Is your website costing your gymnastics center valuable customers?

Do you think of your website as a core part of your business's success or is it just an afterthought? When you think of your website what is the first thing that comes to mind? Is it a constant annoyance, always needing updates, or fixing broken elements that are not functioning properly? If so it might be time to make some meaningful improvements to your site. Websites are often a hassle that gym owners would rather not think about, but this could be costing you valuable customers. Worst of all your site might be causing a secret loss of revenue since you never hear about the 90% of customers who got onto your website and then left never to come back again. These losses can be substantial, however, they can be reduced or eliminated with some improvements. Websites need to be replaced or redesigned about every 3-5 years. Just like uneven bars or a spring floor, parts of your website will stop working as time goes on and technology improves. The major difference is that spring floors are replaced and vault tables repaired, but no extra effort…

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How To Make A Website For Your College Gymnast?

In the fast-paced world of college recruiting for gymnastics having your own website and social media channels is an excellent way to stand out from the crowd. This article will discuss everything that you need to know about creating a personal website for your gymnast. The process might not be as difficult or expensive as you might have thought! Choosing Your Method Of Website Building There are many different ways to build a website, from doing everything yourself to hiring it out and everything in between. Choosing the best method for your level of tech-savvy, availability, and financial resources will help to save you some headaches down the road. But with so many options it can be hard to know where to start. In this article we will review the two major methods: Creating your own website using a simple website builder Hiring out your website design 1) How To Create your personal Gymnast Website Creating your own gymnastics website has a certain feeling of dread that comes along with it. Many people are afraid of website design due to its reputation for complexity. Although website…

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How To Create A Gymnastics Marketing Funnel From Nothing

When it comes to digital marketing it is difficult to find an aspect of advertising that is more important than your marketing funnel. This tool will be used to tie all of your advertising efforts together to create a seamless journey for your customers to transition from strangers to dedicated fans of your brand. In this guide, we will cover one of the simplest and most practical funnels that you can start creating for your business today! But before we get into all of that let's break down exactly what a funnel is. The funnel is defined as “your customer's journey with you from the initial stages when someone learns about your business, to the purchasing stage” - Social Sprout The Four Major Stages Of A Marketing Funnel Depending on who you ask there are many different interpretations of the marketing funnel. For the sake of simplicity, this model will be what we are using to break down the different aspects of the funnel. Awareness - This stage is all about your customer's first interaction with your business. This could be seeing an advertisement from your…

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How To Choose Gymnastics Website Design Elements?

Your website is an incredibly important cornerstone of your gym. The design elements that you choose will do a great deal to impact every part of your site. Digital design elements encompass everything that is displayed on your website, from the colors you choose to the layout, photos, and font. These decisions convey many unspoken messages to your customers about your business on both a subconscious and conscious level. So, what is the best way to choose your gym's design elements? Internal Analysis The best way to find out how to express your business online is to start by looking into what your business is and why it matters. Think about the atmosphere, goals, and identifying characteristics of your gym. Think about what you stand for and what separates you from your competition. Honing these differences will help you to create a website that matches your gym's philosophy. Take some time to think of your gym and what it has to offer its customers. Do you have a killer preschool program? Do you run a highly competitive team, or perhaps you have the best birthday parties…

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What I Learned By Analyzing 200 Gymnastics Websites

I learned a lot from analyzing around 200 gymnastics websites to find the top 20 websites. I found that many shared similar mistakes that held them back. While many of the greatest websites had things in common that pushed them toward success. In this quick review, we will cover both what to avoid and what to do in order to get the most out of your gym's website. Functionality One of the largest factors that lead to the success of a website is its functionality. I know that this sounds like a no-brainer, but you would not believe how many websites I came across with broken elements, links, and photos. The first tier of a successful website is its basic functionality. It does not matter how beautiful a website is if it cannot be used by your customers. Another factor that demoted many websites was that they were not functional on mobile devices. More people are using the internet on their phones every day. Your website must work on phones just as well as it works on computers. People will only continue to use their phones…

