Fitness Website Design: The Ultimate Guide
Congratulations! Opening your first fitness studio is something to celebrate! It also comes with a to-do list long enough to cause serious overwhelm. You’re hiring staff, putting the final touches on your space and there’s a lot happening all at once — which is exactly why something like your fitness website design may not even be on your radar right now.
However, you do need to prioritize getting the word out about your studio.
The good news is that you don’t need a giant email list or to have thousands of social media followers before you launch. What you DO need is a professional-looking website.
Why Your Fitness Website Design Matters
“97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.”
Your website is a customer’s first stop for your studio. Often, it’s where customers will first discover you. Your website is what they’ll use to learn more about you, book their classes, and recommend you to their friends.
That’s why fitness website design is so important. This is your first impression, and you want it to be both informative and user-friendly, not to mention visually appealing.
If you’re going to invest in one marketing tool before you launch, it should be a great website — and that means ensuring your fitness website design is top-notch.
Is your grand opening right around the corner and you need a website fast?
Let’s talk! I can help.
When well-designed and optimized, your website:
Allows prospective clients to discover and learn about your business.
Makes it easy for existing clients to book classes or appointments.
Takes the pressure off your front desk by providing key information and streamlining the communication process.
Offers 24/7 access to your business.
Demonstrates your approach, helping visitors feel confident they’re in the right place so they choose your business over your competitors.
Puts your business in the search results of potential clients nearby.
Where do you begin with fitness website design? Let’s take a look…
Key Elements of a Fitness Website Design
You may wonder what makes the difference between an okay website, and one that really stands out. Let’s be real, you don’t want a website that’s just okay — you want a website that looks professional and represents your brand.
As a new business, there are key elements you’ll want to have incorporated into your fitness website design, and knowing these before you even begin will help you not waste time focusing on the wrong things.
Start by considering this —
What do you want your website to DO? What are you selling and how are you delivering it? Get specific.
Once you’ve got that nailed down, then you can start looking at some of the key elements your fitness website design should include.
#1. An Easy-to-Manage Website Platform
In my opinion, Squarespace is hands down the best platform for brick-and-mortar fitness and wellness businesses. Not only is it incredibly user-friendly and intuitive, but it’s also packed with beautiful templates that are ready to go. Also, Squarespace integrates well with a range of features valuable to fitness studio owners, making it the ideal choice for a fitness website.
#2. A Scheduling System
Your clients need to be able to book their classes and sessions online. With that in mind, your fitness website must take that into account. Make sure you choose a scheduling system that you can embed directly onto your Squarespace website.
#3. Visual Branding
Visual branding is all about creating a cohesive look and feel so their experience with your brand is memorable. It’s not just about your logo, but the overall identity of your studio. Your visual branding should be consistent, easy to understand and inspires action.
#4. Written Content
Often when people are looking at what they want for their fitness website design, they’re thinking about the visual elements. However, the words on your website matter just as much.
Most people underestimate the time and effort that goes into copywriting and think they can easily do it themselves. However, just like fitness website design, copywriting should have a strategy behind it, so outsourcing writing your website content might be your best option.
#5. Photography
Poor-quality photos can instantly detract from the professionalism of your website. Real photos (not stock) are a beautiful way to convey the atmosphere of your studio. Using high-quality photos of yourself and other trainers or instructors at your studio also helps build trust and a sense of connection with potential clients.
Choosing Your Tools and Tech
Part of ensuring your fitness website design meets the needs of your clients and your team is choosing the right tools and tech to integrate.
While there’s no shortage of tech to choose from, I’m a fan of keeping things simple. The more things you try to integrate, the greater likelihood is that something may go wrong in the future. As tempting as it is to want all the bells and whistles, your focus should be on what will best serve the people visiting your website.
When working on fitness website design, there are three main areas from the tools and tech category I suggest you focus on.
Your Website Platform
One of the first things you’ll need to decide is where your website will be built. This is the website platform, or Content Management System (CMS), where your website lives. Some examples of popular website platforms are WordPress, Squarespace, LiveEdit, and Wix.
Website platforms vary greatly in everything from price, features, and ease of use, to design flexibility, support, and security. Regardless of the platform you choose, you can expect to pay a few hundred dollars a year for your website’s theme and hosting.
As mentioned in the key elements above, I am a big advocate of using Squarespace for fitness website design.
Mobile traffic has continued to increase every year, so it’s absolutely critical to make sure that whatever platform you choose, your website works well on mobile devices. You want the text to be clear and readable (without tons of scrolling) on mobile. Plus, you need to ensure that any integrations — like your studio booking — should display in the right dimensions without needing to scroll in tiny windows. Again, Squarespace has this area covered.
