We know you are in the trenches working hard day in and day out on your business. You offer exceptional training with every interaction. You ensure quality control in class, you coach your clients on proper technique and encourage them to “go hard” “go heavy” and work for “just 60 more seconds” every day. You provide and you equip your location with the equipment needed to get people RESULTS. You educate them on the benefits of proper nutrition and introduce them to a community that is much more like a family than like a gym. You make sure your gym is clean your coaches exude excellence and you truly disrupt generations of family’s habits and lead them instead to a healthy and abundant lifestyle.

But what if all that you’re doing inside your gym, in real time comes to a screeching halt when someone types in your gym’s URL? Does your website successfully portray your company’s mission?

Your website can be a potential customer’s first interaction with your company. If it doesn’t match all that your accomplishing inside your gym some potential customers will never make it past the first step – finding your business online.

Check out these 5 crucial MUSTS for your website:

1. Post everyday.
Yes, every day. Through the Holidays, through the weekends and while you’re on vacation. By posting everyday your website will become a place that your community, both clients and potential clients, can plug into. They can keep up with the latest news, find out about programs and also celebrate their fellow CrossFitters success. This can (and should) also be done on your facebook page, however; people still believe in websites. As we progress, more of our conversations are taking place on facebook but your website is a mainstay. And believe it or not, there are still some people who are not on facebook. There are others who have been on facebook since its beginnings and are experiencing Facebook burnout. This does not mean that they won’t rejoin the conversation at some point, but you who not want to alienate these pockets of people.

Also, think about the websites that you visit on a daily basis  CrossFit.com, ESPN.com, HuffingtonPost.com. What if they stopped putting out content? Would you visit them less and begin looking for content elsewhere? The likelihood is high.

2. Post a picture with every post & post pictures of your clients
When you post pictures of your clients and call them out by name you are celebrating them! This also fuels the person to spread word of mouth marketing for your gym, as they are likely to tell their friends and family to check out the site that their picture is posted on. Pictures will also help structure your online presence and brand. They will tell the story of your gym to any newbies faster than a couple of paragraphs or plain text.

3.  Organize your content & stay up to date
Keep the content on your site organized and clean. Link when appropriate and make sure all of the dates on your website (challenge dates, program start dates, etc) are current.

4. Make sure you have a CONTACT US tab
Seems like a “no-brainer” concept and something everybody already has, right? Wrong. I see so many small businesses fail to put their phone number and email address in a very easily accessible place.

5. Repeat the important information
Two things that should be very clear and distinct on your website – contact/location information and how to register. Put these in 2-3 places on your site so you can’t miss them. Add it to the sidebar of your site, the very bottom and create a Register or Sign Up tab and a Contact Us tab. On your main nav bar.

Once you have the above in place on your website, set up a day each month that you set aside one hour to “refresh” the website. We chose the 4^th Wednesday of every month. On that day we go through the entire website to ensure links are working, dates are correct and the information displayed is clear, concise and easy to follow. We also use this time to update any of the pictures and media that is on the website. And one of the most important factors of this “refresh” date is looking at your site from a new person’s eyes.  As you’re updating your site, look at it as if you are a potential customer and have little to know experience in the fitness industry, but are interested in getting fit.  Is your site easy to follow and easy to understand? Do you fill your daily posts with acronyms and language that only people in your community would recognize?

You MUST be consistent with checking up on your site. Think of yourself as a consumer. If you are a potential customer and log on to a small business’ website and see outdated pictures, broken links and incorrect dates – what impression are you left with? This small interaction sets the tone for how you feel about this business. And when there are many small businesses to choose from and you, as a potential consumer, can merely judge a “book by its cover” you will more than likely shop elsewhere on a website that takes pride in its online presence.

Keeping it all Together – The Content Calendar.
Now  you’re getting people to the “proverbial” door – your website. Your traffic is increasing and you have a TON of quality content to put out. So how do you keep it all together? At CrossFit Central we have 7+ fully functioning brands, all with websites, twitter accounts and facebook pages. The easiest way we keep momentum high, the community engaged and the content fresh is through a website content calendar. Each brand creates this calendar for their community every month. This ensures organization and high quality content for our community. I am a big believer in organic content but by creating a content calendar for your website you will be able to have a clear focus each week, organize content ahead of time and allow organic content to flow through your twitter and facebook accounts.

Check out the follow up post this Thursday where I will outline how we create this calendar.