What Makes a Great Health Club Website?
Key Points
- Regularly update your health club website with fresh, relevant content and fitness-related news to improve user experience and boost online presence.
- Incorporate engaging elements like blogs, videos, and infographics to attract visitors, enhance search engine rankings, and establish your club as a fitness authority.
- Offer online training and membership sign-ups to increase convenience, credibility, and member acquisition through your website.
Today there is nothing more damaging to a business than not having a website, except perhaps having a poor website.
Gone are the days when a website can just be an ad for your health club or a simple landing page with nothing more than basic information. Today’s health club and its website need to be a hub for all things fitness education–each club should be a mini-media company in addition to the best provider of services and programming.
A well-designed and constructed website is the first step to being the area’s authority on all things health and fitness, and perhaps, increasing revenues at the same time.
Here are 5 ways to kick-start your website from a placeholder to a hub.
1. Update Often
Too often, club owners take a post-it and forget it attitude when it comes to their website, only updating quarterly schedule changes. Updating certain aspects of a website to ensure that users are getting the best experience possible, which will, in turn, result in improved sales and a better online presence. Let members know the website (and social media as well) is how to find out about closings, changes, special promotions, and, most importantly, fitness-related news and tips.
2. Utilize Great Content
When updating the content of a website, it is important to ensure the content is relevant and fresh, and also well-crafted. New search engine algorithms require that content be well written for the human eye rather than for the search engine spiders. The days of SEO stuffing, as it was called, are over. The focus should be on original, quality content.
3. Add New Elements
Websites should not only be well-written but should also include infographics, pictures and videos, and other design elements that attract and keep visitors engaged. These elements can keep your website not only high in search engine rankings, but also in people’s minds when they are looking for the latest fitness trend, exercise how-to, and more.
And while this shouldn’t be new, if you aren’t blogging yet, start today. Consider hiring a professional writer to blog and write your website so you are assured of top-notch content.
4. Offer Online Training
Be it a webinar on eating for spring or ongoing “personal” training for the Boston Marathon, having a reason for members and prospects to continue to come to your site will increase your credibility, search engine ranking and sign-ups.
5. Let Them Join Online.
It may mean changing some of your sales structure or posting your prices (which some states and local governments are requiring), but in today’s instant gratification of one-click buying, you may see memberships grow with members that may go elsewhere if forced to leave their home.
Key Takeaways
- Keep your website dynamic by frequently updating it with schedule changes, promotions, and fitness tips to maintain member engagement and improve visibility.
- Focus on creating high-quality, original content that resonates with your audience and aligns with modern search engine algorithms for better rankings.
- Add interactive and visually appealing elements, such as videos and infographics, to make your website more engaging and memorable for visitors.
- Provide online training options and enable one-click membership sign-ups to meet customer expectations for convenience and grow your health club’s membership base.
