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No, seriously. Stand back and take a good hard look at what you are offering and ask yourself if you would even choose to buy from your website?
Put yourself in your client’s shoes and walk through the journey they take when buying from you.
Well, it’s time you take a fresh look at your business from your client’s perspective.
Google yourself. Start with CrossFit “Your Town”. Do you even show up on the first page? If so, great. If not, you are invisible to a ton of people and pretty much don’t exist. Now google some other terms like fitness “your town”, nutrition “your town”, etc. My guess is you don’t rank for these. Stop competing against every other CrossFit gym in your area. Focus on ranking for the next layer where so many potential members are just waiting to find you. If you want more info on this topic, click here.
Now visit your website. What’s your first impression?
Be as unbiased as possible. Keep in mind, a visitor makes up their mind within 5 seconds if they are going to stick around. Things like a slow website load, confusing text, poor navigation, etc. will not help at all. So you pass the 5 second test, ask yourself these 3 questions: What do we offer? How could what we offer make your life better? How can you purchase what we offer?
These 3 questions need to be easily understood and visible for your potential athletes. If someone can’t purchase or make a decision to take the next step easily with you at midnight after they ate a pop tart, then they will find some place where they can. They may just be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Is your strategic advantage clear?
Can I clearly see what makes you unique among your competition and please don’t tell me it’s your community or coaches. That means nothing to me as someone new to CrossFit. I need you to tell me that you understand my pain points, the struggles in my life. I need you to show me you will be my unintimidating guide.
Does your website tell me what to do next? Is there a clear Call to Action? Show me what to do next. Schedule your free No Sweat Intro. Come in for your first free class. “Contact Us” is not a call to action.
Are you building your list? Your email list.
Building your email list is one of the key essentials of your business. You can typically measure the strength of a business by their email list. You wonder why you don’t get many leads each month. Here’s the reason: you just expect visitors to come back when they are ready to sign up. Look at your own life. How busy are you? How many daily things are vying for your attention. The list is long. Facebook, email, Instagram, calls, members, husband/wife, kids, friends, competitors, etc. The list feels endless.
Here’s the deal: A typical member needs at least 5 touch points before they are ready to make a decision on a purchase. Think about that for a minute. Ok, now back to your email list. Create an opt-in with a value add ebook on your website to capture emails so you can provide those 5 point touches so they choose you when they are ready. Did you know 95% of people are not ready to buy when they visit your site. They are just checking you out. So yeah, capturing an email address is a BIG deal and should be your top priority on your site.
How much clutter do you have on your site?
Simplify your site as much as possible. No one reads long pages of text. You may think your Getting Started page needs to share every single detail of your process. Unfortunately, the truth is most people won’t get past the first paragraph. Knowing this, eliminate clutter and then go back and eliminate more. Turn your Getting Started page into a simple 3 step process for starters. Then look at every page and think to yourself, Would you even read this? If not, tighten it up and simplify. Even get rid of pages that don’t serve a purpose. That nutrition blog you had high hopes of starting has a couple posts from a couple months ago. FYI: that actually makes you look worse by not posting on a regular basis. Delete it.
How many stories are you sharing on your website?
We won’t get into this in depth now, just know people resonate with stories. Yours and those of your clients. Don’t take this lightly. This can be the difference maker.
Are you building your expertise?
Yes, I know you do this every day when your members come in for the WOD. You show them how to warm-up, walk them through progression, and give tactical tips. Your members respect you for your knowledge. So, why aren’t you sharing that expertise to your local community? They want to benefit too from your knowledge on things like – helping save their backs while sitting at my office desk, or whether they should down that Diet soda in the afternoon at their desk. Maybe if you meet them where they are, they just may come in someday because you are the only one providing health tips online via your website or social media. Your local community, not only your members, need you to step up and become the health/fitness expert. Hint: You may just get a few new members from sharing your knowledge.
Putting yourself in your client’s shoes is incredibly eye-opening.
Kinda like me flying into Washington DC for our seminar the other weekend. Seeing DC from a different perspective gives a whole new point of view. Step out, look in, and evaluate. Treat your website with the professionalism it deserves.
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