Mistakes Coaching Websites Make & How to Fix Them
I’m a coach whose passion is coaching, and I doubt I would have become a Squarespace website designer had I not noticed so many mistakes on coaching websites. Like, even though I absolutely love building and even coding my own websites, I’ve never really had much interest in building websites for others.
That changed shortly after my coach training ended and my friends started DIYing their own websites. Shortly thereafter, a few hired me to audit their sites…which led me to see the many ways that I could make their sites better…which led me to - eventually! - embrace the idea of building Squarespace websites for other coaches.
But I don’t build websites for just any coach. In fact, coaches whose primary motivation is to “build a six figure business” aren’t my people (though I fully support “my people” earning six figures!). Let’s just say I’m a very niche Squarespace website designer!
The takeaway is that if you’re a coach who’s intrinsically motivated to be of service to humanity and your website isn’t converting, know that (1) I love serving people like you, (2) you’re the person I’m writing this post for, and (3) it might just behoove you to keep reading.
— In this Article —
Most coaching websites have some issues.
In this post I dive into the most common problems I’ve seen on coaching websites. It’s not exhaustive, of course, but if you’re a coach who has a website, I invite you to reflect on whether your site is “guilty” of any of these problems. If it is, I encourage you to fix them so that your site ranks higher in Google search results and does a better job of converting website visitors into paying clients.
And with that, the “prompt” that precedes the following headings is effectively: “Things that coaching websites screw up.”
Their navigation isn’t simple and clear.
Your primary navigation should be uncluttered and clear. Some pages that people often include in their primary navigation belong in what Donald Miller refers to as “the junk drawer” (aka your site’s footer).
There are certain things that people will scroll down to your footer to look for. For example, your “Contact” page, legal pages, client portals, etc.
I generally recommend a maximum of five top-level items for your primary navigation. For example:
Work with me → This can be a single page that lists all of your services and links to their sales pages, a drop-down containing each of your sales pages, or - if you have a lot of offers, a drop-down of services pages (each of which include your offers for a specific category).
About → More on this below.
Blog (or Podcast) → If you have one.
Shop → If you have digital products.
Events → If you have a lineup of events.
Contact → It’s fine to include here if your navigation isn’t cluttered.
They have too many or not enough CTAs.
CTA: call to action. Too many options leads to confusion, and confusion leads visitors to leave without taking any action. Similarly, visitors who aren’t asked to do something probably won’t do anything.
There are various schools of thought as to how to approach CTAs. My recommendation is to have a section high up on your home page with two or three paths visitors can take, all with CTA buttons.
This is a good place to talk about what the purpose of your website actually is. Aside from it being your online home, what are the top three things - the “three paths” - you want people to do when they visit your site? Focus your CTAS on them.
For example, coaching websites may steer visitors to book exploratory calls, join group programs, or listen to podcasts. My own coaching website (kristiamdahl.com) is, perhaps, a bit unusual, as my three paths encourage visitors to:
Explore Wayfinder Coaching,
Explore Sacred Circling, or
Explore Web Design
Even if you’re a brand new coach, you probably have three paths. Maybe one is to sign up for your newsletter, another is to book a call, and another is to go to your “About” page to learn more about who you are and how you coach.
[Note: If you include a CTA button in your navigation or hero section, I recommend that it’s aligned with one of your three paths.]
Many home pages include a section for each and every thing they offer. As of the date I’m writing this post, mine does as well! While this can be cluttering and create confusion, Tad Hargrave with Marketing for Hippies (one of my favorite marketing and messaging resources) has managed to include several CTAs AND keep his home page clutter-free. How? By limiting them to his hero section and a “three paths” section. In his “three paths” section, he has multiple CTAs for each path, each of which identifies who it’s for. [Not: Yours truly is considering doing something similar.]
A good way to see if your site is directs visitors in the way you want it to is to ask a few friends who aren’t overly familiar with your work to spend 30 seconds on your home page and take the most obvious action. What they do will be quite telling!
They use jargon or language that’s clever, not clear.
It’s easy to get caught up in coach-speak. Using jargon - e.g. “limiting beliefs” or even “coaching” (what is coaching, anyway?!) - is often only clear to other coaches.
Worse are phrases like “find your power” or “get your glow on” (as a young Gen Xer, I have no idea what this means) that sound fluffy and don’t make sense to everyone. Unless your niche is very well-versed on a clever or trending phrase, it’s best to stick with clear language on your coaching website.
For example, instead of using the phrase “limiting belief,” describe what a limiting belief is. “Thoughts that keep you stuck” is going to be clearer to your average Joe.
They don’t articulate the problem(s) they help clients solve.
“But I help everyone with every problem!” you may protest. True. But since you haven’t helped an infinite number of clients solve an infinite number of problems, list the problems you either want to help clients solve or have helped them solve (and make sure that they’re problems you want to help people solve!).
