The Pages you Need on your Tennis Website
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to episode number 16 of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast.
Which also happens to be the second part of the 3 part series on websites.
In the first part I covered a couple of key concepts around the goal for a website.
And basically the main idea to bear in mind, is that you should be designing your website with your potential customers in mind, not your current customers.
Now, if this is the first time you’re hearing me say this, you might want to go and listen to the previous episode that explains why I think this is true, as I’m not going to cover it again in this episode.
It would get pretty boring if I kept repeating myself every episode!
Ok, so that’s the starting point for this episode, the idea that we’re building websites with our potential customers in mind, first.
And from there, the next question that we should ask ourselves is what content should I include on the website?
And more specifically, what pages do I need to add to the website? And what should they cover?
That’s what I want to cover in today’s episode.
But before I get into the detail of it, there’s one thing that you must understand.
I believe in simplicity.
It’s kind of a personal trait I guess you could say. I like simplicity in pretty much everything in life.
But I wholeheartedly believe the best websites are the simple websites.
And I have 2 specific reasons that aren’t related to just my personality.
Reason 1 to strive for the simplest website with the fewest possible pages, is that it’s going to be easier to manage.
The more ‘stuff’ you add to the website, the more time and effort you need to put in to manage and update it going forward.
And I’m going to assume that that is NOT how you want to spend a lot of your time.
So, that’s one reason to keep it simple. Less time spent updating and managing the website.
And the second big reason for keeping it simple is that if you have a simple website, visitors will be more likely to click where you’d like them to click and read what you’d like them to read.
Fewer pages equals fewer distractions which equals more clicks on the pages that really matter.
The more pages you add, the fewer people will click on the ones that you’d really like them to click on - which is basically a wasted opportunity to show someone the info that they really need to know about you and what you do.
So, these are the 2 reasons why you should keep the website simple, it’s easier to build and maintain and it gives you the best chance of getting people to read and interact with the information that will make a difference.
So, with that out of the way it’s time to get into the specifics of which pages are actually necessary.
And to make this easier I’m going to go through the pages needed for a coaching website and the pages needed for a club website separately, since they sell slightly different things and will therefore have slightly different websites.
So let’s start with the coaching website.
And the absolutely essential pages for a coaching website are the ‘Offer’ page, the Adults page, the Juniors page and the Application Form Page.
That’s it. You build those 4 pages well and you have more than enough to be able to persuade someone to sign-up to your coaching programme.
So, let’s go through them in turn.
The ‘offer’ page is in essence a sales page for your offer.
The idea being that its sole purpose for existing is to secure sign-ups to your offer.
It’s like a written website version of a sales pitch.
Now, your offer could be anything.
It could be a 30-day trial, it could be a free lesson trial, it could be a beginners course, a package of individual lessons or whatever else that you’re selling as the first step in a player’s journey on your coaching programme.
And the ‘offer’ could also be set at any price point. Just bear in mind that the higher the price point, the more selling you’ll need to do to get people to get their wallets out.
Ok, so the ‘offer’ page is a sales page for your offer. Its sole purpose is to get people to sign-up.
And it will contain many different sections, like testimonials sections, features & benefits section, timetables, calls to action and perhaps a few others.
I’ll explain more about the different sections in the 3rd part of this series, but for now just start thinking about the things you would want to share if your goal is to sell your offer - which it is.
Or in other words, what would you want a parent or an adult player to read about you and your coaching programme, that you think will make it more likely that they’ll sign-up to your offer.
That’s basically what you are trying to do, not just in the offer page but throughout the whole website really.
Which brings me to the Adults and the Juniors pages.
These are in essence still sales pages, but with 1 major difference.
Instead of it being centred around the offer, each page should be centred around the relevant coaching programme.
So, the juniors page will explain what the juniors - and by juniors I mean a child or teenager of any age - the juniors page will cover everything that a parent needs to know about the juniors programme, in order to be able to make a decision about signing-up their child or not.
And the adults page will do the same, but from the perspective of providing all the necessary information about the adults programme.
The idea behind having these 2 pages is two fold.
Number one, the ‘offer’ page can be a lot more scary to people who are just exploring and aren’t necessarily in a sign up mind frame yet.
So, instead of ‘forcing’ them - so to speak - to read and interact with the ‘offer’ page, you give them a less sales-y option.
For someone who is still shopping around it’s much easier to click something that says juniors or adults, instead of something that says 30 day trial, for example.
So, that’s one reason to have these pages.
The second reason is that it allows you to write directly to those 2 target audiences.
It’s different trying to sell the juniors programme to parents, than it is to try to sell the adults programme to an adult player.
And therefore you will need to write about different things.
Having this split between juniors and adults allows you to tailor your copy to the specific target audience that is visiting those pages.
Which means that they will be more likely to relate to what you’re saying and will therefore be more likely to keep reading and hopefully sign-up for your offer.
Which leaves us with the 4th page that you need which is the application form page.
This is just the page that you take website visitors to, when they’re ready to actually sign-up to your offer.
The form should ask for their name, email address, phone number and then perhaps a bit more information about their level of ability and their age group.
The idea is that once someone fills in this form, you’ll be notified and will be able to follow-up with them and book the trial, etc.
Very simple page, but obviously very important as it’s where you want the journey to end for your website visitors.
