Creating a Life Coaching Website
Why Create a Website?
If you are thinking of starting a life coaching business then you probably don't need to be reminded of the reasons for creating a website but just in case, here are a few:
1. To attract new customers - from people searching the web for the kinds of life coaching services that you offer.
2. To establish your credibility and professionalism - in this day and age many people take it as read that a professional business will have its own website. You can use your website to give information about your expertise, training and specialisms so that people can find out about your services at their leisure.
3. To market your services far afield - this may not be relevant if you are only providing face to face coaching, but if like most life coaches you provide services via telephone and/or email then a website offers an ideal way to spread information about your service across the world because of the accessibility of the internet. Currently approximately 1/3rd of the visits to my website coming from people outside the UK, where I am based, and I have had clients from Europe, Africa and the USA as well as all parts of the United Kingdom because people across the world have found my website through searching on the internet.
4. To give information about your services to existing customers or to colleagues or others which whom you might set up strategic alliances or network.
5. To sell life coaching products online - e.g. self help e-books that you might create on particular topics or sell on behalf of others as an affiliate for a commission.
6. To enable customers to pay for your services online by credit card or debit card - it is relatively easy to set up a payments system such as Paypal on your website. This can cut down on administration and time in having to process cheques or other payment methods.
Website Design - The Basic Principle
The basic principle to remember in designing your website or getting someone else to design your website for you is that you want your website to be effective in achieving the primary aim that you set for it (which might be for example to attract a certain number of new customers in a year).
This may sound like an obvious statement but many website designers may base their creation of a website or their critique of your own website on designing a website that looks good. A website may look good and be admired for its style but if the design doesn't encourage people to take action on reading your web pages then ask yourself is it worth having that admiration?
On the other hand, a website may look fairly simple or rudimentary but if potential clients and others can navigate across it easily and on reading the webpages they make a purchase or arrange a session or sign up to your newsletter - or whatever your intention for the website is - then the website is fulfilling its purpose.
In summary the design of the website should be subordinate to its function or aim - Design the website in a way that is likely to help the website to meet whatever aims you want it to meet rather than simply to look good or pretty. It is likely that you may have to try out different layouts or designs for a while and see what difference they make to the core results you are hoping to achieve (e.g. to the number of clients you get) before you can accurately assess what website design is best suited for your purpose.
Should I Create My Own Website?
Before I became a life coach I had never created a website or done anything similar - my own use of the internet was confined to making searches and sending emails. I therefore undertook a short course in creating a website and with some advice from one or two people who had experience in the area I learned what html was and how to create web pages. For some people this may sound daunting, but it was in fact of great use to me and I will never regret it.
Creating and managing your own web site:
- Enables you to try out different layouts, change wording on web pages and create new pages without incurring excessive expense (other than the use of your time)
- Means that you can continually reevaluate the role and success of your website in your internet marketing strategy and use it to inform business decisions
- Saves you the time and energy (as well as money) that you would have spent in finding and paying someone else to create your website
- Means that you know that the person who is creating your website is someone you can trust - you!
Getting Someone Else to Design Your Website
If you do decide to get someone else to design and create your website, then unless you already have someone in mind to do it whom you know and trust and have strong reason to believe will be able to create a website that will fulfill your primary aims, it makes sense to:
- Compare different options - i.e. don't automatically use the first web designer whom you find - ask them what they can offer and how much it will cost and compare that offer with at least 2 others. Let the different providers know that you are exploring different possibilities as this may give you a negotiating point in relation to cost.
- Decide in advance of contacting the web designer what are the essential requirements that you want them to be able to meet in designing your website and what you see as the primary aims of the website so that you can ask each potential web designer how they will meet those requriements
- Ask the website designer how they will be able to demonstrate the extent to which they are meeting your specifications - for example if you want the website designer also to help with search engine optimisation, there are various tools such as Google Analytics which (for free) can provide extensive data as to the number of visitors to your website, the nature of the searches they make to get there, how long they stay on your website, what pages they visit and much further information. It should be possible to set some defined objectives in advance which can be monitored to see if the website has met them (e.g. regarding number of visitors to the site).
- Be wary of locking yourself into a long term contract with a web designer unless or until they have first demonstrated that they can deliver the level of service that you want.
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