Coach Coen

Archive for the ‘Website creation’ Category

Are you struggling to articulate what you do and what you have to offer? This is not uncommon, especially for coaches. After all, a good coach can coach most people on most topics

When writing for your website you need to grab people’s attention quickly. “If you’re alive I am the coach for you” just isn’t good enough

As I wrote before, you need to grab your website visitors quickly

How you work, what you have to offer and who you work best with is unique. Being so close to it may make it difficult for you to see what about your approach is attractive to potential clients, and what words to use

The best people to ask are your clients. Contact them and ask them what they got from working with you, how they describe what you do to their friends or colleagues, and what is particularly attractive about what you do

Do this by phone, email or face to face – and make sure you write down their exact words. Don’t start summarising your findings in your own words – this is about discovering the words that your clients use

And finally, when explaining your services, first list the benefits, then explain the features that provide these benefits. You need to generate interest first (what’s in it for me), before establishing credibility (so this is how it works)

Does your website pass the drive-by test?

Imagine your home page is a roadside billboard. It has two seconds to grab the attention of your target audience, before they’re gone forever

I am currently working with a client to convert their website to WordPress. They are using the opportunity to review and revise their website text. I realised they offer some excellent services, but that it takes too much work to find out to discover this

On your website make sure the first pages visitors meet (such as your home page and the “about” page) grab your target audience quickly. On the rest of your website write as much as you like, with full background information to your services, long articles to display your expertise and plenty of valuable information

To pass the drive-by test:

• Know who your website is for. The text (meaning), the words, the images, colours and layout all need to work together to show your visitor that this website is for her, or for who she is aspiring to be. A website selling health products needs to show images of health. A website aimed at executives needs to use the same language that executives use
• Quickly and clearly show or describe the benefits of your service or product

Speaking with coaches about their website, what many want is a website that reflects who they are, affordable, quick to create and easy to maintain. The freely available WordPress software offers much of this

You can use WordPress as a service, doing away with the need to have your own web space, but your website address will be something like coachcoen.wordpress.com – not very professional

Or you can use the WordPress software. Most website hosts will let you install this on your webspace and create the necessary database. Some hosts have a WordPress install option on their control panel

In short, WordPress offers you the following:

• The ability to easily create and edit simple website pages
• Your own blog
• Various plug-ins (over 11,000 of them) to extend the capability of your website, from adding a simple form to an extensive social media website
• Themes, allowing you to choose the look of your website. The look of a WordPress website is somewhat limited, but still leaves plenty of scope for creativity and personality. You can choose from the 1250+ themes freely available at the WordPress website, find many more online (just search for “wordpress theme” for free and low-cost themes) or create your own

Installation and set up is fairly straight forward, helped by the excellent and extensive documentation at the WordPress website

If you look at the very end of this page you’ll see that this website is created in WordPress. For the template I used some special software, Artisteer. With Artisteer you can quickly generate a series of theme ideas. Once you come across an idea that you like you can tweak the different elements to your heart’s content. Finally, export the design as a WordPress theme, copy it to your web space and activate it

And if that still sounds like too much work, and you’d rather get on with coaching instead of fiddling with technology, just contact me now