If you’re running a business in the competitive fitness industry, you know that building a strong online presence is crucial for brand growth. As your fitness business website is often responsible for the first impression potential clients get about you, it’s essential to make it both visually appealing and user-friendly. However, creating such a fitness web design can be a daunting task if you don’t establish proper communication with your web service providers. In this article, experts from our Chicago web design company will tell you precisely what you should request from your designers to ensure you get a fitness website that perfectly represents your brand values and drives conversions.
Table of Contents
- What separates fitness website design from others?
- Which factors do you need to have in mind when designing a custom fitness website
- 6 main requests for professional fitness website designers
- Final thoughts
What separates fitness website design from others?
Fitness website design is a unique challenge that requires a unique approach from web designers. The fitness industry is highly competitive, and first-time visitors to a fitness site often look for ways to achieve quick results. You need to motivate people to work out and become gym members, which starts with creating an aesthetically pleasing website. Besides having a visually appealing user interface, fitness and gym web designs also need to be easy to navigate, provide helpful information, and contain powerful CTAs.
However, in order to build long-term relationships with clients and credibility for your brand, you need to avoid making overpromises on your gym website – so avoid going beyond the limits of reality. Instead of promising that by simply hiring your services, people can achieve desired looks and become healthier, you need to provide them with useful content such as diet programs, workout routines, reviews of various supplements, potential injuries, and more. Building trust with your target audience is especially important in fitness web design. And not everyone visits fitness websites with the same intentions – while some people may want to find a workout routine, others might be looking for a more personal trainer-client business approach. That’s why you need to define your target audience clearly.
Although most fitness website design agencies will do extensive research on the industry before working on your fitness website, they won’t be able to meet all of your requirements if you fail to establish proper communication with them. Before hiring professional gym web design services, it is generally a good idea to have a clear vision and ideas that you’ll be able to discuss with your web design team. It is crucial to introduce them to your company’s culture and business goals so they can start putting all the pieces together to build a premium fitness web design.
Custom Fitness Website Design
There are many different factors you need to consider when designing a fitness website. You need to have a clear idea of the message you want to communicate, the colors that represent your brand, the photos and videos that will inspire your visitors, and the layout that will make it all easy to navigate. When choosing between website builders or hardcoding, many business owners think that they can save time and money by using fitness website templates. While it’s true that templated websites are usually cheaper and faster to set up, they are not always the best option for your business. Instead, we recommend hiring professional fitness website designers to build a custom fitness studio website design from scratch for you. Here is what you can expect from experienced fitness website design agencies:
Tailor-made fitness & gym website design that meets your brand guidelines
Unlike when using page-building platforms, with custom fitness web design, you don’t have to face specific limitations that prevent you from fully adjusting a website’s look and feel to your brand identity system. Working with a website design company will allow you to adhere to your brand guidelines, ensure that your website is consistent with the rest of your marketing materials, and accurately represents your brand. Failing to establish such consistency can reflect poorly on your business and turn potential customers away.
Unique features on your fitness website
With so many fitness websites out there, you need to offer something that will make people want to keep visiting your site instead of someone else’s and eventually hire you as their fitness gym personal trainer. If you want to implement a tool that allows your potential clients to create their personal diet plan, workout schedule, or any other feature – you’ll quickly run into roadblocks when using fitness website templates. On the other hand, custom fitness web design gives you an opportunity for endless experimentation. Web designers from a professional marketing agency can help you build a unique online presence and stand out in front of the competition with custom fitness website features.
Better user experience for your potential fitness clients
As a fitness business owner, you want your clients to have the best possible experience when they visit your website. Besides loading quickly and having unique features, your fitness site must be easy to navigate and use. The best way to achieve this is by hiring a professional fitness web design agency to build your website from scratch. They will provide you with a fitness web design that goes hand-in-hand with specific user requirements for a website and provides a much better user experience than a templated website.
Enhanced security of your customers’ private data
Online data breaches are becoming increasingly common, and fitness websites are a popular target for hackers and other cybercriminals. That is because they usually contain sensitive information such as credit card numbers and health data. If these websites are not properly secured, it can lead to identity theft and other serious problems. That could make your fitness business lose credibility and appear less trustworthy to potential clients. That’s why fitness website owners need to ensure their site is as secure as possible.
Using fitness website templates is a much less secure option compared to custom web design. But why? First, custom code a professional web development team writes exclusively for your website will be much harder for hackers to get a hand on than code used on millions of other websites. Second, they will make sure all the plugins are updated and secure. Professional web designers will also implement SSL certificates and make your website PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant, so your clients can pay for your products and services safely.
6 main requests for professional fitness website designers
When you’re ready to take your fitness business online, you need a website that will help you stand out from the crowd. Despite the higher web design cost you can expect for building a custom fitness boot camp website, it is clear that hiring fitness website designers from an experienced marketing agency is a much better option than risking drag-and-drop website creation platforms. But with so many decisions you have to make right in order to achieve the desired look and feel for your fitness site, it can be tough to know where to start. To help you stay on track and make consultation calls more productive, we’ve compiled a list of the six most important requests you should make of your professional fitness website designers:
Use only High-Quality Photos on a Fitness Website
One of the most important aspects of any fitness website is the photos that are used. High-quality photos can make a big difference in the way that potential customers perceive your website. Using low-quality photos will reflect poorly on your brand and make it harder for people to take you seriously. And this doesn’t only stand for low-resolution photos – you need to avoid generic stock photos too. On the other hand, original photos will make your website look more professional and trustworthy and help evoke desired emotions within the target audience.
You need to show potential customers how well-equipped your gym is. It is also a good idea to present fitness gym personal trainers that work for you and use photos to demonstrate their professionalism. This way, people will be able to visualize themselves achieving results after joining your programs. And it will increase the chances that clients will react more positively when they see familiar faces upon visiting your physical location.
