it’s a great move to make.
Again, I think any “move” is good as long as you can learn from it. I suppose any action brings learning.
BENEFITS … yes!
What a great list! Still working on a few of these items though. Thanks for putting this together.
Thanks for pointing that out Jen. Brand/marketing/niche … I feel they are all overlapping kind of concepts. But yeah. Great to have that in order.
Some people are discovering their brand, learning about business and endup doing whatever makes sense to where they are at and what they feel are their next steps. So they can dive into speaking, web marketing, overthinking, learning, etc …
Yeah, great to know who and what. Great to have you here, and would love to hear your comments.
I feel brand strategy should be #1, knowing who you are as a brand serves as your foundation for which everything else gets built on. I realize these weren’t listed in order of importance but I do think were many people get “off track” with their website is they haven’t done (hard) work upfront to define who they truly are as a brand and what is the experience they want to create for their audience?