After all of your hard work perfecting your fitness website design, what happens next? How do you turn your website visitors into prospects and paying members?
First, your website needs to have a goal. Think about what you want your website visitors to do once they click on your website. What primary action do you want them to take?
One example of a goal might be getting new visitors to contact you so you can provide them with more information about your services. Another goal may be getting new members to sign up for a free trial offer. Or maybe you want to get current members to sign up for a monthly membership.
Once you’ve set a clear goal for how you want your website visitors to act, the next step is letting them know. You can communicate what you want your visitors to do by using a call-to-action (CTA).
What is a Call-to-Action and Why is it Important?
Your website might have great traffic, but without some form of guidance your visitors may leave your website without doing anything. No sign-ups. No free trials. No new prospects.
Why would they leave?
Because you made one of the most common website mistakes by not showing them what to do through a call-to-action.
Using a CTA to show people where to click is a great way to improve your website. It gives visitors direction on what to do, and it guides them along a digital path to your website goal.
What Makes a Great Fitness Website CTA?
Here are some tips for writing smart CTAs for your fitness website.
1.) Keep it Simple
A complicated CTA may discourage visitors from clicking.
Let’s say you want your visitors to fill out a form to submit their contact information. It would be nice to learn as much as you can about this person, but including too many fields can cause them to lose motivation and leave the form before completing it.
Keep your fields to a minimum – name, phone number, and email. You can ask them about their fitness goals, workout history, and program of interest after you’ve reached out to them.
2.) Be Specific
Use text that clearly describes what you want your visitor to do.
Let’s say you use your About Us page to outline who you are and what your business is all about. At the bottom of the description, you include a link that says “Click Here” to contact you.
“Click Here” might seem like the right CTA, but it’s too vague. Your visitors won’t be sure where they’re headed after they click, so they may not click at all.
Using detailed language like “Get Started on Your Fitness Goals” is more specific. Including creative text makes your website unique compared to other fitness websites that still use “Click Here.”
3.) Reduce the Risk
A CTA that reduces the prospect’s risk can yield positive results.
Someone brand new to your fitness business may not be ready to commit to a membership, but offering a free trial could be intriguing. If you offer a free trial to prospective members, try using a friendly, risk-free CTA like “Try a Free Class On Us” instead of “Sign Up.”
4.) Make it Visible
Each one of your website pages should have a CTA prominently displayed.
This includes areas where website visitors would naturally be ready to take action, such as the bottom and top of your web pages.
Another way to make your CTAs more visible is to use colors or font sizes that help the link or button stand out from the rest of the page.
5.) Give Small Changes Time to Work
Once you’ve made changes to your existing CTAs or added new ones, give the updates some time to do their job.
Making small changes can help you figure out what’s working and what isn’t. If you update the text, color, and location of a single CTA all at once, it’ll be hard to identify which change had the largest impact.
If you only update the CTA’s text and see what happens, you can track the impact of that change and make your future updates even better. If after a few weeks you’re not sure that your CTA is working well, try making another small update.
Smart CTAs are only one of the key components of a successful fitness website.