10 Awful Mistakes Gyms Inadvertently Make on Their Website
In this article, I'm going to be showing you the top 10 biggest mistakes gyms often make on their websites that are scaring away potential customers and ultimately costing them sales.
These mistakes are ones I find a lot when doing free website audits for the local gyms in my area. In fact, I find at least a few of these mistakes on nearly every website I audit.
Before I explain each one, here is a quick list of the 10 mistakes gyms make on their website:
- No Click to Call/Text
- No Clear Call to Action (CTA)
- No Value Proposition
- Using Stock Photos
- Design is Too Busy
- Logo is WAY Too Big
- Having a Pricing Page
- No Free Offer to Collect Leads
- Not Including Testimonials/Case Studies
- Not Optimizing for Local SEO
- Bonus Mistake
Mistake #1 - No Click to Call/Text
This is one of the worst mistakes a gym owner can make on their website because it inconveniences the person visiting their site. In fact, a study showed that 35% of consumers felt disappointed when a brand or organization did not have a click-to-call button.
While it may seem small and insignificant, it's not a good experience for the user. If you include a phone number on your website that is not clickable, the person visiting your site will have to copy the phone number, and then paste it into their phone app to make the phone call.
In addition to this not being a good experience for the user, it can also limit how many people call you. It may sound odd, but some people won't take the time to copy & paste a phone number into their phone, they'll either try to find another way to contact you or go to your competitor's website.
Mistake #2 - No Clear Call to Action (CTA)
A call to action, or CTA for short, is a button or a link that is asking a website visitor to take an action. For example, currently, at the time of this article, the call to action for my Fitr Media is for a free website audit, which actually ties in with mistake #8 on this list.
A good call to action can be the deal breaker on whether or not someone coming to your website remains just a viewer looking for more info on your business or someone actually buying your product/service.
Call to actions can vary depending on your business. For example, a good CTA for an emergency plumber would be to book an appointment, view this website I built for a plumber that has an appointment booking CTA. Another example would be back to my agency's call to action. I included a CTA to a free offer that would provide someone visiting my website a ton of value, while at the same time collecting their contact info so I could send them promotional offers down the road.
Mistake #3 - No Value Proposition
A value proposition is a phrase or a short sentence that clearly states what product/service you provide and who you provide it to. Aside from not having a clickable phone number, this is one of the biggest problems I encounter when auditing websites for gyms.
Here's an example to show you how important it is for a gym to offer a clear value proposition. Say you're a gym in Denver, Colorado and you specialize in helping people lose weight doing CrossFit. A value proposition you could include on your website could be, "We help people in Denver lose weight and get the body of their dreams".
First, you mentioned that you help people in Denver (this is who you serve). Second, you mentioned how you help people lose weight (this is the service you provide). If someone now comes to your website and they have a goal of losing weight, they'll be more likely to come to your gym than the gym down the road that is just general in who they serve.
This actually ties in very well with mistake #9, so keep reading!
Mistake #4 - Using Stock Photos
This one actually perplexes me. It is not uncommon for me to audit a gym's website and most, if not all, of the images on the website are stock photos of other gyms or people working out.
Now, stock photos are totally fine if they are good photos that don't look like stock photos (for example, the iconic light bulb photo or people shaking hands) and if they're used sparingly.
In fact, some businesses can get by with using stock photos more than others. For example, my agency doesn't have a physical location, so other than photos of myself, there isn't much to take pictures of. However, if you own a gym, you have a ton of photos you can take! You can take photos of your gym's exterior, interior, members working out, and the equipment you have.
Mistake #5 - Design is Too Busy
Now, good design is relative and opinions will vary. However, a website that is busy can intimidate a user and even cause them to bounce off your website and visit another website.
In addition to intimidating a user, it can also make it confusing on what exactly your gym is about and the value you offer.
I'm not going to spend a ton of time explaining how to design a clean website because that could be an entire article all together, however here is a very important design tip—have a lot of white space.
If you're not a designer and you're unsure if your website is busy or not, just make sure you have a lot of white space on your site. This tip alone can immediately make your website look clean and more modern.
Mistake #6 - Logo is WAY Too Big
This is another common mistake I find on gym's websites when doing audits, is the logo being way too big. And I get it, your gym may have a really dope logo, and you want to show it off, but it's actually unnecessary and is actually taking up screen real estate that you could be using for more important things such as including your value proposition or photos of your gym.
For an example of how big your logo should be, feel free to visit Fitr Media's homepage here and take a look at the logo for reference.
Mistake #7 - Having a Pricing Page
Now, this is not necessarily a mistake, but I wanted to include it on this list anyway. If you browse my agency's website, you won't be able to find any pricing on my web design & SEO services that I offer to gym owners. I explain this more in-depth in this article, but gym owners should start doing the same.
In fact, some gym owners who are already starting to do this strategy are noticing some extreme results. They can get on the phone with a lead and explain the value that their gym offers, and how their gym can help them hit their goals.
Basically, if you include pricing on your gym's website, you're leaving it up to them to determine if it's worth the value. By taking pricing away from your website, they'll have to reach out to you for the pricing, and you'll have more control over the sale.
Mistake #8 - No Free Offer to Collect Leads
Sometimes someone just isn't ready to sign up for a gym membership, and that's okay. Maybe it's a financial issue, or they're currently out of town. Whatever the reason is, you don't want to waste these leads.
One of the best ways to turn these people into leads, instead of losing them completely, is by offering something for free in exchange for their contact info.
For example, for my agency Fitr Media, I offer a free course that teaches fitness professionals how to double their website customers in 60 days. It's completely free, I just ask for your contact info in order to gain access to the course.
Once you have a prospect's contact info, you can follow up with more free content to further provide value, or send promotional content about your business.
Mistake #9 - Not Including Testimonials/Case Studies
This is a VERY big mistake gym owners make since testimonials and case studies can be incredibly huge selling points. Remember in mistake #3 we went over why it's important to include your value proposition on your website? This is the next step. After clearly stating your gym's value proposition, you then should include reviews and case studies that support that value proposition.
So for example, if your value proposition was the one we created in mistake #3, you would want to include testimonials of people your gym has already helped lose weight, and even include some case studies of your most powerful client transformations.
I actually feel bad for the gyms out there not doing this because this can literally make or break a sale. In fact, 84% of people read, and trust, online reviews so it's very important that you're including reviews and case studies of your members on your website.
Mistake #10 - Not Optimizing for Local SEO
The last mistake I see gyms make is not optimizing their website for local SEO. Now I can fully understand why—SEO can be complicated.
However, the reason every gym should be optimizing their website for local SEO is simple, people are actually searching for gyms near them, so half the battle of finding new gym members is already done since they're already searching for a gym near them.
For example, a CrossFit gym in Denver that is ranking #1 for "CrossFit gym in Denver" will get most of the traffic from those keywords. And I've got news for you, they didn't get there by accident. They either did local SEO themselves or hired an agency like Fitr Media to do it for them. Either way, local SEO is extremely important and you need to start optimizing your site for it right away.
If you're unsure how to optimize your website for local SEO, I go over the least complicated way for a gym to do local SEO in my free course here. I'd highly suggest you check it out!
Bonus Mistake
Another big mistake gym owners make is not creating a strategy around their homepage. What action do they want someone to take, what content should they include, etc. Creating a homepage strategy is extremely important when it comes to collecting as many leads as possible.
If you don't know how to create a homepage strategy, take this free course where I go in-depth in video 2 in the course on creating a strategy for your homepage.
