Wendy (00:02.766)
there. I'm Wendy McCallum. I am the host of the Coaching Edge podcast and I'm really happy to be back today with a topic that I came up with, I've got to admit, just sort of on the cuff. I was out for a walk with my dogs, which is when I get some of my better ideas. And I just threw this together. And while I was making the list of things I wanted to talk about in this episode, I realized I could actually talk about this probably for, you know, three, four or five episodes. And so the 10
that I'm gonna talk about today, the 10 mistakes that I see very, very often on coaching websites that are easy fixes, they're just 10 of probably 100 mistakes that I see. I'm just gonna use these today, because these felt like the ones that came to my head first. These are the types of things that we talk about all the time in the BBB, which is my business building bootcamp for coaches. It's a one -year membership program where you get direct.
support from me and an intimate group community setting with other coaches who are building their businesses on a weekly basis and also access to a huge library. In the library, of course, we talk about websites and I give you all the basics of building your first website. But these are just some of the key kind of pitfalls, mistakes, places that I see coaches getting stuck.
when it comes to developing their website and improving their website. And I thought I would share them with you today, because I think you could do a little audit of your website after listening to this episode to see whether you are making any of these mistakes. Probably as I start talking about this, you're going to realize that a few of these things are things that you are already doing that might merit some time to go back and sort of fix them up or improve them.
And I want to just remind you before I start, should really say this in every Coaching Edge episode, it is totally okay if there are some things that you're not doing right. That is part of building your own business as a solopreneur. There are always things that I realize I'm not doing as well as I could be. Mistakes that I'm making or things that I need to work on, improve, get some support around. That is just part of the deal, guys. So don't be too hard on yourself.
Wendy (02:09.986)
The goal here is for a couple of these things to kind of resonate with you and for you to go and then tweak your websites and improve your websites so that you have a better chance of achieving the goal with a website, which is when your dream client lands on that website, they know they are in the right place and you are the right coach to help with the particular area of challenge that they are struggling with. And conversely, if they are not your dream client, they land on the page, they know that you're not the right coach for you. That is the goal.
of a really good website. So I'm going to go through 10 of some of the common coaching website mistakes that I see and things that I think really you should try to avoid on a coaching website. I want to be clear. I think I'm on my third or fourth iteration of a website since I started coaching 15 years ago. So your website is going to be changing all the time and a good website is dynamic in that there's new content being added to it all the time. And as you learn more about yourself,
what you excel at as a coach, your kind of sweet spot, your unique special sauce, and also the niche that you wanna work with and the problems that you're really, really good at helping people solve, your copy on your website should be changing to reflect that. So again, these are not the only mistakes. These are just the 10 that came to my mind first when I was making a list and I thought I would start here and maybe there'll be a second installment of this episode down the line on the coaching edge. So the first mistake that I noted,
that happens a lot. And this one's really important, is when coaches are not capitalizing on the prime real estate of your website, which is what we call the part that's above the fold. So if you think of an old school newspaper, a print newspaper, the above the fold portion is the portion that you see when that newspaper is folded and sitting right in front of you. It's the big headlines, the name of the newspaper and the top headline in the article that goes with it.
That's the prime real estate in a newspaper because it's what everybody sees. The same thing happens with your website. There is an above the fold area on your website. That is your prime real estate. And that is what people see when they click on a link that takes them to your homepage. So it is that first screen of information before they have to start scrolling down. That's your prime real estate and you want to be making sure that you are capitalizing on that. And a lot of people don't. They end up
Wendy (04:33.824)
including in that section a bunch of like fillers, kind of fluffy stuff that's not that important, and they therefore miss out on that capitalizing on that prime real estate. So you might, for example, have like a big logo that's taking up a bunch of space or the name of your coaching business up there, or maybe there's like a header where you're talking about, you know, something that's really not that important, but that you're, you know, promoting that month or something.
You want to make sure that that part of your website is a place where you make it very, very, very clear to people that they are in the right place if they are actually in the right place. So this is where you want to have that statement that says something like, I'm Wendy McCallum, I help, then whoever the niche is that you help. So for me, if we're talking about my life coaching, might be burnt out, professional women do.
Wendy (05:30.994)
So whatever the thing is that you help them with. So for me it might be reduce their stress and drink less, buy, and then you put your special sauce in there, which for me might be without deprivation or willpower, right? So my niche statement might be something like, I'm Wendy McCallum, I help professional burnt out women stress less and drink less without deprivation or willpower or without relying on deprivation or willpower. That is my statement. That tells you who I am. It tells you who I work with. It tells you...
what I help them do and what my special sauce is that makes me unique as a coach. And then with that, you really, in a perfect world, have a really great, very colorful, very attractive, inviting photo of you so that people know who you are. Because you are your brand as a coach, this is the information that should just hit people right away when they land on your website because it's going to do two things. It's going to...
