7 Elements of a High-Performing Personal Trainer Website

Did you become a personal trainer because you want to help people achieve their fitness goals? If so, you may be more interested in getting strength training or cardio results than creating a personal trainer website. While this is understandable, your website can help make or break your business.

An effective personal trainer website contains seven elements. That said, the only thing worse than having an ineffective website is having no website at all.

Why Every Personal Trainer Needs a Website

BrightLocal’s 2022 Consumer Review Survey shares that 78% of consumers use the internet to learn about local businesses. And they use it for this purpose more than once a week. If you don’t have a website, your potential clients won’t be able to find you. Instead, they will find your competitors who are online.

Based on this factor alone, having a website can help you grow your personal training business. But there’s another reason every personal trainer needs a website. It helps you achieve the three keys of marketing success: enabling your potential clients to get to know, like, and trust you.

Trust is critical to retaining clients long term. When clients trust you, it can also help you build credibility within the fitness industry. One of the first steps to establishing trust is getting your clients to like you. They must feel as if they know you for them to like you. Personal training websites are an effective way to make all this happen.

Your website gives visitors a glimpse of who you are as a trainer. The more they like what they see, the more likely they are to want to know more.

7 Elements of an Effective Personal Trainer Website

When developing a personal training website, your options are almost endless. Yet, each element should contribute to the effectiveness of your website. Namely, it should attract visitors and grow your client list. Here are seven factors that can do just that.

#1: Simple Website Design

When creating your personal training website, you may want to use all the bells and whistles possible. However, taking this approach may backfire by slowing your website down. This is important because your page’s load time directly impacts your bounce rate.

Bounce rate refers to the number of people who click on your site only to click back off. The higher your bounce rate, the more potential clients you lose. If your page takes more than three seconds to load, its bounce rate jumps to 38%. Compare this to the bounce rate for a two-second load time, which is only 9%.

Keeping your website design as simple as possible can help improve load time. Before adding another graphic or element, ask yourself if it’s needed. Also, take the time to pull up your website on multiple devices. See how fast it loads on a desktop versus a mobile device. If it’s more than three seconds, you may need to remove a few elements.

#2: High Quality Images

If you want to try a new local restaurant, what’s one way to see if it’s for you? One option is to go online and look at pictures. This enables you to see what it looks like both inside and out. If those images are high in quality, you may be more inclined to try it out. The same is true about your personal training website.

Pictures that are fuzzy or out of focus make it seem like you don’t care how your business is portrayed. Images that are far off won’t give a client the ability to see your training style. Use high quality images and you can avoid these scenarios.

Include pictures of:

• Your fitness studio or the fitness center in which you work

• You conducting personal training sessions

• Smiling clients who are happing while working out

(Note: If you plan to use images of a person other than you, get their written permission first. Also, get permission if you plan to use images of a training facility that you do not own.)

#3: Easy-to-Find Contact Info

Have you ever gone to a website and wanted to contact the business but couldn’t find its phone number or email? That’s the last thing you want to do to your potential clients.

Put your contact information at both the top and bottom of the website. Include a ‘Contact Us’ page that shares your hours, phone number, email, and physical address (if you offer in-person training).

You might even share your workout schedule along with the contact data. This makes it easy for potential clients to know upfront whether they can fit your training session into their day.

#4: Snippet Workout Videos

When you’re looking for a fitness trainer, it’s helpful to see them in action. You get a feel for their energy. It also gives insight into their training style.

Include video snippets of you providing personal training services. This gives a prospective client the ability to check you out. This is especially important if you are an online personal trainer. Since prospects can’t come to see you in person, you want to give them a taste of an online training session.

The videos don’t have to be long either. Just one to two minutes is enough for them to decide if they want to try you out. Another option is to offer a free five or 10-minute workout video. This shows your desire to help them out before they even sign up. (If you ask for their email to get this video, it helps grow your client list.) It also gives a new client a workout before their first session.

#5: Compelling Success Stories

Nothing sells a personal trainer more than seeing the results they can provide. Before and after photos of clients you’ve helped can compel your site’s visitors to take action.

You can also ask your clients to share their fitness journey in writing. There’s something powerful about hearing their struggles and triumphs in their own words. This also adds credibility to you as a trainer.

#6: A Fitness Instructor Bio That Shares Your ‘Why’

Your trainer website should connect with visitors on a personal level. The more it does this, the more likely a person is to hire you for personal training services. This is where your bio can help.

Tell your website visitor why living a healthy lifestyle is so important to you. Explain why you decided to become a certified personal trainer. Share your ‘why.’

Try to speak from the heart when writing your bio. Be honest about your fitness struggles. This adds to your genuineness as a trainer. It also makes potential clients feel more comfortable with sharing their challenges.

#7: FAQs for Prospective Clients

It can be incredibly frustrating to go to a website with questions and not find answers. You can prevent this from happening by adding a frequently asked questions (FAQs) page to your personal training website.

Some of the questions you may want to answer are:

• What type of training do you offer? (strength training, cardio, yoga, etc.)

• What should a new client expect during their first training session?

• What’s the best way to contact you?

• How long before the client can expect to see results?

• Do you offer any services outside of fitness training? (diet plans, health coaching, etc.)

• Do clients need to be at a certain fitness level to sign up?

• What should a client do if they can’t show up to their session?

The One Question Personal Trainer Websites Need to Answer

When potential customers come to your personal trainer website, there is one question that they want answered: What’s in it for me? Keep this in mind when creating your website content.

This is actually one mistake found on many personal training websites. The trainer focuses too much on themselves. They talk almost exclusively about their qualifications or what they can do. This leaves the person viewing the site feeling left out.

The best place to talk about yourself is in your bio. Otherwise, keep the focus on the client. Tell them what results you can provide. Get them to picture themselves at improved fitness levels with you as their trainer.

DIY Website Builder vs Hiring Someone to Create Your Fitness Website

You have two basic options when creating your personal training website. The first is to use a website builder. Many online platforms offer the ability to create your own website. You pick the theme and colors, then input your content.

The benefit of using a website builder is that you have total control. That makes this a good option for someone who knows exactly what they want. It’s also typically cheaper to build your website with a do-it-yourself (DIY) platform. Many even offer a variety of SEO tools. SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is what search sites use to connect you with a potential client.

The one major con of using a website builder is that you have to do the work yourself. If you’re busy training clients, you might not have much time. Even if you have time, you may have no interest in learning the software. Or you might not understand which graphics, colors, or fonts will have the most impact.

Hiring someone to create your trainer website resolves all these issues. An expert in website design can craft a site that attracts more clients. Ideally, this should be someone who has worked with personal training professionals. That way, they understand what you do and how to best impact your potential clients.

Before hiring a web designer, check their references. See what others have to say about working with them. Ask them what they envision for your website. Make sure it aligns with what you want. Also, ask about their pricing. Look for hidden costs that might unexpectedly appear after you sign a contract.

A Free Professional Personal Training Website

If you want a website but don’t have a lot of cash—or a lot of time to set one up—all of ISSA’s certification courses come with a free professional website. Plug in your information and you can be found online.

This website is provided with the Personal Trainer Certification course, as well as all of the Specialization Courses.

If you offer online personal training, our Online Coach Certification course shares even more tips for creating a solid virtual presence for your online coaching business. This includes the creation of an effective training website.