Redesign Your Coaching Website – 3 Tips for More Client Inquiries
You’ll reach a point where your website has been live for a while. You’ve made some traffic-building efforts and you’re seeing low-level results — a few leads from the site, some content out there, maybe a couple of clients coming in.
New Year’s hits, or it’s time to leave the job, or your life situation changes. Or maybe you’re just tired of putzing around and realize it’s time to make a stronger push to get more clients.
You want your website to reflect what you do so when people check you out, it’s current, engaging, and builds a strong case for getting in touch with you for coaching support.
Here are three redesign tips to turn more visitors into coaching inquiries and create your dream coaching business …
Website Conversion Tip #1:
Tie your message to a real pain — one people already pay to fix.
If your messaging feels vague, abstract, or overly conceptual, clients won’t engage. They can’t feel the value, so they leave.
Instead, help them see why to hire you. Anchor your message in real-life problems people already spend money on: health issues, stalled careers, and strained relationships..
The bigger the pain — and the longer they’ve been struggling — the more impact your copy will have.
Relief and transformation are the flip side of pain — so yes, talk about goals, results, and dreams too.
Focusing on struggles is a great move for content. Get more strategies like “speaking the client’s language” and “finding your uniqueness” in my book, The Coaching Website Guide. A must-have if you want a compelling website.
Coach Website Conversion Tip #2: Declutter for “Marie Kondo” joy — make visitors feel at home.
Organizer extraordinaire Marie wrote The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, a simple but excellent book. I watched her Netflix series too — fabulous.
It’s easy to clutter a website with all the widgets, add-ons, and whatchamacallits available today.
A few good moves for most messy sites:
- Reduce too many fonts, colors, and sizes so the heirarchy of content is obvious
- Reduce long menus to a handful of items with shorter, simpler labels.
- Avoid trying to stuff everything at the top of the homepage
In short, opt for a clean, simple use of text, images, and pages that lead visitors toward a clear, logical next step.
That step should smoothly guide them into working with you.
Hands down, the biggest issue with coach websites is chaos — a confusing mix of images, text, buttons, and doodads. Learn how to both keep it simple and exciting with tips in The Coaching Website Guide.
Coach Website Conversion Tip #3:
Focus on ONE Call-to-Action:
I often see websites with too many competing calls to action — three or more scattered around, like:
- Contact me for more Info
- Got a question? Chat with me now
- Let’s connect
- Request more info
- Get a free consultation
- Book a call
With too many options, people struggle to decide and end up doing nothing. On top of that, most of these calls to action are weak.
Instead, craft ONE SPICY INVITATION to get on a call with you.
Make it clear, obvious, simple, and relevant. Optimize the experience so it feels easy, logical, and enjoyable.
For example, if you’re a health coach helping seniors eat better and stay active to fight disease, a Strong After 60 Session would be a great place to start.
Ya gotta sell that action step 😀
Plus, with one CTA (short for call to action), it’s much easier to track, test, and improve.
I call this the Compelling Call-to-Action. I share examples, writing guides, and more to help you generate more client inquiries from your website in my book, The Coaching Website Guide. 25 years of my best stuff in one PDF.
Are you planning a redesign?
Post in the comments below.
I’d love to know about your redesign and the ideas you want to implement. Hearing is fun and helps us all do better. Let’s hear about your plan to take over the world 😀
Quick Answers (FAQs) for Skimmers
Why isn’t my coaching website getting inquiries?
Most coaching websites struggle because their message is weak, the layout is confusing, and the call to action is unclear and complicated. When visitors can’t clearly see the problem you help with and struggle to use your site, they leave without taking action.
What should I focus on when redesigning a coaching website?
Focus on tying your message to a real problem people already pay to fix, simplifying the experience, and guiding visitors toward one clear next step.
How do I make my coaching website clearer?
Clarity comes from reducing clutter, simplifying navigation, and making it obvious what you do, who you help, and what someone should do next.
What makes a call to action work on a coaching website?
A strong call to action is clear, specific, and easy to say yes to. One well-defined invitation works far better than multiple weak options.
Oh boy I’m probably breaking all these rules. How many colors do you recommend a color palette contain?
I’ve seen your stuff … the overall colors feel good — purple and some yellow/gold. It’s consistent, as long as most of it is your color.
The problem kicks in when websites use too many colors, too often, and there’s no clear main color or consistent mix. Basically, the colors compete with each other. As a very obvious extreme example, one page is full of Crayola rainbows, and another page is all black with yellow text. That’s a massive clash.
Should you use a color scheme on your coaching website?
Color schemes like 4,5 or even more colors in a combination are nice to look at, but I find them difficult to make work. Go simple with one main color, and one secondary color that’s complementary or analagous.
Want a simple way for great colors, a consistent feel, that matches your brand?
A good way to get a scheme to work from is to use one great photo of you in your workspace or with a client. And then pull colors, textures, images from that photo.
(I’m going a bit overboard on this comment hehe, faq mania for seo and ai search visibility. But shhh, don’t tell!)
Great advice. In particular highlighting specific struggles and pain I’ve helped clients with is a something I plan to experiment with in my posts in the new year.
Yes, looking forward to your innately genius implementation of ideas.
People love stories.
People want truth.
People are drawn to solutions.
People want to be moved by the success of others.
Why not use our experience, insights, talents, and stories to help our audience, followers, and clients along?
And help us share what we do, get out there, and market our services in a legitimate, natural, and inspiring way?
