They are not giving their website budgets the value that they deserve
Most coaches and small business owners dedicate little money to building a proper website. They think they don’t have any money, or they think they don’t need to allocate any money to this part of their business. Coupled with all the hoopla out there about how you can have a website for next to nothing, there is a common misperception that you can have an easy, effective, money-generating website without having to pay more than $0. Or $300. Or even $900. The truth is, you can have a good website for next to nothing, but the only way to do it is to know everything about what a good website entails. If you are prepared to spend a lot of time learning all the components of a good website – the programming, hosting, email management, copywriting, photographing all your imagery and creating all your graphical elements yourself, ecommerce, testing, etc. – at some point you are going to have to fork out some cash to get it done right.
A good website requires a professional presence. This includes the elements listed above, and all of them cost. Images alone can run $20 or more each. You will need to have very good photographs of yourself on the site, and unless you are brilliant at taking selfies, you will need to hire a professional photographer. You will need editing software in order to get your images to fit correctly in the location of the site you want it to appear. You will need to know how to create graphical elements, and unless you are a graphic designer, this could be difficult. You will also need to know how to write effective copy, so that the visitors of your site are engaged and compelled to take action. You will need to know how to collect email addresses from interested parties and how to manage those emails once you get them. You will need to know how to provide ways to contact you that actually work and do not overwhelm you with spam. If you intend to allow customers to buy products from you online, you will need to know how to collect payment information from your customers securely and safely. Unless you know how all of this works, you will have to pay someone to do it for you. And good designers/developers cost. Just like you want to charge top dollar for your services, you must be willing to pay top dollar for other people’s services. What goes around comes around.
The design of this site isn't even the worst thing about it – when the site loads, the video starts. With music. I wanted to blow my ears off. This is a financial coaching website. Would you trust this person about money??
Allocate a decent budget for your website. If you don’t know what a decent budget is, then call around and find out what developers in your niche charge. Get a few estimates. Accept that you may have to pay several thousand dollars for a good site, and don’t forget to budget for good follow-up support. It will be invaluable when things go wrong, because they do. Plan for it, and budget for it. Your website, especially if it is your only portal to your customers, is one of the most important parts of your business. It is the wise coach and business owner who treats it as such.
They let their egos run the show
Too many coaches waste all of their website copy on extolling their own virtues. They want to talk about how long they have been coaching, all their astonishing credentials, all the amazing awards they received in their prior vocations before they became a coach, and basically how unbelievably brilliant they are. Then they have endless testimonials from supposedly prior clients who have gone on to have incredible successes just from working with them. They show how many news sites or TV shows they have been on, and how many household brand companies they have consulted with. Some of them even like to put out there how they are not available for any appointments until 2020 because they are so fantastic and in-demand.
These sites are essentially just brag-fests.
Now I don’t know about you, but I am turned off by these types of coaching sites. When I am looking for coaching, I generally want it NOW. So if someone says they don’t have any available time for me until I am dead, then I am going to move on to someone who does have time for me. Too many testimonials going on about how the client has gone from making $200 a month to $20,000 a month in just six short weeks with SuperCoach’s program makes me a little wary. And while professional credentials and well-known clients have their place in terms of displaying credibility, I don’t need to see that on the home page.
This guy's website is beautiful, but other than knowing he is a speaker, he doesn't say anything about what he's selling. I have no idea what he coaches people on. But he sure lets people know how great he is.
What I want to see up front and center is how the coach is going to solve my problem. That’s all I really care about, as a customer. Not how many advanced degrees he/she has, or even how many years of experience he/she has. I want to see some demonstration, right there on the site, that he/she understands my problem and has a good, solid solution for it that resonates with me. Anything short of that, and I’m checking out someone else.
The best way to design your website is to think like your ideal customers. What do your customers want to know? What do they want to see? What problems are they coming to you to solve? That copy is what you will want to put on your home page, and much of your supporting pages. There is a place for all the other data, but the opening page needs to be all about them. Let’s face it, we are all pretty self-involved, but we are really self-involved when we have a problem, especially if it is a problem that is causing us pain. And when we want to have that problem solved, we want to know that the person we are considering to help us solve it (and pay top dollar to) knows that it is our top priority – not how great they are. The best coaching websites make it immediately known that they can, and will solve that problem.