Need a Coaching Website? 10 Questions to Ask to Make Your Project Go Smoother

“The U.S. life coaching market size was valued at USD 1,469.1 million in 2022 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.85% from 2023 to 2030. The need for coaches is on the rise in the United States as more people seek guidance and inspiration on a variety of topics, including personal development, finding a work-life balance, work performance, relationships, mental health, and other topics.” (Grand View Research)  What does this mean for you if you’re a life or business coach? You have competition. Prospects will be searching for and visiting your coaching website to determine if they want to work with you.

And you must showcase your individuality. 

And one of the best ways to shine your light is through your coaching website. In this day and age, most everyone is online and they are stumbling into your social content, diving deeper into your website to learn more about you, and if you’re lucky, opting into one of your free offers, hoping to solve their problem. But if your coaching website does not grab their attention within seconds, they are gone forever, and some other coach will become the center of their attention.

I don’t want this to happen to you. So if you’re a coach and you don’t have a website, or you aren’t proud of the website you have, now is the time to change that. Make this year the year you embark on building a website that attracts and converts your ideal clients.

But before you rush off and jump into building your coaching website, here are 10 questions you should thoroughly answer to make your project go smoother.

This A Brand New Or Redesigned Coaching Website?

The answer to this question is fairly simple. If you don’t have a website, then this would be a new website project. However, if you have an existing website, redoing your website would be considered a redesign. If you’re not sure if you should redesign your existing website, here are some compelling reasons to consider it:

• Do a website redesign if your original website was not professionally designed (aka Do-it-Yourself)
• Your target audience has changed
• If your website messaging is not resonating with your ideal target audience
• Your brand image has changed
• Your offers have been updated
• A website redesign is good if you haven’t updated your website in a few years
• If you’re not proud of your current website
• Your website is not functioning properly
• If you want to change website platforms
• You need a more comprehensive website

Will You Build Your Own Coaching Website Or Hire An Expert?

With all the website platforms that offer done-for-you templates, it can be very tempting to skip the cost of hiring an expert website designer and opt to do it yourself. But before you make that decision, let’s weigh the pros and cons of Do-it-Yourself vs. Done-for-You.

Do-it-Yourself Coaching Website

PROS:

• Save money
• You can implement your own style
• You can make it happen on your own time
• Increases your skills in website development so you can easily make changes later

CONS:

• Free templates are used all the time so your website won’t likely be overly unique
• You are wasting valuable time that could be used staying in your zone of genius
• A do-it-yourself website is normally not nearly as professional as an expertly designed website
• You need to understand SEO so you can optimize your website 
• When you run into bugs with your website, it can be complicated and time consuming to try and fix
• Your brand can take a hit if the content and design is not on point with your audience

Done-for-You Coaching Website

PROS:

• Experts in brand design, copywriting and website design will elevate your messaging and brand
• You can spend your time on what you do best – coaching and being the CEO of your business, while a website company builds your website
• Your website will be uniquely yours and different from your competitors
• Your website will be optimized for SEO and other important factors like lead and traffic generation
• You don’t have to deal with the tech nightmares that sometimes come with building your own website
• You will feel proud of your website and this will increase your confidence

CONS:

• It is more expensive to hire expert website designers
• It might take longer to have your website built, depending on the agency’s lead time
• There could be some back and forth on copy and design editing as the website agency works to get your brand “right”
• It’s possible you feel a lack of control

So as you can see, you need to weigh the pros and cons of both options before making your final decision.

Have You Reviewed Other Coaching Websites To Get Inspiration?

Recently a website prospect told me they were looking for a corporate feel for their website. They wanted to look like a big corporation, even though they are currently a two person operation. My first question to them was, “Have you looked at other websites to get inspiration?”

We can learn a lot about what we like and what we don’t like by visiting other websites. If you can make a list of websites that you love, this will give your website designer a good feel for what she needs to replicate – with your own unique brand of course. In addition, oftentimes a website will reveal who built the website at the bottom (but not always).

If you’re looking for inspiration from other coaching websites, here are some links you can visit:

10 Absolutely Captivating Life Coaching Websites

20 Great Coaching Websites

The 35 Best Coaching Websites for 2023, Organized by Niche

Have You Invested In A Full Branding Package?

Nine times out of 10, when a new website client comes to us, in their heart of hearts, they believe they have all their branding done. After all, they do have their logo and their colors. But a brand is so much more than that. A full branding packages includes:

• Your company logo
• A complimentary color palette
• Fonts 
• Graphic elements that are used for design
• Photos that represent the brand
• Multiple owner brand photos (professionally done)
• The brand voice
• Words that are used in the messaging
• Full understanding of the target audience
• Your secret sauce
• A complete brand style guide 

What happens when you don’t invest in a full branding package is that your website design company won’t have everything they need to fully represent you and your brand. There will be a lot of back and forth and you run the risk of not getting a website that reflects what you want and needs. That is why Amazing OBM offers a full branding package as part of our website design projects. It’s a fun and necessary process to go through.

Which Platform Will You Use For Your Website?

It used to be that WordPress was the go-to standard for websites but that has evolved so much now. There are so many website platforms to choose from and more are added all the time. It can be an exhausting process to choose the platform you feel is best for you and it often depends on many factors. Some of the things to look for are:

1. Ease of use
2. Design flexibility
3. Pricing
4. Functionality (can you do blogs, courses, e-commerce, etc)
5. Integrations (with other software you use)

So you don’t get sucked into the website research vortex, let me narrow your focus and tell you the most popular website platforms that our coaches and course creators are using right now.