Allow the people who are not the right fit for you to bounce right away, which is what you want. I know that that seems a little counterintuitive, but if they're not the right person for you and you actually are not in the business of helping them, you want them to know that right away so they can move on. And for the people who are the right fit for you, they're gonna know right away that you actually helped solve the exact problem that they have, that you get it, and that you do it in a way that resonates with them.
So you wanna be making sure you're capitalizing on the above the fold space on your website. I cannot emphasize this enough. You're gonna probably wanna have a call to action button right underneath that. And now depending on where you are in your business and what your offers are and all the rest of it, it could just be a button that allows them, it might say, you know, take the first 10 steps for free now or something like that. And it takes them to a really great freebie video series or something that you have that you're offering them. It could be a book of discovery called Button. It could be many different things.
but that needs to be happening above the fold. So check your sites. If that's not what you have above there, how can you be capitalizing more on that part of your website? Okay, the next problem that I see a lot is an unclear niche. So this is where people are way too general. Now, little caveat here. If you're just starting out, if you just got certified, you don't know who you wanna serve yet. You don't know what you're really good at as a coach or what you like to do as a coach.
Wendy (07:46.742)
it's okay to start a little more general. That is absolutely okay. But the key and the goal as you move forward is to get clearer and narrower in your niche. And this is something we work on all the time in the BPP. The coaches and I have conversations constantly about clarity of niche. So if you say something really general in that above the fold area, like, hi, I'm Wendy, I'm a life coach for women, or hi, I'm Wendy, I help men increase their energy and improve their mood, that is so general.
And that is the type of thing that a million other coaches are doing. It doesn't set you apart from anybody else. And frankly, it's kind of vague. Like what does improve your energy actually mean? It doesn't tell you anything about how you do that. That could be, it could be somebody who helps people with exercise. It could be somebody who's specialist in sleep. You could be somebody who is focused on nutrition and you could through all of those different ways help people improve their energy. But there's no information on that there. It's just way too general. So you wanna make sure that your niche
is clear and as specific as possible. Okay, so again, my niche is I help successful, professional women who are burnt out and drinking too much to cope. That is a very specific subsection of the population. And you wanna be making sure that your niche is really clear here and not too general, okay? If you're concerned about your niche, there are other episodes of The Coaching Edge where we talk.
niche specifically. The next issue that I see a lot of concern that I have with websites is, and this is just like, this is like drives me crazy this one, it's when websites are written in the third person and are way too formal. So you know most of us are coaching on our own and we are working one -on -one with people and the most important part of marketing for us
is building like no trust. It's getting people comfortable with us. It's getting people to like us and to trust us enough that they'll actually share their really important secrets with us in a coaching session. And trust us with their time, with their money, and with their, you know, private, their most private struggles. So.
Wendy (10:03.15)
When you craft your website and it says, know, Wendy McCallum used to be a lawyer and after 12 years of practicing and two babies decided to leave the practice of law and move to whatever, and then Wendy McCallum can help you with, or Wendy McCallum helps women with, that is really formal. It's a completely different situation when you use the first person, which is what you should be doing. So you should be talking in the I voice. Another little pet peeve of mine is when people refer to themselves as we.
So I am of the view, now this is a personal thing, but I'm of the view that if you do not actually have a crew of people working for you, if you're not running a small company where you have other coaches working for you and other people who are full -time on your staff, don't refer to yourself as we. People can see right through that. I have never done that. I am a very successful coach and I have lots of people who help me with different things, but I'm the only person who coaches in Wendy McCallum Coaching.
Occasionally I subcontract out to a couple coaches to help me with things, but I am it. I am my brand I refer to myself in the first person I say I I Speak as though it is me speaking on my website and I really encourage you to do the same So that's a quick fix if your language is third person go in and flip it The next thing I want to talk about is when there is a lack of shared story or vulnerability on a website, so
when a coach is incredibly formal. And again, I get in the beginning, can be really, it can feel really scary to put any parts of your story out there. And I always say, you know, when we're sharing, share from your scars, not from your open wounds, right? So if you are sharing your story, make sure it's something that has healed over for you and that you're comfortable sharing, not something that still feels like a gaping open wound. And...