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The Ultimate Guide To Gymnastics Website Design

Websites are one of the most important assets a business can possess. They are the digital welcome mat that many customers will see far before they step foot in your gym. Ever since the .com boom of the 90s websites have made massive changes in the business and gymnastics world. What is the best way to create a website? The following steps will help to walk you through every part of setting up, creating, and maintaining your website. 1) Deciding How You Want to Build Your Website There are many ways to create websites for your gymnastics center. Some are more complex and others are much simpler. No matter what kind of gym you own there is a method that will work for you and your business. To decide what is the best website to make you will need to start by asking these questions: How much time are you looking to spend making your website? What amount of money are you looking to spend? How much control do you want to have over your website? How complex will the website need to be? These four…

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6 Ways To Speed Up Your WordPress Website

Are you having website speed issues? If so this is the perfect guide to cutting down load times and improving overall website speed. Before we begin improving your website speed we need to look into just how slow your site may be loading. One of our favorite free tools is GTMetrix. This website makes it simple to test your site and even to find out what may be slowing you down. Here are the most common ways to decrease load times: Compress and Optimize Images Add Caching Solution Minimize CSS or Javascript files Add Lazyload Remove Unneeded Plugins Change Theme or Hosting 1) Compress and Optimize Images Many times imported images are far too large for their purpose on our websites. If you have a 2000 by 2000 px image filling a 40 by 40 space your page will be spending all that processing power rendering your massive image whereas it could have only taken a small amount of power. It is important to make sure that our images are the right size to fill into our website. Once you have sized all of your images…

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How To Do A Website Audit | Website Wellness

Website audits are an important part of maintaining your website's overall health and useability. In the same way that we get physicals or our cars need to be maintained websites are no different. Since technology is always evolving and changing it is important to make sure that your website is still running as you want it to be. Sometimes websites can be broken in more obvious ways and other times they can be broken behind the scenes. Catching these places where your website is broken is key to its overall success. So how do we actually run a website audit and what do we need to look out for? Great question! Steps To Success In Your Website Audit Manual Test Find broken links Check load times Ensure mobile compliance Check for handicap accessibility Google Analytics Error Reader Check any contact forms, or advanced field manually Check User Experience with heatmaps and click heatmaps 1) Manual Test The manual test is the starting point to build off of for the rest of your site. Take some time to click through your website as a user would try…

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How To Get Started With Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for any business looking to perform well online. It is a resource that allows you to dig deeper into the performance and advanced information on your website. Having a website without google analytics is like shooting in the dark. You might hope that people are visiting your website but there is no way to know without some kind of analytics set in place. Google Analytics allows us to: See how many visitors are finding our website Analyze the behavior of those on our website Find errors and issues that might be hidden under the scenes Optimize for conversions and higher search rankings Find out more information about who is entering our website and why Discover how people are finding our website whether it be from direct search, social media, or other referring outlets Etc. These are all of the reasons that it is incredibly important to set up google analytics. Just how can we go about getting Analytics installed on our website. Each website platform has a different method required but they all work in a similar way. Setting…

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How to Backup Your WordPress Site

It is very important to backup your WordPress site. Websites have been known to lose data, become corrupted, and crash entirely. Having a backup is a great way to safeguard yourself against these potential pitfalls. Running a website without any kind of backup is asking for data loss or complete website failure. Backing Up Your WordPress Site There are many ways to back up your website. Some options are offered through your hosting provider and others can be used through various plugins. Lets begin with plugins as they are the most common and easily implemented solution to backup your website. Backup Plugins There are many plugins that can be used in Wordpress. Here is a list of the most popular options available: UpDraftPlus VaultPress BackupBuddy All three of these plugins do a great job to secure your website. If you ever need to restore your website these can be lifesavers to turn to. Having these options in your back pocket will alleviate any concerns of losing website data. Don't make the mistake of not thinking about backups until your website has already crashed. All of these…

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