Helping clients navigate career changes, co-parent with a narcissistic ex, find their purpose, thrive post-divorce, etc. are all pretty clear problems. “Helping you step into your potential” is not a clear problem.
They focus on features rather than benefits.
Very few people come to your coaching website because they want to sign up for coaching per se. They come because they’re looking for help with something.
Focusing on the features, e.g. number of coaching sessions in a package, between-session support, and session recordings, is important but should never be the focus.
Instead, focus on the benefits that working with you will bring, e.g. clarity to move forward, not second-guessing their decisions, creating a plan of action.
Want to go deeper? Tad Hargrave (mentioned earlier) has a ton of content (free and paid) on what he calls POV Marketing, and I invite you to explore it.
They are vague in terms of how people can work with them.
You’ve gotten a visitor’s interest, but now what? “Book a discovery call” is okay, but honestly I think “discovery” is kinda jargony. Have you ever booked a “discovery call” with someone who wasn’t a coach? I know I haven’t. What is a “discovery call” anyway?
Having a short, 3-step description of your process and a CTA button is going to help potential clients (1) know what to do, and (2) feel assuaged as they’re feeling uncertain about the whole “coaching thing.”
For example, you could include the following:
The potential client completes a questionnaire and schedules a free 45-minute call to explore what it would be like to work together.
You meet at the designated time.
If you decide to work together, you’ll email the client with next steps, e.g. signing an agreement and making a payment.
Bonus points if you create a brochure that they can sit with before your call. If you do this, make sure to mention it in #1!
They don’t share their prices.
There is much debate on whether coaches should do this, and I’m of the camp that you should offer at least a “packages start at $[X]/month” statement either on your coaching website itself or in your questionnaire. If it’s in the questionnaire, mention this on your website.
The point is that a potential client - in my mind - shouldn’t have to hop on a phone call to learn if you’re one of those coaches who charges $30,000 (or whatever!) for six months of biweekly sessions.
You can throw potential clients a bone, even if your packages are 100% bespoke. Just the minimum starting point can work (it’s what I do). This generates trust and reduces buyer’s remorse. And I believe it’s more ethical.
Side note: I won’t work with a coach who’s not transparent about their prices, and I know a lot of others who won’t either. Tad Hargrave has a ton of short YouTube videos where he shares his thoughts on this - perhaps more convincingly than yours truly - so I encourage you to check out this playlist on his YouTube channel.
They don’t collect email addresses.
Okay, so this isn’t necessarily a problem. I mean, if you have zero intentions of ever creating a newsletter, Substack, or podcast, or if you don’t want to email “your list” to let them know about your latest offers or programs, then ignore this.
But growing an email list may become lucrative at some point down the road. So, if you’re not adverse to it, consider asking your visitors for their email addresses. You can do something as simple as inviting them to complete a basic contact form if they want to stay in the know about your latest offers (and then use your normal business email account to communicate with them), or you can get all fancy by creating a free gift in exchange for their email, which will add them to an automated welcome sequence of emails using any number of free or paid options.
Just a note that if you’re relying on social media to communicate with potential clients and promote your offers, you’re taking a risk if the algorithm changes or your account gets flagged for whatever (likely irrational) reason. But if you have an email list, you own the means of communication…
They don’t have an enticing “About” page.
If you’re a coach who doesn’t have a great “About” page, I promise you that you’re losing people who might be interested in your offers. The “About” page is one of the top pages website visitors check out, so if you only have a short blurb written in the third person - the kind you would find in a social media or professional networking bio page - PLEASE change this!
Tim Brownson (aka The Fully Booked Coach) has a great blog post on how to craft a memorable “About” page, in addition to other topics that I don’t cover in this post, and I encourage you to check it out. [Hint: It involves The Hero’s Journey.]
In fact, I came across his article as I was writing this particular post and plan to update my own “About” page both here and at kristiamdahl.com. So, I encourage you to check out his post in conjunction with mine.
There’s incongruence between their website, their offers, and who they are.
THIS. IS. BIG. If you’re following the advice of some (or many) marketing guru(s) that isn’t congruent with who you are, your website’s energy will be off.
This includes your messaging and copy, and it includes things like your chosen stock photography, your own images, and even your fonts. Are all of these things congruent with who you are and what you offer?
If you want to get really deep, you might consider looking at your website and messaging through a Human Design lens. Dani Gardner (aka The Quiet Marketer) and Bryn Brown are two business coaches and/or mentors I’ve worked with who touch base on this, and I highly recommend them. They offer very practical approaches to marketing yourself in ways that are congruent with who you are and how you’re designed.
They are poorly designed and/or structured.
There are so many directions I could go with this one! This section is high-level because otherwise it would take you an hour to read my thoughts!
