Here’s my thoughts on a personal training business site. I think you’ll be able to pick up some good tips from this if you run a local business (or a training studio)
The site: Mike Hanley’s Studio that offers Personal Training in New Jersey (TheTrainingStudioNJ.com)
Initial thoughts
Ok where did he get this designer and why haven’t I hired him yet? Seriously this is a great, clean design that has pretty much everything you could need for a local business.
I’m split on designs a lot. Being a big blog reader and also a big fan of direct marketing, its tough to combine the two. I do however think there can be a middle ground where a good design meets great copy and this will bring in you in some customers…
Problems I see with the site…
- The copy sounds like it was written by an exercise scientist, not a real human being. This is killer #1, when trying to connect with your audience. If your audience says over and over that they want to lose body fat, then don’t try and tell them about your stability training, core activation and corrective exercises. Your client wants to hear that you have the solution for their problem. Don’t shove your agenda down their throat.
- The SEO on the site could be improved a lot. On the programs/services page each of those services needs its own seperate page. So for example, he should have a page on Nurtrition, Powerlifting, Bodybuilding etc… This way he’ll be bale to rank in the search engines for each of those phrases…
ex… New Jersey Nutritionist, Powerlifting in New Jersey etc….
- The call to action needs to be better. Just putting a link to your email is not gonna cut it. You need to get in their face and tell them exactly what you want them to do. John Carlton calls this “selling from your heels” and it’s a major mistake. When it comes time you need to give a big ole phone number for them to call or a huge button to click on to send you an email. Don’t hold back when it comes time to take action…
- Testimonials need to be featured on the homepage. I think I found a few testimonials on some other pages, but we need to get them right up in the front and center. Testimonials are the lifeblood of a local business site. You could sell a personal training package with nothing more than before and after pictures if you had to. Before and after pics are absolutely necessary when it comes to selling a fitness product. My business partner Vic who runs Fitness Bootcamps in Columbus also has made this mistake. He has testimonials on his personal training page, but not on his bootcamp page.
- The title tags need keywords. One of the biggest factors in ranking well in the search engines are the keywords in your title tags. Mike’s site has some pretty general title tags, and has no local keywords in them. His target should be to rank for local keywords like New Jersey Personal Trainer or New Jersey Nutritionist. Having things like Programs/Services in the title tag is doing him no good.
There ya go, those are some of the biggest mistakes on his site. If you are making any of these, you should probably get them switched up as soon as possible 
- Justin
