Every business needs a website. That’s a fact these days. No
one can find you online if you aren’t online, seems obvious doesn’t it? Getting
a website doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. In fact, you can actually get a fully
functional website for under £100! And that includes advertising! Sound good?
Read on…
There are certain things you can’t get for free. But the
majority is out there for you to find if you put in the effort. Not everyone
needs to hire a website designer. Maybe in the future, when you have expanded
your business to a nationwide service. But when you first want to put yourself
out there, you aren’t going to need to fork out thousands. Here is all you
need:
·
Domain name – For those of you who aren’t up to
date with the tech lingo; this is your website address (for example www.ArunGrayPT.com). Obviously some of
these website names are taken (such as Facebook.com and Google.com) but chances
are, if you are going to be using your name, it is probably available. It
doesn’t have to be your name however. If you have a business name, use that!
Have a play around with ideas and see what you can come up with. This will cost
you around £6.99 per year for a .co.uk domain, or £9.99 for a .com domain;
depending on what you would like to go for. I would stick to these two rather
than .org or .net… but that’s just my preference as I think they don’t look as
professional to customers.
·
Website host – This is the service that will put
your website on the Internet. Basically, they are the middle man between your
website and your customers. There are hundreds out there to choose from and I
will recommend a few below.
Buying a domain
As I touched on above; your domain name can be anything…
within reason. If you decided (for some reason) to add expletives to your
domain, it will probably get blacklisted by Google and customers won’t find it.
But that would be stupid so I’m sure you thought of that! I would choose
something that clearly shows what you do. So, instead of www.ArunGray.co.uk you
could go for www.ArunGrayPT.co.uk which
shows you’re a PT. This way, customers know what they’re getting. If they see
“Joe Bloggs” on Google and then see “Arun Gray Personal Training” below it,
even though it’s lower on the list, they are more likely to click on it as they
can see it’s the website of a personal trainer.
GoDaddy are one of the biggest domain selling sites in the
world and their website it pretty easy to navigate. As I mentioned earlier, you
can pick up a domain for under £10.
Website hosting
Hosting can again be simple, as long as you do a few YouTube
searches and have a look at some how-to guides. I like Yola. It starts just £27
a year to host your website under their Bronze package. This is all I use and I
attract a good amount of traffic. They use a simple drag and drop style design
so you don’t need to learn any html programming which is what puts most people
off creating a website. You simply drag a text box or image box from their
easy-to-navigate tool bar and place it where you want on your page. There are
also little widgets you can add such as Facebook “like” buttons which you can
link to your Facebook pages.
If you want to keep everything in one place, GoDaddy also
offer a hosting service for just £29.88 per year.
What should you
include?
The basics you need on your website are:
·
Home/Welcome
page – Again, sounds obvious but this is the first thing your potential
customers will see. It needs to be clear, professional and appealing. Images
always stand out more and if people see loads of text, they probably won’t read
it. Put on some pictures of past clients, yourself, your equipment.
·
Contact
page – Once you’ve attracted anyone to your website, your next goal is to
get them to contact you. This is how you clinch your sale. They will be
interested if they have visited your site. The only way they can get hold of
you is if you show them how too. Include everything. Phone, address, email,
social media accounts, even a map. Yola automatically places a map on your
contact page if you have entered your address. This is visually appealing and
will attract your customers’ attention.
·
About
page – Again, an obvious but vital page. You need to explain who you are,
what you do, how you can help people. Include details such as, how experienced
you are, what qualifications you have, what sort of things you offer and what
you specialise in. Think about the things people will be searching for. People often
want to hire a personal trainer either for weight loss or for muscle building.
Think about this when writing your bio. It’s a way of selling yourself. It will
be there for the rest of your career, make it impressive. It’s like a CV. You
wouldn’t apply for a job with a thin, short CV.
Promote!
Once you’ve purchased your domain name and you are hosted
online, you need to get people on your website. The more people that see your
website, the more sales you will make. If 5% of the people that visit your website
become customers, for every 100 people that see your site 5 will become
clients. This figure is much more flattering if 10,000 people are seeing your
website! This can be done in two forms: online and offline promotion.
Online promotion
involved adverts, getting your name out there and giving your page the best
chance of being found on search engines. Look into search engine optimisation.
Hire a SEO consultant. Purchase ads on Facebook, Google, Twitter.
Offline promotion
is much more simple. Flyers, posters, signs, banners, clothing, business cards,
directly telling people about your website.
Everything you do should include your website. Even if
people see it and don’t need/want your service… they might do in the future.
When they do need your help, they will know where to find you! Get your website
printed on everything. Your uniform, business cards, even your car! It can also
help with current customers. If they are with your for weight loss and they see
you run a boot camp at the weekend, they might want to find out more.
Get yourself out there!
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