A brief look at the tools we recommend that are currently available to personal trainers and fit pros for their site.
This is what we presented on at the Fitness Entreprenurs Bootcamp in Birmingham in March 2014
Essential
- Domain Name (£10 / year) www.godaddy.com depending if you go for a .com or a .co.uk.
Incidentally there are no some new TLD’s available such as .fitness, .guru and even .education. However .com and .co.uk are still the standard, especially from search engine optimisation point of view.
Content Management / Main Website Platform
- WordPress (free) Most hosts will allow a one click install direct from your cpanel or you can download it from wordpress.com
There are a whole host of other content management and web site platforms but WordPress is what we recommend and is more than suitable for personal training and boot camp business, even membership sites for online programs.
WordPress Themes
The theme is basically what makes it look pretty.
- WordPress.com
- Theme forest or even Thrive Themes
- Internet Fit Pro (Personal Trainer and Fit Pro Specific Themes)
Hosting
Free Hosting – Doesn't really exist unless you use some of the cheaper site builders like 1 and 1 or vista-print but enven thought it’s free you will still be paying in the end as they will show ads on your site. (Avoid at all costs)
Affordable Hosting Packages Around £100 per year
- Hostgator
- Bluehost
- GoDaddy
All good value budget options at around £10 a month, suitable for most local personal trainers. We host sites at no extra cost as part of our fit pro package when we build a site for someone.
Email Marketing software
- Free> Mail Chimp (we don't recommend because of the low deliver-ability rates and its a bit fiddly to work with
- Paid Email Marketing > Aweber or Get Response
Most marketers are using Aweber and its also what we use here at Internet Fitpro and also in our own fitness businesses
Squeeze Pages / Landing Page Options
Lower Cost
- Hybrid Connect
- Instabuilder