What Does Your Website Say About Your Fitness Business: Reader Requests.

Last week I posted an article called What Does Your Website Say About Your Fitness Business, where I randomly searched out several personal trainer's websites and gave my honest critique on them based on several factors that in my experience, consider important.

At the end of that post and also on Facebook, I offered readers the opportunity to submit their sites for me to look over and the below reviews are those sites.



The first site I'm going to take a look at is from Joe Shanley and his site is Fitness Built For You.

First Impression:

Great colors, image and especially like 'You' being highlighted in your logo. However, the torn page feature looks like something is missing. The effect is cool, but perhaps could be reduced to allow more room for quality content, perhaps a facebook page invitation?

I also like the testimonials on the front page, though they could use an image (before and afters rock) of the people who wrote them and change the font to differentiate from the regular text.

Running through your tabs

'Fitness Training' is the best of the four in terms of presentation, though your slogan 'Train with the best for less' could be highlighted better, either by size, as a cool image or whatever.

'Success Stories' needs some work. As with the front page, add some images, fix the spacing between quotes and you should also consider some video testimonials.

'About Joe'

"Understanding that not everyone is created equally, I founded Fitness Built For You." This is GOLD, so make it EXPLODE from the rest of the text!

All in all a very nice, non intimidating and easy to navigate site. At a glance I'm unsure who your target market is, which is something you might want to consider mentioning and it's as simple as how you present your testimonials. Also, I think that you should make your contact details clearer, perhaps with a tab of their own.

Finaly, I'm very impressed with your industry experience and knowledge and flattered to have such an awesome trainer reading my blog :). Thanks Joe.

The next site we're going to take a look at is from personal trainer Pete Luxford.

First Impression

You look like a race car driver! The image is great and the site looks very well laid out.

This is perhaps the best landing page I've seen in a while Pete, very well done. You appear to have dotted all your i's and crossed all your t's. Lets take a look around.

Tabs

I went through each and really can't fault your site at all. Having the health questionaire right there for prospects to fill out is a brilliant idea that I hadn't considered, bet it saves time!

Have you considered putting up any video testimonials or even a short clip of a group training class? This can give prospects a good vibe of what it's really like to train with you.

I even Googled all of your locations as well i.e "Personal Trainer Letchworth" etc. and you came up as second ranked on EVERY ONE except "Personal Trainer Stevenage" (it was the top of page 2...come on...I had to find SOMETHING for you to work on! Haha).

Very impressive site Pete, how has it performed for you? I'm also curious how the 'Products' for sale addition goes? Perhaps you could let us know how viable it is to sell equipment from your site.

Great site and thank you for alerting it to our readers Pete, I'm sure they will find a LOT of value in how you have put it together.

And finally, we're going to take a quick look through Ellie Burscough's site Power Mums.

First Impression

At a glance, it is definitely branded to suit your target market, but as you said yourself; it's really lacking content and 2011 technology.

Your home page is very bare. After looking through your tabs you have some wonderful content and you may consider moving some of it to the home page, especially the video testimonial or the video of you training with the baby (great screen cap on that one by the way; very clickable).

You might want to consider getting a professional graphic made for your "Lose Baby Fat" ebook as well to make it more appealing. Call it "Fill in your details to receive your FREE eBook or Report" and really sell it.

Get rid of "Sign Up" as well as this could sound like they're obligated to purchase something. Put "click here" or something like that instead.

Get rid of that 'share' button and install some proper social media icons. Make it easy for people to follow you and share your content.

I'm not a Mum, but the "qualified babysitter at every class" hook is money in the bank. Think about highlighting that in some way as it's one less sales objection for you.

Since I know that it's a work in progress I'm not going to break your balls on it Ellie and you already know that it needs work, but hopefully you will consider the few suggestions I've made here. :)

Thank you to the brave trainers for allowing me to scrutinize your sites here on My Business Is Fitness, I hope you guys find some value in the advice I've offered.

If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them below and as always, if you enjoyed this article share this epic piece of work with your connections and colleagues by intimidating the icons at the top of this post.

Keep on bringing it guys!

Ben