Scheduling Software
Your clients will expect to be able to book online, so your fitness website design should be planned to incorporate some sort of scheduling software. There are a multitude of options to choose from, but having spent years working with fitness studios I think Mindbody , Walla, and Mariana Tek are the three biggest players to consider. *affiliate links
As an industry leader for class-based businesses, Mindbody helps you juggle multiple items that may require scheduling including enrollments, classes, appointments and more. Better yet, it also offers additional features like built-in analytics and reporting, payroll management, multi-location setups and staff profiles.
Walla is newer to the studio scheduling space and therefore has less features compared to Mindbody, but is being designed from the ground up with a lot of intention and includes built-in livestream and video on demand capability as well as a really great modern user interface. I really like where this platform is headed.
Mariana Tek has been popular with indoor cycling studios for years and is a solid choice for class-based studios. They have a pick-a-spot feature and a clean website integration. Mariana Tek isn’t a great option if you offer appointments or enrollments though.
Want to see examples of studios using these software solutions (and others)? Head to my fitness website design portfolio where you can filter projects by fitness style and platform.
A Video On Demand Platform
A few years ago this wouldn’t have necessarily been a must-have for a fitness studio website, but if we’ve learned anything from COVID-19 it’s that sometimes we need to pivot quickly.
Now, your clients are looking for more online options for their fitness needs. Incorporating a video on demand platform into your fitness website design can help open up your services to a new audience, or help retain the clients you already have because it provides greater flexibility.
If your studios offers trainings and certifications, these can also be added to the platform, which means you’re saving a ton of time since you only have to record the video once!
There are three main options you’ll want to consider when looking at what you want to offer by way of digital products:
On-Demand Video Library: This library would contain pre-recorded videos or classes, workshops, and so on, that clients can access at any time. Usually offered as part of a membership, it allows the client to take classes at their convenience.
Live Stream: Some fitness studios now offer live streams of classes, which gives students access to activities in real-time. This is great for studios that have classes that often reach capacity in the actual studio, or as another option for clients who can’t make it there in person.
Courses: While courses are also offered on-demand, the difference from the regular video library is that they’re designed to be taken in sequence. This key different requires a different type of software.
Choosing the right platform will be dictated by your specific needs, as well as factors like cost, ease of set up, simplicity (or complexity), the trustworthiness of the platform and more.
For a review of some of the various video platforms for fitness studios on the market, check out this post.
Getting Inspired for Your Fitness Website Design
When considering what you want for your fitness website design, it can be easy to get all caught up in the shiny things.
Just like everything else, website design has trends that come and go. You want to find a balance between being modern (you don’t want your website to look like it's 2003!) while not falling prey to a trend so specific it will quickly be dated.
This is one of those times where working with an expert can be hugely beneficial, as they know the key elements to hone in on when executing fitness website design.
It’s always good to have some of your own ideas to help steer the direction. Some current ideas you can incorporate into your new fitness website design might include:
Video backgrounds
Branded backgrounds
Overlapping and layered elements
Subtle animations
Accessibility
Diverse and branded photos
Accordion text and lightbox info
GIF thumbnails
Thank you pages with a VIP experience
Fitness Website Design Examples
See even more examples in my full fitness website design portfolio.
Finding Your Brand Voice and Visual Style
As a fitness studio, you need a brand that reflects your studio’s voice — both in words and in images.
Your brand voice is the way you show up in the marketplace. It’s the way you teach your classes, interact with your clients, and talk about your studio. It’s the atmosphere you create in your studio and the way you talk about yoga, health, and fitness. It’s the passion you bring to the studio every day and the energy your teachers and staff show to customers.
Before you write your content and start picking out images or scheduling a photo shoot, you need to think about your business and get clear on what makes YOU different from other options in your area.
Think about your studio: is it warm, welcoming and relaxing? Is it energetic, trendy, and up-tempo? Are the classes you teach focused on goals and grit or flexibility and feelings? Your vibe could be completely different from any of these, or it could be a combination.
Your fitness website design should take into account the imagery that reflects the brand. In a world where first impressions are made online, the way your website looks can mean the difference between customers choosing you over a competitor.
I generally recommend my clients have a photoshoot done to capture the right look and feel for their website. If you want to have a photoshoot to get images that work well with your fitness website design and can give clients a holistic idea of your studio as well, consider the following:
Landscape-oriented photos are ideal for websites. They can always be cropped, if necessary; and there are more digital design options possible.
Try to get more background than you think you need. This is handy for overlaying text and design elements in the “white space”.
Close-up, candid style photos of attendees enjoying themselves, as well as class shots. (These are the most important ones to get.)
Plan to get a variety of close-up details and far-away shots of equipment, props and room décor.
Get photos of teachers or trainers assisting, treating or correcting class participants if this is a part of your business philosophy, as well as teaching the class.
Images of participants chatting before and after their class or session will show camaraderie and a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.
Don’t forget to capture your building exterior or entrance and welcome desk shots too.