• Kajabi
• SquareSpace
• WordPress

What Are The Goals Of Your Coaching Website?

When we are approached by someone to help them design their website, the first thing we do – before even sending out a proposal – is ask them about their goals. Their goals for their business and the role they want their website to play in it. Do they want their website to:

• act as an online brochure showcasing their business and its offers?
• be an active part of their sales funnel? 
• generate leads for them or make sales on autopilot?

Or is it a space to educate and inspire people with blogs? Perhaps a membership community? Showcase online course? A mix of all? Do they want a website that grows with their business? To scale it as their business grows? And so on. 

Having clarity on your website design goals will lead to planning a strategic website that’s more than a pretty asset for people to look at.

How Many Pages Will Your Coaching Website Have?

When you work with a website designer, part of planning your website will include knowing what pages you want to be included in your website. At the very basic level, a website should always include:

1. Your homepage – this is probably the most important page of your entire website because this is normally the first page people land on. You will either entice prospects to keep reading or they will bounce off immediately and move on. Your homepage is like a high level summary of everything there is to know about you and your organization.
2. Your about page – many coaches think this is the page where you go on and on about yourself, but nothing could be further than the truth. Your prospects want to know that you understand them deeply and your about page should showcase how well you understand your audience and what you can do to solve their problems. Sure, you can tell a captivating story of your journey but it should always be tied into how it will help transform your clients’ lives. Use empathy and authority on this page.
3. Your services page – you may have one or more services pages, depending on your offers. It’s possible to have a main services page (if you have a lot of offers), with each summarized service leading to a larger and more in-depth page.
4. Your contact page – this is a page visitors can use to connect with you. Even though you should be using Call to Action buttons throughout your entire site to connect with you, this page’s sole purpose is to provide contact information.

Other pages to consider adding to your website are:

• Blog
• Podcast
• Video
• Media
• Speaking
• Courses
• Landing page for your freebie
• Book
• Resources
• Testimonials (although these should be weaved throughout your website)
• Case studies

Have You Gotten Crystal Clear On Your Audience, Messaging And Offers?

This is the single biggest stumbling block for many coaches and course creators. And getting clarity on your audience, messaging and offers is probably the most important thing you can do before embarking on a website project.

Web Psychologist, Nathalie Nahai, says “one of the biggest barriers to gaining new clients is lack of trust”. The right messaging on your website can not only help you gain potential clients’ trust but also help with positioning. Your website should clearly indicate what it’s about, what value it (or your business/offer) creates, what makes you different from the rest, and why should people choose you. And in order to do that you need to know who you are serving, their pain, their desires, wants, needs, and more in relation to your business.  

Will you write your own website content or will you invest in a copywriter?

Making the decision whether you will write your own website content or hire a copywriter is similar to the decision to build your own website or hire an expert designer. The words you use to communicate with your prospects will make or break your website. So this decision is important.

It is true that you know your audience better than anyone else. You’ve been working with them or at least have had an opportunity to do some good market research. And if you are skilled at writing copy, then by all means, write your own website copy. At least you know it will be in your own voice and will feel authentic to you. You can pour your heart and soul into the copy and it should resonate with your ideal clients.

However, if copywriting is not your forte and you find yourself staring at a blank screen for hours, then it is time to hire a copywriter. There are many benefits to investing in a copywriter:

• A good copywriter will create actionable content for you and entice your readers to respond.
• Well written copy can increase conversions and ultimately get you more clients.
• A skilled copywriter knows how to interview you, pull out juicy soundbites and turn that into good copy.
• She/he can provide an outside perspective – sometimes it helps to receive other creative input.
• A good copywriter knows marketing well and can use these skills to promote your business.
• You can spend your time coaching your clients and not worry about pulling your hair out writing copy – a labor intensive activity.

So no matter your choice, you will need content for each of your website pages before website design can take place. Pick the best and fastest approach to get that done.  At Amazing OBM, we offer full service web design – branding, copywriting and web design.

How Will You Organize And Track The Progress Of Your Website Project?

As you can imagine, taking on a website project is a large, labor intensive, and time consuming process. And the more organized you are with the project, the smoother it will go.

When we work with our website clients, we have a very specific process we follow to ensure everything is done in an orderly and timely fashion. This process looks something like this:

1. Identify the website goals
2. Define the project scope
3. Submit a proposal to the client
4. Onboard the client
5. Create a sitemap for the website
6. Do a content outline for each of the pages
7. Gather all the branding elements (do a branding session if needed)
8. Write the homepage copy
9. Design the homepage
10. Write the copy for all the other pages
11. Design the remaining website pages
12. Mobile optimization
13. Proofread and edit content and design
14. Test the website
15. Pre-launch to close friends and colleagues
16. Launch to the world
17. Celebrate!

At each phase of this process, there are client check ins and approvals so we can course correct early before moving on. And all of our website projects are tracked in a project management software with detailed tasks that include instructions, notes, assignees and due dates. A project manager oversees the whole project to make sure everything is on track.

Getting a new website is fun! It’s like bringing a new baby into the world! So if you are going to embark on a new or redesigned website project this year, I hope these questions help you flesh out everything you need to think about.

And if you want a beautiful and lead generating website, we offer full service website design – branding, copywriting and web design. Let’s schedule a call so we can discuss your website project.