Kenn, these are great — but I’ve gotta tease you a bit. I’m used to your posts coming with screenshots, examples, diagrams, smoke signals… something. This one felt like you took the afternoon off. The tips are solid though, especially the clarity around pain and simplifying the path. But reading it, I kept waiting for the big one: the whole point of a coaching website is to generate leads and ultimately clients. So I’d throw in a Tip #4: offer a strong opt‑in tied directly to the client’s biggest pain point. And maybe a Tip #4.5: have an autoresponder ready to deliver the freebie and warm that lead with a thoughtful automated sequence that naturally leads to a call. When those pieces are in place, the whole system clicks.
Hey EG! Great to have your inputs here. For everyone reading, EG runs the biggest Coach Support Group on LinkedIn (ya’ll should come by).
I love and recommend your ideas #4 and #4.5.
I recommend those for sure.
AND …
From a practical standpoint …
From watching coaches …
From being on the design frontlines …
From reviewing hundreds (gotta be over 1000 by now) …
From helping coaches get more inquiries …
I bow down to the wisdom of Pareto — the 80/20 rule.
80% of the results come from 20% of the inputs.
The few that matter most, that are implementable right away.
I see this …
When a coach is trekking up their first mountain of success — proving they can actually do it, and get paying clients — the three moves I’d suggest to take their existing mish-mash of a business to another level
I’ve reviewed hundreds (has to be over after 25 years) — If these three items were tweaked, numbers would go up — leading to new website inquiries.
Great idea on visuals — I’ve noted it. It would be great to have one visual for each of the above items. I know I’ve spoken and done videos on this stuff, and lots of examples in my book.
I might need a vampire bite so I can live forever and get it all done. ;D
You write like a poet, my friend 🙂 — YES! Start with minimum viable – your 3 are an excellent start. Then once you have the basics in place, step up your game and automate lead-capture and lead-warm-up, as much as possible. Come to our group and start a conversation on how to do it most cost-effectively – don’t struggle trying to figure out on your own. This stuff can get complicated. I have lots of tutorial videos that I’m happy to share at no cost. Join us here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1816082/ *** Send me a DM here: https://linkedin.com/in/egSebastian OR to Kenn to approve you. We have 20,000+ on the waiting list, but always happy to approve anyone who asks… and who is a real coach, author, speaker – or aspiring to become one (and not someone who is wants to join only to sell to coaches).
This really resonates, Kenn. I see the same themes in coaching — when the message isn’t anchored in a real client pain, people disengage quickly. The focus on decluttering and one meaningful call to action feels especially important for high achievers who are already overwhelmed. Clear, calm, and purposeful makes reaching out feel much easier.
Thanks for chiming in Gaye.
Yes, overachievers … when they need help, they want progress on a good plan over slow-gress due to confusion, too many options, or the perfect plan.
Do you find that to be the case?
While I like all these tips, I think numbers 1& 3 are most relevant to my website. Last time I updated my website, I was practicing pretty generally as a positive psychology coach. Now that I’m working more specifically with people going through big transitions, I could shift the language towards the struggles these clients face.
I definitely need a better name for my free consultation call too. What’s the spicy version of a call that empowers people to create (& activate) a plan to make a transition. The most common transitions I’m seeing are career change, retirement & midlife (empty nesting, divorce, new business.)
“Spicy” got my attention 😉
You asked: What’s the spicy version of a call that empowers people to create (& activate) a plan to make a transition?
KennGPT: Just mix your words a bit and see what tastes good.
* Empowered Plan Session
* Transition Power Planner
* Powerful Plan Session
* Plan & Action Session
Some ChatGPT ideas, which I think can help rule out some stuff
* The Transition Reset Call
* Next-Chapter Activation Session
* Life Pivot Strategy Call
* Crossroads Clarity Call
* The What’s-Next Breakthrough
* Midlife Momentum Session
* The Reinvention Map Call
* From Stuck to Steady Session
* New Chapter Game Plan
* The Transition Blueprint Call
Ooh! So many ideas to play with!
I’m going to play with combos that use transition & empowered like Empowered Transition Call.
I love good word play. Can we run these ideas by some of your fave clients?
I’m curious what will come back.
One call to action…For my coaching business the sentence: “ Strong After 60 Session would be a great place to start” could be something like: “10 Coaching sessions to become 10 times Stronger as a Safety Leader” but how would you measure that? I have a couple of ideas. Any additional thoughts?
By call-to-action, I mean the thing you want people to do at your website.
For you, I believe your plan is to put out content, grow your visiblity, and get folks onto your email list so you can continue trust building.
After that, you’ll invite them to a call with you.
So getting your guide and onto your list would be primary.
To measure the success of your call to action … you run it for a few months, check stats that show how many times it’s been seen (viewed, the page visited), and how many people complete the call to action.
As long as your big-picture digital strategy is sound, you can work from there to implement, measure, improve.
Always amazing insight
Thanks for all you do~ what you do matters!
http://www.3wcoaching.com
Hi Kenn,
Last year you gave out many great ideas to help improve websites.
One that was a good point and reminder to us all is to keep sentences/paragraphs to no more than 5 lines, then separate to start the next sentences and so on.
The point being to break up text/information to keep it interesting without a break can give reading a headache. With short paragraphs much better for readers to keep interested.
Great concepts for applying to my website revamp. I will be starting that in a few weeks. Very excited!!
Thank you for sharing relevant content always.
PS Big not bit under point 3 paragraph 4.
Thanks for that Leslie!
HPC? Sounds like a Brendon cert. ;D