Have you been meaning to set up a website for your coaching business, but struggling with how to structure a coaching website? Perhaps you’ve already established your services, get a logo designed, chosen your platform, and you’re wondering “okay, what’s next?”
If that sounds like you, know that you’re definitely in the right place to get your questions answered.
But first, we’re Cass + Tee! We’re web designers turned life coaches, turned web designers again.
Yes, seriously… our decision to pivot backward was influenced by the realization that there wasn’t anyone else out there who created websites or brands that really understood what it was like to be a coach.
We created Lovely Impact to change that.
Look, we get it. The idea of building a website can be daunting, especially when you don’t even know where to begin. Our best recommendation?
If you are creating a coaching website, you should always start with a plan for its structure.
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In this informative guide, we’re going to be covering everything you need to know about planning, organizing, and structuring your coaching website.
Let’s dive right in!
What Does Website Structure Mean for Coaches?
In website design, website structure refers to how you layout information so it appears clearly, concisely, and logically.
It ensures that relevant pages connect with each other so that your site users can navigate between them with ease, and links up information to make it easy to find.
If you don’t think about structure, it will be much harder for your potential coaching clients to navigate.
As a result, your pages will be a jumble of random information, and your clients will struggle to find the information and tools they need.
(via Top Design Firms)
The goal is to consider how your users will experience your website and build a structure around this.
For example, you wouldn’t build a house without first drafting a detailed blueprint, right?
Think of your website as the virtual home for your business and the digital salesperson that helps you impact more people with your coaching services.
Why Knowing How To Structure a Coaching Website Important
There are a couple of reasons why knowing how to structure a coaching website effectively is crucial.
First, it ensures that your potential clients can get everything they need from your coaching website and have a good experience.
Secondly, it will ensure that you are utilizing search engine optimization, a fancy word that means you’ll show up in Google so your site can be found organically.
(via NetMarketShare)
Third, it’ll make it easier for people to actually use your coaching website. A badly designed site can be a huge deterrent because it tells clients that you aren’t professional and makes their first impression of “working with you” negative.
Poorly designed coaching websites are hard to navigate and feel disorganized and messy, which can, unfortunately, become a direct reflection of you.
Trust us, that isn’t what you want potential clients to associate you with yet we see it all the time!
Therefore, it’s critical to make sure that your coaching website presents the best experience possible.
➡️ Need more help? Click here for our step-by-step guide on SEO >>
What’s The Ideal Structure for a Coaching Website?
Simplicity is a coach’s best friend. You want your site to feel easy, welcoming, and upfront so that your clients immediately get a sense of warmth and trust.
Ideally, you want to follow the traditional pyramid structure for laying out your pages.
This means that the link to the home page is right at the top, and beneath it, there are some links to the main pages that your potential client is likely to need.
These pages will usually be Coaching Services, About The Coach, Contact/Booking, and Coaching Program Sales Page.
Your clients should be able to easily navigate to these pages with just one click, like the example below from our life coaching website template, Maryann.
If you have a blog about coaching, you’ll need to put that in one of these top category pages too, so it’s easy to find. All the content of your entire site should then be filed under these pages.
When planning how to structure a coaching website, it’s important to think carefully about how to categorize each thing so that it is in a logical place.
Beneath the main categories, you will then have individual posts for your clients to look at and learn from.
This should help you to impose a tight, organized structure over the whole site, and will immediately make your content tidy and logical.
How To Structure a Coaching Website
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into exactly how to structure a coaching website.
Step 1: Choose Your Website Goal
You should always have your overall goal in mind while designing your site.
As coaches, your goals may vary, but ultimately the main objective will be to turn your website visitors into actual clients who contact you and ask about your coaching services.
You can start by defining what success means to you. Do you want your client to end up on the booking page? Send you an email? Or do you just want them to view the services that you offer and gain an understanding of them?
Determine this, and then work toward making sure it happens.