Avoid tight framing of the subject – keep their full head and shoulders within the frame. If you’d like to include your staff's action or yoga pose photos with bios, use them as secondary shots.
Finally, when thinking about your brand’s voice, that includes the words on your website. Great fitness website design also includes strong copywriting, so you’ll want to be clear on how you want people to feel when they read the words on the page.
For those building a new website, it’s always a good idea to not try to do too much at once. There are certain website pages that are a “need to have” whereas others are more of a nice to have.
Here’s a quick rundown on my top recommendations:
Recommended starting pages for fitness studios: Home, About, Schedule, Pricing, Contact, New Client
Recommended starting pages for a personal trainer: Home, About, Pricing, Private Instruction, Schedule, Blog (depends on business model)
Hiring the Right Fitness Website Designer
The choice whether or not to DIY your fitness website design depends on several factors including your skill level and expertise, time and money.
While many people think they can easily handle fitness website design on their own, as someone who does this for a living I can say that having someone who understands all the nuances of design and has a strong grasp on the strategy behind it can make a difference in the long-term performance of your website.
If you’re ready to hand this project off to a professional, I recommend that you ask some specific questions to help gauge if they are a good fit for you and your studio.
Some questions to consider should include:
#1. Can this person represent me well?
Designers have different styles in the work they create. You’ll want to review their website project portfolio and ensure you like what you see.
#2. Does this person have a branding or general graphic design background?
Not all web developers have design skills and not all graphic designers also do websites. You want someone who has both an eye for design and understands how your brand can translate to the digital world.
#3. How much maintenance will be required post-launch?
Find out what regular maintenance will need to be done on your new site, and if the designer offers those additional services.
#4. How much training is provided with your website design package?
You’ll need someone on your staff that knows how to do basic things with your studio’s website. Choose a designer that understands this and is willing to provide resources for training your team.
#5. Does the designer understand your industry and how your website will work with your scheduling software?
Whether you use Mindbody, Mariana Tek, Walla or another scheduling software, you’ll want to make sure your website seamlessly integrates with your studio operations.
#6. Are there Search Engine Optimization services included with the website?
Although not a deal-breaker, if your designer does not offer SEO, knowing this will allow you to save some room in your budget for hiring someone else to implement basic on-site SEO for your new website. Many designers and agencies do offer these services alongside the website build though, so it’s good to know what you’re getting for the cost.
Planning a Fitness Website Design Launch Timeline
If you’re still months out from your studio’s grand opening, you’re in a perfect spot to maximize the lead-up to your opening buzz in your area. If you have the time, opening a new studio should ideally come with a few phases of your new website:
Phase 1 - Your "coming soon" landing page
(2-6 months prior to opening)
The goal of your "coming soon" landing page is to generate buzz and collect emails. Key things to include on this version 1 website:
Where you're going to be located
What type of studio it will be
Social links to start building that community
Interest form collecting name, email + possibly phone number
Other things to consider including:
Are you looking for instructors or staff? Add a way to contact you for job inquiries.
Have any photos of the location, construction, team or even architectural renderings? Include them to give something visually relevant to get excited about.
Do you have the ability to put "coming soon" signage up at your future location? If so, include your website url or QR code so people can learn more.
Once you’re able to receive mail at your new address, you can also establish your Google Business Profile to start establishing yourself in your local search results.
Phase 2 - Your "founding member" pre-sale site
(1-2 months prior to opening)
If you’ve done a good job with your first phase of website launch you now have a list of emails and social media followers who are excited about your new studio. These people will form the core of your new community! One way to kickstart that budding community is to offer a special “founding member” price that is the lowest price you plan to ever offer.
This is the time when you’ll want to get your scheduling software up and running and build out that first pricing option and add it to your website so people can sign-up.
You may also want to consider adding other pages in this phase once you start finalizing things like your class descriptions and team.
Phase 3 - Finally, your full booking site
(a couple weeks/days prior to opening)
Your full website should launch around your grand opening when you have your class schedule or appointment availability set and all your pricing options built in your new software.
As mentioned about, this full website will have all the core pages needed to run and promote your business (Schedule, About, Pricing, New Client, Contact) and be fully integrated with your scheduling software. In this phase you also want to ensure your site is optimized for search engines so people can find you on google too!
Leveraging Your Fitness Website Design for Marketing Results
The bottom line when it comes to fitness website design is this:
The most important tool in your marketing toolbox is your website.
A well-designed website can help you attract and retain customers. It can reflect your brand and communicate what makes your studio special. Your website is the marketing hub for your studio, and it’s a must-have for your marketing.
You may choose to tackle fitness website design on your own, and I’ve given you a lot of information that will help you get started…
…but if you decide you’d like to work with a designer who can create a custom website that will be the hub for all your marketing efforts, get in touch with me to schedule a consultation. I’d love to hear your ideas and share mine about the perfect custom web design for your fitness or wellness studio.