You get to decide how much information you share, but it is really important in building that like no trust, which is so critically important to getting somebody to trust you enough to actually hire you to help them or even to book a discovery call or sometimes even to download a freebie. I mean, it's really hard to convince people to take something for free these days because people are being bombarded with offers in exchange for their email addresses. So in order to get people to take whatever that next step is on your website, they have
Wendy (12:20.078)
to like, trust you and you've got to share something about yourself in order to start building that relationship. So when coaches have nothing about themselves on their about page or their homepage that is remotely personal, that is a problem. So if you're just listing all of your credentials, there's a very low likelihood that someone is gonna book a discovery call with you, honestly. You want to be sharing something about yourself.
you're curious about what that might look like, you can go to my website at wendymckellum .com and take a look. I share my story everywhere. I share my story here, I share my story on my website, I share my story on my socials. So something about yourself. Even if you just go in there and you add three personal details to your about today, I'm gonna call that a success for you. So that might be the fact that you absolutely love to...
read rare goldfish. It might be that you, you know, just took a big leap of faith and moved across the country so that you could be closer to the ocean. It could be that you, you know, are the proud mother of four Portuguese water dogs. Or that you love to read or that you're you're an aspiring secret in the closet novelist or something like that.
information about you is going to increase the likelihood that people feel like you're actually a human. And that is really, really important. So make sure that there's some shared story and just a little bit of personal details and some vulnerability if you can muster it up. And there's a place for people to click through to my alcohol story on my website and it is a very long story and it's all there. And that is really helpful. There's also on my burnout page,
a video where I share my own experience with burnout and that's all to create that shared story vulnerability, that feeling for my potential clients who click on that page that they're not alone and that I actually get it because I have been there. Okay, really crummy photos on your website. I get that professional photos are expensive.
Wendy (14:30.786)
But I always encourage my BBB members when they are getting started as coaches to invest in at least a small set of good quality professional photos that they can use on their website. And if you're careful about your photo shoot, you can get a lot of bang for your buck. But even if at this point you need to get somebody to take photos of you for free, so you have a friend or somebody who knows a pretty good photographer.
you're gonna want photos that are really crisp, really good quality, really bright. And I've seen too many websites where people just grab some old photo they found in themselves, blow it up, the resolution's terrible, and they put that on as their headshot on their website. The other problem that often happens is that people use stock photos on their website that are not even remotely in alignment with their brand or their niche. So I would really encourage you to check both of those things. The photos of you, are they really good quality, you know,
You want them to be inviting photos of you and then if you're using stock photos on your website Are you using stock photos that are in alignment with the people that you actually want to serve and support? So for example for me, I don't really work with women under the age of 38 39 so me having a bunch of photos of women doing fun things on my website that are you obviously in their 20s is going to probably cause somebody who's 50 who comes on my website to bounce because they're gonna realize they're gonna think this is
She doesn't help people like me. So photos, definitely worth a check. Are your stock photos in alignment with your brand and your niche? And are the photos of you good enough quality? Could you use an improvement there? This one, next one is just a little one. It's such a common issue, which is that people use too much text on their websites. So there are huge blocks of text. What do I mean by block? I mean like a pair.
What you want to be doing is paring down the text on especially on your home page of your website to as little text as possible. You want to be using bullet points and you want to be using you know really concise language. You want it to be as catchy copy as possible. You want it to be interesting and dynamic. What you don't want is big blocks of text. People will look at that and just bounce.
Wendy (16:54.796)
because it is overwhelming for us. And we are used to being served content in very small bite -sized bits now. So you wanna make sure that your website is digestible for people and not overwhelming. And one of the first ways to do that is to take a look at how many words you're trying to jam into small spaces. Is there a way to break them into much smaller paragraphs or even into single lines? And then even better, can you take that and convert it to a bulleted list?
in order to shorten it all up. So it'd be a great place to experiment with, experiment, sorry, with ChatGPT, by the way. You know, I don't love ChatGPT for everything, but boy, can it be helpful for some things. And you could literally copy all of your homepage copy, put it into ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to really make that as concise, precise as possible using some bulleted lists and shorter paragraphs and see what it turns out for you. Okay.
The next little thing, which is something that I think it's a common mistake for coaches, especially in the beginning, is trying to do too much selling on your homepage. So selling of higher priced offers like one -on -one coaching or group programs that you might be running right on your homepage. Too much selling on the homepage is almost always going to repel people. Even if they're actually genuinely interested in booking you as a coach or potentially working with you in some other way.