Poor Design
While I’ve known fully-booked coaches who don’t have a website or whose websites look like a relic of the 90s, sending a professional, “you mean business” vibe via a well-designed website is never going to hurt. In fact, I’d argue strongly that the aforementioned fully-booked coaches who have crappy websites are fully booked despite them.
What makes for poor design? A website that makes the potential client’s journey confusing. We touched on this somewhat above, but if it’s not clear to visitors what you want them to do or how you can help them, it’s poorly designed even if it looks awesome.
But generally speaking, a lot of coaching websites have a very DIY vibe going on. Let’s face it: most coaches aren’t web designers, and some who claim to be would benefit from taking a course in design. #sorrynotsorry
Wanna know what screams DIY to me? Here are 12 things (out of many) to fix:
A sterile, corporate, “girl boss,” overly transcendent, or cookie-cutter aesthetic
Inconsistent, not enough, or too much white space
Lack of mobile responsiveness, e.g. having to zoom in due to too small typography, having to scroll to the left to view the entire width, etc.
Typography - font pairings - that don’t go well together
Script fonts (except for very sparse use as an accent)
Colors that are either hard on the eyes or just don’t vibe well together (check out Design Seeds for inspo)
Lack of contrast between text and background color (this is an accessibly thing)
Too small or too thin fonts (again, this is an accessibly thing)
Selfies or non-professional photos that “try” to look professional, e.g. they’re taken at home against a white wall and aren’t professionally edited OR they are AI-generated (AI always seems to do weird things to the eyes!).
Stock photography that looks piecemeal rather than curated
Inconsistencies surrounding formatting, colors, spacing, borders (application, thickness, etc.)
Lots of non-functional design elements, which are like usually included in a DIY template to entice YOU to buy it and NOT to add value to your site’s visitors.
Hopefully this list offers you something to work with!
Poor Structure
Optimizing your site for Google is critically important if you want to show up in search results! There are a lot of structural issues that - if fixed - can help optimize your site, but the following offer the biggest bang for your buck:
Rename page titles → For example, changing your “About” page title to “About [your name], [your title that includes the key word you want to rank for]” in your SEO settings. Ex: About Kristi | Wayfinder Coach & Squarespace Website Designer for Coaches — Kristi Amdahl.
Write meta descriptions → Do this for every page you want to show up in search results, being sure to include the key words you want each page to rank for.
Use high-quality backlinks → This just means linking to outside trusted content. So, if you have a YouTube video, link to (or embed) it. If you want to share someone else’s work, by all means share it! Affiliate links, however, don’t really count. [Note: I employed a lot of backlinks in this post because they’re all high-quality and very relevant.]
Use H tags appropriately → Your H tags (H1, H2, etc.) provide search engines a literal outline of your web page’s content. Just like an outline should only have one title, each page should have only one H1 tag. Next are H2 tags, then H3 tags, etc. A few additional comments:
Misusing H tags - which often happens because you like the aesthetic of a particular tag - is simply bad news…so please don’t do it. Instead, change your settings so that your H tags have the aesthetic you’re after.
Use key words in your H tags, but don’t “stuff” them. Your use of them should sound natural.
Review your page’s H tags. It should be clear from them what your page is about. If it’s not, change them.
Review your content → Okay, so this isn’t exactly structural, but it’s important enough to mention it. Google favors sites that are viewed as trustworthy within your niche. How do you make your site trustworthy? By creating valuable, fresh, high-quality content that visitors spend time reading. You don’t need to create a blog if that’s not your jam, but the longer you can keep eyes on your site before visitors leave it, the better. Update your site, revisit your messaging, and employ backlinks. If you do have a blog, adding a table of contents to each post has anecdotal evidence of being helpful.
Resize and compress your images → Again, this isn’t exactly structural. But it’s super important anyway. Bloated images WILL slow your site down, and Google doesn’t think kindly of slow sites (neither do your site visitors). My process includes (1) resizing images to the following widths: 600px (thumbnail), 1500px (those that span less than half the screen), and 2500px (images that span the full screen), and (2) compressing them using the free tool tinypng.com.
Final thoughts…
Okay, so this is where I tell you all about how I can help you with your website. But I also don’t really feel like doing that because I’m tired. I thought I could crank out this post in an hour, and it’s been at least four. Seriously. I’m spent.
And, you may have gathered that I have an inkling on how to build a solid website. If you’re a coach (or are in a coaching-adjacent field) and you’d like to explore working with me, I invite you to do one or more of the following:
Click here to explore my One Day, One Page Website offer.
Click here to explore my One Week Website offer.
Click here if you’d like me build you a custom Squarespace website.
Click here if you’re a coach who already has a Squarespace website and would like to schedule a Design Hour.
Click here if you’d like me to audit your site. Oops! That’s actually not a formal offer yet. I’ll add a link soon!
That is all.