Think of your coaching website experience like a “journey” you’d like to take your potential clients on. You can determine the steps that you would expect visitors to take through your site, and make sure that everything is gently guiding them toward your goal page.
Step 2: Plan Your Homepage
Your homepage plays an essential role in your overall website experience, and it’s where you can display the links that lead to your other most important pages, similar to how we setup Sylvie, our health coaching website template below.
If you link to your coaching services on the homepage, for example, you’ll be telling the search engine that your services are important, and increasing its ranking.
You will also be guiding your visitors to that page so they can learn more about you.
Pro-Tip: Don’t pile up your homepage with links, or they will lose their effectiveness.
Choose your most valuable coaching resources to appear here, and minimize the clutter.
Your goal is to make this page look tidy and visually appealing.
➡️ Need more help? Click here to learn how to create the perfect homepage >>
Step 3: Plan Your Main Coaching Pages
Every coach is different, but you are likely going to need the following pages:
- Coaching Services
- Coaching Program Sales Page
- About The Coach
- Free Opt-in
- Shop
- Contact The Coach/Book A Session
You may find that you want another page or two, but our best advice is to keep it simple wherever and whenever you can.
You don’t need separate pages for all the services you offer. Think about broad, overall categories and organize your content into them; this will make it easy for your clients to find what they need.
For example, the service page buttons on Callie, our executive coaching template, link to the booking form versus different landing pages.
➡️ Need more help? Click here to learn about the most important pages to have on your coaching website >>
Step 4: Plan Your Blog Categories
Categories are key to organizing your blog, and you should think in advance about what categories you will write within.
These will vary according to your coaching niche, for example, if you offer business coaching, similar to Jordan, our business coaching website template, as seen below, you might divide this into categories like “ mindset,” “funnels,” “marketing.”
If any of the categories you create end up becoming too big, they can then be divided a second time.
For example, a relationship coach might have a “dating tips” category that could be split into categories of people such as “online dating tips” and “first date tips.”
This will help people to further navigate through the resources you are offering, increasing the chances of them finding the things they are interested in.
➡️ Need more help with blogging? Click here to learn how to plan a coaching blog post >>
Step 5: Organize Your Navigation
It’s no good organizing your site beautifully if your potential clients can’t access anything, so you need to have an effective menu of page options for them to navigate. A great example of well-done navigation is Alicia, our weight loss coaching template, seen below:
Visitors will probably use this tool most often to understand how your site is set up, and it will help them to find their way around. Keep your menu simple and clear, but don’t be afraid to send people directly to your services.
For example, if you offer two kinds of coaching, it may make sense to have one menu dedicated to “Private coaching” and another to “Group coaching.”
Again, you want to minimize and keep things crisp and simple. Don’t have dozens of menus or hundreds of links in any one menu.
Step 6: Finalize Your Site Map
Your site map is your bird’s eye view of your whole website, and you can use it to corral all of the above information and work out how all the different elements of your site will fit together.
You should not write material for your site until you have spent some time working on this overall “map” that orders everything.
Without a site map, you cannot organize the different elements of your website into logical placements, so make sure you don’t skip this step.
Think of it like a blueprint of your overall site, something that you can refer back to when you want to review your navigation system and check that everything is in the right place.
Pro-Tip: A sitemap can be submitted to Google and other search engines, and may also help with SEO.
Final Thoughts
As you saw here, learning how to structure a coaching website is essential!
By establishing a solid structure, you will ultimately set yourself up for success. With a website that is tidy and organized your visitors will have a positive experience getting to know you through your website.
Typically, you have about 15 seconds to capture your website visitor’s attention and keep them navigating through your website.
We can’t stress this enough, if you skip this step and don’t lay out a structure, the building process will become overwhelming and ineffective.
You’ll miss out on so many coaching leads if your website is not structured to accommodate them or align with your goals.
If this guide, “How To Structure a Coaching Website,” helped you out, let us know in the comments!
We love talking to and hearing from coaches from around the world.