Building a well-designed website for your fitness business takes time, but it’s a critical piece of your business. Often, outsourcing can be a smart move for fitness business owners looking for a hassle-free experience with their website. However, making an informed decision is crucial before jumping to outsourcing.
Consider these five factors before outsourcing your website.
1. Outsourcing Saves Time
Building a website from scratch can be intimidating, especially when you’re a new fitness business owner. It’s a time-intensive process that involves learning through trial and error.
Getting started:
- Identify a hosting provider
- Write your web copy
- Select a design template
Optimizing your site:
- Update branding to match your business
- Create an XML sitemap for Google
- Set up a robots.txt file
- Optimize your content
This is merely the setting up portion of website building. Although you may be interested in learning how to build a website, time is a valuable commodity when running your fitness business. Maintaining your website, posting content—and doing it right—can be a full-time job in and of itself.
If you’re exhausted just thinking about all the details, keep in mind that outsourcing website design takes care of all the above-mentioned tasks and regular updates. Outsourcing saves you an extraordinary amount of time that is better spent serving your members and growing your business.
2. Outsourcing Can Create Seamless Integration
Whether it’s DIY or outsourced, make sure your website offers the flexibility to embed forms and calendars from your software into the HTML code. This level of customization is common across many web platforms, but it’s important to consider early in the process. Such functionality boosts visitor engagement, allowing members to easily book classes, trial membership, and visit your business.
3. Quality is Key and Outsourcing Delivers
Outsourcing website design doesn’t just save time. It also significantly enhances the quality of the final product. Consumer-friendly website platforms like Wix and Squarespace are popular among fitness businesses, but you’ll still need to put in a lot of work to build a well-designed and helpful website.
A fitness business website needs specific design features to capture leads effectively. Outsourcing your design via a web builder can help you avoid common pitfalls like:
- Poor colors schemes and readability
- Inefficient distribution of information
- Hard-to-find or missing calls-to-action
- Bulky, unappealing text blocks
- Security issues and broken links
4. Agencies May Charge More for Optimization
If you’re building your website yourself, keep SEO best practices in mind. Your website should be mobile friendly and include lead capture forms wherever visitors would be tempted to take action. This ensures more visitors are visiting your website and following your conversion path.
Optimizing URLS, title tags, and meta descriptions with industry-specific keywords to ensure your website is discoverable on search engines. To bump your website further up the rankings, you should regularly publish content.
If you choose to outsource your website, be ready to tackle extra SEO charges. Many agencies or freelancers offering optimization services do so with an hourly fee ranging from $80-$150.
5. Outsourcing Can Save You Money
The cost of a DIY website might seem more attractive, but the small charges, time, and effort add up. In addition to photography, optimization, and maintenance costs, consider these other potential costs:
- Domain - Registering a domain (URL) for your website costs between $10 and $20 per year.
- Hosting - This could be part of your platform subscription or an additional free for a custom website. Quality hosting services typically cost around $30 per month.
- SSL Certificate - This ensures secure data transfer, improves your website’s credibility, and aids in Google rankings. An SSL certificate can cost between $50 and $350 per year.
- Other Hidden Costs - Custom websites might require plug-in upgrades, additional storage, backups, and more. Be aware of these costs upfront.
Choosing to outsource your fitness business website doesn’t need to be a complicated decision. Remember that your website is a tool to connect with members. Whether you choose to outsource your website or design it yourself, make sure your choice serves your overall business goals.
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