Ok, now there are a few other utility pages that you need which I’ll go through towards the end of the episode.
But as far as the important pages are concerned, you only need these 4. The ‘offer’ page, the adults page the juniors page and the application form page.
Get those in there and your coaching website will be 90% done.
Now let’s go through the club website.
And the same type of reasoning will apply to a club website. But assuming that the club sells both memberships and coaching you’ll need to think about how you’re going to organise that information.
And we’ll get to that in a second.
But first let’s go through the must haves.
And your club’s website still needs to have an offer page. The idea is exactly the same as with the coaching website.
The only difference is that the offer will be different, since it will usually be around a membership offer OR a membership + coaching offer.
Like a free coaching lesson + a 2 week free membership, for example.
The other page that you will need that is the same as the coaching website is the application form page.
Whatever it is that you’re selling you need an end point for the website journey where either you allow people to immediately purchase the membership of their choosing, or you ask them to fill in an application form, so that you can then follow-up with them.
The other bit of functionality that a club usually needs to have is the ability to allow people to book courts. But as long as you have a decent court booking system in place, this shouldn’t be difficult to put onto the website.
Ok, so those are the easy ones.
Now let’s address that split that I was talking about.
So, with the coaching website we structured the information around a juniors and an adults page.
And you can use the same idea for your club’s website.
You split it at the top into juniors and adults and then in the junior page you cover the relevant info about the junior coaching and the junior memberships and in the adults page you cover the info about the adult coaching and the adult memberships.
Or you can organise it around a memberships page and a coaching page.
Personally, if I had to create a website that covers both memberships and coaching, I’d be more inclined to use this second option to structure it, although I do think that both could work.
The important thing here is for you to make a decision from the start and to then think carefully about the content that you need on each page to make sure that potential customers are getting all the information that they need.
So, if you choose to structure it so that the website visitor will have to decide between clicking on memberships or coaching, then you’ll need to present them with all the important info about the memberships on the membership page and all the important info about the coaching on the coaching page.
This is obvious, of course!
But it’s only obvious once you’ve made the firm decision to structure the website this way.
If you don’t make a firm decision to do it one way or another, what will happen is that none of the pages will have a clear purpose and it will feel wishy-washy and will therefore be much less likely to grab people’s attention.
There could potentially be other ways to structure the important info, but the main thing is that you make a clear decision as to how you want to structure it, so that you can then create the pages with a specific purpose.
As long as you do that, you should be fine!
Alright, so we’ve covered the most important pages you need for your coaching or club website.
But I did say that there were a bunch of utility pages - I also call them the boring pages - that are necessary.
They’re not crucial to get people signing-up, but nonetheless they still need to be there, so it’s important that I cover them.
These utility pages are:
The privacy policy page - which covers all the policies around data privacy etc. You must have one of these.
The terms and conditions page - which explains all the T&Cs of your services to customers
All the other policies - like the safeguarding policy, whistleblower policy, complaints, diversity, etc. You might be required to have these displayed on your website.
These are the ones that you usually have to make sure are there. Putting a link to them in the footer is usually more than sufficient.
Ok, that covers the utility pages, but there’s one more page that I want to cover before I quickly summarise all the info and end this episode.
Which is the homepage.
Maybe you’ve already noticed that I haven’t spoken about the homepage yet, even though you definitely need one.
And the reason I have left it to the end is because once you’ve created the pages I mentioned earlier, the homepage will be really easy to put together.
The easiest option in fact is to use the ‘offer’ page and also set it as the homepage.
If you’ve built a quality ‘offer’ page it should be perfectly fine to use it as a homepage, as it will explain exactly what you and your club or business are about.
But if you’re not down with that, and want to create a different homepage, go for it.
It doesn’t need to be complicated. Repurpose some of the sections that you used on the other pages, and use the homepage to direct people to the right page for them - junior coaching or adult coaching, for example? Or Memberships or coaching?
If the homepage is directing people to the pages that make sense for them, then the homepage is doing its job.
Ok, before we go let’s just quickly recap all the pages that you actually need on your coaching or club website.
On your coaching website you need:
An ‘offer’ page - which is a page that sells your offer, whatever that might be
An adults page - which is a page that covers all the important info about the adults coaching programme
A juniors page - which covers all the important info about the juniors coaching programme
An application form page - which is the page that potential customers who want to sign-up to your offer will be directed to, to fill in an application form.
For your club’s website you need:
Court booking functionality - as long as you have a decent court booking system in place this should be very easy to add to the website
An ‘offer’ page - the same idea as the ‘offer’ page on the coaching website but with a different type of offer
An application form page - which is a page that has a form for people to fill in to apply to becoming a member, or a page where people can purchase the membership there and then
And then either a juniors and adults pages like with the coaching website, or a memberships and a coaching page. Regardless of how you decide to structure the website, what matters is that you make a firm decision and then match the content to your decision.
And that’s it!
These pages are more than enough to get the job done.
Remember, the goal here isn’t to cover EVERYTHING someone might ever want to read. The goal here is to build a simple, but effective website.
Because a simple website will be easier to create and maintain, but also because the less stuff is on it, the higher the likelihood that your website visitors will actually read and interact with the information that really matters.
Alright, that’s it for today’s episode.
As always I’ll be back next week with another instalment of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast where we’ll continue on this website journey.
Until then and thanks for tuning in.