I think too much of that on the homepage is a bad idea. The homepage is a great place to really, like I said earlier, make it super clear on who you are, who you serve, the problem that you help people with, the transformation that you help clients to affect. And what's gonna change for them if they stick with you here? If they continue reading, if they follow you on Instagram, if they download this amazing free offer or
resource that you have for them. So it's really the first place you start to build that like no trust. I think it's a great place to be giving away some really valuable content, but also the best place to be putting your best foot forward in terms of your getting really clear on what it is you do and who you help. So.
Wendy (19:13.888)
Resist the urge to have all your offers on your homepage and a bunch of buttons that take people to purchase things and any prices or any of that stuff on your homepage. I think that's far better left for other pages on your website. And what you really want to be doing is you want to be getting people to take the next small step and the next small step for most coaches on their website is taking people through to a really valuable free offer, a free video series, a free...
mini course, whatever it is that you're offering so that you can get their email address, capture their email address. So resist the urge to sell, sell, sell on your homepage, because I don't think that's a great place to be doing that. The next thing is that that is a mistake that is often made is that people focus on their credentials as coaches in their about section. So you have a huge list of all of the different credentials and trainings that they've done. Nobody cares about that.
hate to say it guys, but it's really not that important to most people. I've been doing this for 15 years. I have so many different coach trainings and certifications. And I don't spend a lot of time talking about those things because that's not what matters. What matters is whether people feel like I know what I'm talking about. They like my vibe. It feels like they can trust me. It feels like they might, you know, have some fun with me.
and that I actually know what I'm talking about and have been where they've been. That is the most important information. So again, in your about section on your homepage, just avoid the urge to just list in detail and talk in great detail about your certification and your training. It's just not that important to people. Obviously you wanna let people know, like I said, what makes you special and unique as a coach and maybe the type of certification and training that you've had.
informs that, but I think using the name of your designation, certification, the program, the college, whatever it is that you got your certification from, in most cases, is not going to be super helpful, especially on your homepage. We really want to be focusing again on the personal details, on the story, on the shared experience, on the transformation that you're going to help your client affect, on the change that they're going to experience if they decide to go further with you.
Wendy (21:37.206)
And again, go further with you on the homepage usually means opting in to some free offer as opposed to actually signing up for a coaching package with you right away. So focus less on your credentials, more on your client's transformation and on your story. And then next, this is number nine, we're almost done guys. This is so common and this, my gosh, we talk about this a lot again in the BBB.
when we're in office hours and the coaches, know, are especially the newer coaches are just launching their websites and in the first year of their business and they're spending a ton of time looking at their stats on traffic to their website and they're getting really down on it. They're down on themselves and so they're spending way too much time trying to refine and perfect the copy on their websites and also often
trying to improve SEO, which is search engine optimization, by using keywords and by doing all of the things that we talked about in an episode last year on The Coaching Edge that are involved in SEO for your website. I remind my coaches all the time that in the first couple years of your business, any cold traffic is coming to your website.
So people are not gonna just be finding your website usually in the early days, unless you're in a really, really rare specific niche. Are people gonna be finding you by Googling like wellness coach for women? It takes so long to move up in the Google rankings and there are lots of different things that you can do to move yourself up quicker and those are things that we've talked about in other episodes and things that I talk about all the time in the BBB. But spending too much time perfecting the copy and then getting down on yourself because people aren't signing up for discovery calls or aren't coming to your website.
It's just a mistake. It's because it's not your fault. It's the way the web works. And so, you know, the actual specific copy, whether you choose this word or that word on your website, usually doesn't matter at all. And people get really caught up in that and spend far too much time on that. In the early days, months, years, most of the traffic that comes to your website is going to be directed there via a link that you share somewhere else. So you share through social media, you share when you're guesting on a podcast somewhere, you share
Wendy (23:58.414)
through maybe a newsletter that you send out. But it is not going to be cold Google search traffic. It's just not going to be. spending too much time on SEO, spending too much time refining the marketing copy on your website, it's a waste of time in the early days. Don't do it. Do your best with it and then walk away from it and work on actually building ways to direct traffic to your website. So that might be building your social media.
getting on other people's podcasts, doing lives with other people on Instagram so you can share your website information or share your social media accounts. Okay, the very last one that I want to talk about, I'm gonna come in right under the wire here under the 30 minute mark, which is perfect, these 10 really common coaching website mistakes to avoid is not having a really valuable freebie on your homepage. A really
valuable free offer is the absolute key to building a sustainable stream of traffic and revenue. When I'm talking about valuable freebies, there's a whole, there's a whole coaching edge episode on this, by the way, so you can go back and look at the archives. I have so much to say about freebies. One of the things that I have been doing very successfully for the last probably six or seven years,
is offering an incredible amount of free valuable content and it has changed my business. And so I can't say enough about this. A one pager, five tricks to or three things I wish I'd known or whatever, it's just like a one page PDF that people print off or get your free one recipe here or get your whatever. Nobody is willing to trade their email address for that kind of thing anymore.
