Have you ever tried to create your own coaching website only to realize it’s a lot harder than it looks? Or maybe you tried using a website template that required “no programming skills” and discovered that it wasn’t as easy as it looked in the demo video.
If you’re wondering how to create a do-it-yourself website that actually looks great, this article may be just what you’ve been looking for.
You want a professional website that will help you grow your coaching business. But you don’t want the ongoing expenses of paying a webmaster. And you don’t want to spend frustrating weeks – or even months – trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together.
Is there a way to have it all?
The solution is to use the analogy of a kit. Hire experts to do the critical parts that you cannot do and then take those parts and put them together yourself. The reason most coaches spend endless hours trying to complete a website is because they either try to do everything themselves, or they don’t know what parts to hire out and what to do themselves.
Here are 3 steps to creating a do-it-yourself website that looks great, attracts clients, and helps you save money.
Step 1 – Marketing Strategy
Before you start designing your website, you want to get crystal clear on your niche, ideal client, and the transformation that you offer. Otherwise, you’ll end up with an ineffective website. Even if it looks pretty, you’ll find that it doesn’t help you get new clients.
To do this, you’ll want to work with an Internet and marketing expert, such as a business coach, marketing coach, or online marketing coach/consultant. They can help you create your online marketing strategy to attract clients, including planning out your website.
This is one of the best investments you will ever make in your business because it saves you so much time and effort and helps you get FAST results. And there are lots of options available, depending on your budget: home study courses, group programs, or private VIP coaching programs. Of course, the closer you work personally with the expert, the better your results will be. But as a coach yourself, you already knew that, right?
This is a case where you don’t know what you don’t know. An online marketing expert will help you know what web pages you need, how to best lay out those pages, and what to write on the website to make it irresistible. You’ll learn what tools are best to use and how to maximize list building and sales.
They will usually help you with your branding message as well, such as choosing a URL, company name, website colors, tag lines, and program names. And occasionally, you’ll find an online marketing expert, like myself, who can also create the website for you. Normally, your marketing expert and web designer will be two separate people.
Step 2 – Website Template
Hire a web designer (or webmaster) to create the website your online marketing expert helped you develop. Don’t try to do this yourself.
I recommend using a WordPress theme for your site, rather than having a site built from scratch. This will save a lot of time and money, Your web designer can add custom graphics, essential plugins, and easy (or complex) customization to the WordPress theme to implement your online marketing strategy.
WordPress blogs are fairly easy to use. But they are rarely easy to customize. Rather than waste tons of time learning how to do this yourself, hire it done and have the site ready fast.
Your goal here is to have a professional set up the foundation of the site for you so you can build on it. Remember my earlier analogy about the kit? Having a web designer create the foundation for you is like buying a do-it-yourself kit. Have them do the technical parts that require training and skill, such as graphic design, hosting set up, plugin configuration, and adjustments to the stylesheets.
Your investment will vary greatly depending on the amount of customization and extra services you ask your web designer to do before you take over the site. Things like search engine optimization, keyword research, custom graphics, and shopping carts can add hundreds or thousands of dollars to the cost of a site set up. So if you’re on a budget, start with the bare minimum and plan to add on later.
Step 3 – Website Creation
Now start adding content to your site. WordPress allows you to create blog posts and pages with the same ease as using a word processor. And you can often add audio, video, and special formatting with little (or even no) programming skills.
WordPress is truly a do-it-yourself website solution. And there is a lot of flexibility on how much you can do yourself or hire it done.
Summary
If you’ve been struggling to build your website, take a look at the 3 steps above and make a list of where you need to leverage your time and/or invest in experts to save money. Are you crystal clear on your niche and ideal client? Are you getting assistance with your online marketing strategy or trying to “wing it”? Or you wasting time trying to learn programming or graphic software?
By using the kit analogy and getting expert assistance, you really can have an irresistible do-it-yourself website for your coaching business.
Hello
Thank you for your nice article.
Thanks
You’re welcome. The topic of do-it-yourself websites for coaches seems to be pretty popular. I’ve already had the article picked up by other online sites that help coaches with their online marketing.
Thank you for visiting my site!
Karen Brunet
More Clients More Sales More Often
Continue the wonderful good article, I just read couple of articles about this web page and i believe that the blog is rattling intriguing and consists of sets of helpful information.
Wow!! i am very impressed with your lovely post.. i am so glad to left comment on this..This has been a so interesting read, would love to read more here….