Your website is the vein of your Internet presence. If your website appears and acts unprofessional, your health club will seem unprofessional and people won’t feel confident in the idea of becoming a member. Given that, there are a number of basic concepts you should consider when building your website. And while the more you model your website off of this list the better, each of these items can independently assist in your overall Web presence.
THE “DON’TS” OF WEBSITE DESIGN
• Don’t make visitors wait. If visitors have to wait for a page to load because it is bogged down with too many graphics and other media, they’ll just leave. While the number of high speed users (U.S. at-home broadband users) increased 36 percent in 2004, accounting for 55 percent of the total high speed users by the end of the year, according to the latest data from Nielsen//NetRatings, you cannot forget about the other 45 percent of possible visitors. With the increase in broadband access, there also seems to be a trend of increasing the load time with excessive graphics, making high speed users also wait, and totally negating low-speed access all together.
• Don’t limit access to your site by requiring visitors to download a certain plug-in, this is the same as increasing download time and most people won’t bother to wait for the download, they’ll just visit your competition instead.
• Don’t irritate your visitors with blinking text, pages full of banners, continuous background music that slows down everything, pop-up windows, or too much text. If you do annoy them, you can bet they won’t leave with a good impression or return. It’s that simple.
• Don’t use “under construction” pages. If you do not have a page finished, simply hide the link until you have completed it. You waste visitors’ time allowing them to click into a link that provides no information. If you must link to an uncompleted page, you must offer them something. At the very least, contactinformation so they can receive relevant information.
Avoiding the above “don’ts” of Web design will at least give you the chance for a positive visitor experience, and you may even have a few visitors fill out your lead form, return for more information, and/or recommend your site to others. Now let’s concentrate on the things you should do when designing a website to add to the experience of the visitor and make your site easier to use. This is important because visitors to your site are potential members and the more they enjoy their visit to your site, the more likely they will like you and your health club.
THE “DO’S” OF WEBSITE DESIGN
• Do convey what your health club is like on the main page, as well as its hours of operation and address. This saves time if visitors are not interested in what your site offers or they just needed to find out your hours and your address.
• Do have a constant style and navigation throughout your website. If your style and navigation is not consistent, then visitors will find it difficult to know if they’re still on your website, and may just leave. Or they will get so confused trying to navigate, they will leave. Either way, you have lost a potential member to your club.
• Do have a “Contact Us” link or an email address on every page. Make it easy for visitors to contact you and get more information about the club and your membership options. If visitors have to search for a way to contact you, they will become frustrated and leave altogether.
• Do have a link to the home page on every internal page of your site. Because some users will enter your site by some other entry besides the home page, you need to have a way for them to navigate back to your home page. Some will come through other pages via search engines and when they get there they will be stuck unless you direct them back to the home page.
• Do use space to break up long pages of text as long paragraphs look unprofessional and are hard to read. If something’s hard to read, people just won’t bother reading it. In addition, your website should entice potential members to contact you, not give them so much information that there is no need to contact you. You have salespersons for a reason – to close the sale. The website is there to make the potential member, comfortable with your services and amenities and “pre-qualify” them for your sales staff.
Using all, most, or some of the above when designing your website will surely enhance the visitor experience to one degree or another; making visitors more inclined to become a member of your health club. By boosting this user experience, you will find that the leads you receive from the Internet will yield qualified leads with much higher than normal conversion rates. And, let’s face it – that is what it all comes down to, right?!
Michaleen McGarry is the Chief Operating Officer of FitnessInsite. She can be contacted at 800.787.3955, or by email at Michaleen@fitnessventuregroup.com.