really, really difficult to get people to sign up for freebies now because everybody's doing them because they're so great. Because there's such a great way to build your email list and to really grow that funnel that will eventually lead to paying clients. And so what you need to do is make sure that whatever the free thing is that you're giving away, that it's really, really valuable. If you go look at my website, you will see that I have some very, very big things that I give away. First thing,
Wendy (26:16.558)
This podcast guys, completely free. I do two episodes a month. I try to pack them full of helpful information. It is all completely free. This is the top of my funnel, right? So this is an example of a really great freebie. And if you go to my homepage, you will see that there is information about the Coaching Edge podcast there and where to listen to it. I also have a couple of really great free workshops that I give away, master classes. There's one on like how to get 10 clients right now.
So 10 ways to get, sorry, it's not how to get 10 clients, it's how it's 10 ways to get clients right away when you start as a coach without going, know, and spending a bunch of money on paid ads or doing those types of things. Like the best ways to get clients right out of the gate as a coach. And if you haven't downloaded that yet, go to my website and get that. It's wendymichellum .com and you will see how valuable the freebies are that I give away.
That is something that I could sell as a paid masterclass, but instead I give it away for free. And you will also see that it leads to a really well -crafted email sequence that I have spent a lot of time on that actually tells you a lot about me as a coach and really starts to build that like no trust factor. I think you'll agree if you follow through on that sequence and read those emails that it gives you a really good sense of who I am as a coach. And it also does some of the things I was talking about in this episode in terms of sharing my story.
getting a little bit vulnerable, talking about the things that I struggled with when I was starting as a coach. So you wanna make sure that on your homepage you are giving away something that is really obviously valuable. It needs to be a no -brainer for somebody who lands on your website. They need to be like, I need that thing now, right? And when people see the 10 ways to get clients right now,
get new clients right now, masterclass, it's completely free. It's kind of a no brainer, like, yeah, duh, yes, please, thank you, I need more clients, right? So what is the problem that's kind of top of mind for the avatar or the dream client that you would like to serve? And how can you solve that problem for them for free? Right? So it's not the whole problem. You're not solving the whole complicated problem. But what's like one of the...
Wendy (28:32.398)
Problems that they have that is leading to them having this bigger problem or feeling the way that they're feeling in their life But an insular piece of the problem that you can solve for them and that you can solve for them for free You need to have something like that on your website again. I've done episodes on really good quality freebies So go back and listen to those episodes if you're thinking yourself. I don't have that right now I don't have anything for free that I offer or the thing that I offer for free is kind of a rinky -dink offer and
or likely that the reason why people aren't signing up for it and why I'm not building my email list is because it's not valuable enough. The other little mistake that sometimes happens is you might have a really incredibly valuable free offer. Maybe you've got this amazing mini course that people get, but the copy on your main page doesn't do anything.
to excite people and to make it really clear to them that the value is there. So if you're just, you just have a button that says download my free mini course now, and you don't have, you haven't spent any time trying to sell them that free thing, that's a mistake and that's probably costing you a lot of conversion in terms of people signing up for that freebie and joining your email list. Remember, it's hard to sell free things now. You actually have to sell people the free thing. You have to convince them and show them and prove to them that it is worth it.
they're exchanging their email address for your free offer. Okay, that's the last thing. So those are the 10 coaching websites, website mistakes that I see often. And there are 30 more, but I just, again, I chose these 10 today because I thought it would be a good place to start. Hope you found that helpful.
If you are listening to this and you're thinking, my gosh, there's so much to consider when it comes to building a coaching practice. And I feel really alone in all of this and I am spinning my wheels out here. I don't even know where to start. And I'm starting to get overwhelmed and discouraged. Please consider joining me at the next BBB open house or sending me a message and getting on a call with me. I'm always happy to get on calls with coaches to talk through where you are in your business and whether the BBB might just be exactly what you're looking for in terms of some.
Wendy (30:43.394)
really intimate, very regular, very organized, focused support for you as you build your coaching business. I think the thing that my BBB coaches find the most valuable, honestly, other than the office hours calls with me every week, is the community. They love not feeling alone. They love knowing other coaches who are going through similar things and being able to draw from that.
of shared experience that we have in the BBB when they're trying new things. Okay, thanks so much for listening to The Coaching Edge. I'll see you in a couple weeks with the next episode. Have a great day.