However, while having a lot of photos and other high-quality visuals is crucial for fitness sites, keep in mind that your fitness website designers need to optimize image file sizes in order to maintain high page speeds and use proper image alt texts to make them more accessible to both search engines and users. And as a powerful hero section can boost the conversion rates on your website, make sure to get a general idea of hero section best practices before consulting with your marketing agency. That way, you’ll be able to make more specific requests to their web designers.
Implement Membership Options and Scheduling Features
Membership options offer a way for fitness businesses to increase revenue and encourage customer loyalty. By implementing this feature on your fitness website, you can give your clients a convenient way to pay for your fitness and gym services and access their account information at any time. You will also be able to make your brand appear more professional and build special connections by rewarding the most loyal gym members.
If you provide personal coaching and training services, request your web designers to implement a scheduling feature on your fitness website. That is a must-have for any site that wants to offer its visitors the ability to book appointments or classes online. Scheduling allows your visitors to see available times for appointments and book them in advance. You won’t have to lose customers due to missed calls anymore.
Include Reviews and Testimonials to Build Trust With Potential Gym Members
Fitness website design services providers understand that building trust with the target audience is crucial for fitness business owners like you. Your potential customers need to know they can trust you with their health and money. One of the best ways to build trust with your fitness website is to use reviews and testimonials. By showcasing happy customers who have had success with your products or services, you can show fitness website visitors that you’re a company that can be trusted. So remember to ask a gym website designer to keep reviews and testimonials in mind when designing your digital landscape.
Implement a Fitness & Gym Blog on your Website
If you’re considering building a fitness website, you might wonder why you should bother with a blog. After all, there are already so many fitness websites out there. Why would anyone want to read your blog?
Well, regularly publishing useful content on your fitness blog is a proven way to boost your brand’s authority and make it appear more trustworthy in the eyes of potential clients. But it’s also much more than that. A blog is a powerful tool that can help you attract new visitors through search engines, build quality relationships with your audience, and even sell more products and services. It allows people to obtain relevant information from the fitness industry that can help them improve their lives. However, keep in mind that assuring the accuracy of the information on your website is crucial if you’re into the fitness business. You can provide them with nutrition tips, weight loss plans, training and workout pieces of advice, fitness and gym equipment reviews, and much more. Lastly, make sure not to publish anything that may harm someone’s health for the pure sake of getting more clicks on your articles.
Here are our marketing agency’s tips for running a successful fitness blog:
Understand your target audience’s needs and wants
- Define clear goals you want to achieve with your content
- Conduct comprehensive keyword research
- Create a long-term content strategy
- Follow best SEO practices when publishing content
After telling your fitness web designers that you want a blog on your website, perhaps you can even discuss some of the unique CMS features that could make publishing and managing articles easier for your team. And if you don’t have your own content and SEO team, remember to ask your marketing agency if they can regularly provide you with fresh content for your blog.
Ensure your Fitness Web Design is SEO-friendly
Did you know that the way your website is designed can either help or hinder your efforts to rank highly in search engine results pages? A lot of businesses don’t realize the importance of SEO-friendly fitness web design. They think that as long as their website looks nice, they’ll be able to attract customers. However, looks aren’t everything, and if you want your fitness business to succeed, you need to make sure that your website is designed with SEO in mind. To improve the chances of ranking your pages high on Google and other popular search engines, require your fitness website designers to do the following:
Make sure the pages on your fitness website are fully indexable
- Create user-friendly URLs
- Strategically plan your Site Structure
- Secure, fast page speeds
- Ensure content is easy-to-read
- Make the navigation smooth on your fitness site
Before choosing your fitness website design company, we advise you to ensure that besides fitness web designers, they also hire professional website developers and SEO experts. To build fitness websites, such web design companies utilize expertise in various fields. Your website will be able to serve you as a solid foundation for advanced SEO strategies. Also, check if they provide web design audit services which might come in handy for expanding your website’s lifespan and staying on top of the competition in the future.
Create a mobile-friendly fitness web design
The fitness industry is booming, and more and more people are looking for ways to get in shape. But as we are witnessing increased usage of smartphones and tablets for accessing the internet, it is safe to conclude that if your website isn’t designed for these devices, you’ll be losing a lot of potential traffic. Having a mobile responsive website is no longer a luxury – it’s a must.
By utilizing either responsive or adaptive design, your web design company needs to create a website that provides a fantastic user experience on various screen sizes. As nearly 59 percent of global website traffic comes from mobile devices, mobile-friendly fitness and gym website design will benefit your business in various ways, including:
- Enhanced user experience for your potential clients across various devices
- Improved conversion rates
- Positive ranking signals to search engines
- Faster website loading times
- Professional brand image
And to build even more quality relationships with mobile users and open a completely new marketing channel, you can also request your software development company to build an app for your fitness business. That would give you an edge over the competition as you’ll be able to utilize push-up notifications to send personalized messages and offers to the target audience at any time. And as wearable devices are gaining popularity, you’ll also be able to provide users with real-time fitness tracking features. All of this can help you enhance their loyalty to your brand.
Gym & Fitness web design agency
Are you looking for a gym & fitness web design agency that can help you kickstart your online journey? Feel free to get in touch with Alpha Efficiency’s world-class website designers.
After years of experience in providing web design services and executing web development projects for gym and fitness businesses, our marketing agency has obtained an advanced level of knowledge about this unique industry that we will apply to secure your brand’s growth. And to make sure you’re satisfied with the end results, our team will use consultation calls to learn everything about your needs and wants. To get started, you can schedule a call and introduce us to your business, and our experts will start preparing strategies.
