5 Killer Tips For Creating Your Online Personal Training Website

In the past, I've personally done full graphic design and coding for twelve of my own websites. I've also had local community graphic web designers create two additional websites. But now, I outsource all this time-consuming work to Pakistan, India, or some other very inexpensive technology sector based geographical area. I talk comprehensively about this type of outsourcing in Chapter 5 of Train For Top Dollar.

So what methods have I used to create my websites?

Whoever you use to host your website will typically come include free web templates. What this means is that you can download the template to your computer, or you can use an online editing program that is usually available on your web host, and most of the work is done for you. For multiple reasons included in my book, especially for utilizing one-click, simple blog creation, my favorite host is Bluehost.

The colors, backgrounds, and organization in these templates are already present, and you just drag and drop your desired pictures and text. This can be a very effective and quick way to design your website.

On the flipside, a template will have a very generic feel, and you have extremely limited control over the basic website design and organization. These type of sites have no wow factor, but if you're on a time crunch, have a limited budget, or just want to get started, this may be the way to go.

If you use an online website design tool, typically also available from your hosting service (like Bluehost), you'll finish a web page on your web site, then just press "publish" or "save", and it now appears when people type your domain name (aka URL) into their computer's web browser.

If you use your own website design software, based from your computer, you typically have to create the website on your computer, then send it electronically (called FTP) to your hosting service, which typically provides pretty good instructions in the help section on how to use various web design software to create and upload your site.

My favorite computer based software is Adobe GoLive, but if you go to a freeware or shareware download website like Tucows, you can trial or use any number of free website design software packages.

Here are my five killer tips for your website design:

• Keep it simple and clean. Include lots of "white space" so your readers don't become confused with 18 different training advertisements, fitness pop-ups, and sounds or music when they first visit your page.

• Use photos effectively. Try to include your face or body if possible, to build a trust relationship with your potential online clients and show that you are indeed fit.

• Use a simple navigation menu without too many buttons. A simple "Home", "Services", "About Us", and "Contact Us" will suffice for a basic online personal training page.

• Include space for publishing your latest breaking articles on your home page. This is very important for search engine optimization, which I present later in this chapter.

• Include a space for client testimonials. Here's an e-mail that I send out to each successful client after they've reached a milestone goal and have enough dopamine and endorphins rumbling through their system to give me a fantastic testimonial:

"Dear _________,

The people I coach and train are my main focus in life. When you reach your goals, I feel I've contributed to your life in a unique way, and somehow contributed my knowledge to help you achieve something special and meaningful.

I'm in the process of updating my website - specifically the online fitness and nutritional training services. I really want people to know how I can help them achieve their desires.

Here's where you come in. If you're interested, I'm looking for testimonials. Just a brief sentence or paragraph about how I've helped you identify objectives, reach your goals or simply supplied you with a nudge in the right direction.

If I use your testimonial on my website or in a brochure, I would just write your first name, or simply your initials if you'd prefer. All you really have to do is shoot your testimonial to me via e-mail.

Thanks for considering, and remember to train and eat smart!"

These 5 tips will get you started. I also offer business and website consulting services to personal trainers, and give a vast amount of information in my book Train For Top Dollar, which teaches how to maximize your income as a fitness professional.

Ben Greenfield offers business consulting services to fitness professionals, gym owners, nutritional consultants, and personal trainers. In his book Train For Top Dollar, and at his website http://www.trainfortopdollar.com, Ben teaches tips and tricks on effective high-income producing strategies. To learn more, you can e-mail Ben at ben@trainfortopdollar.com

Using Web Analytics to Improve Your Site

How often do you check your web traffic status? If your answer is never, then it is time you start doing so. Measuring and analyzing your website's success is an important step which is often ignored by many website owners. Your sales might be pretty good for your website but without the knowledge of your visitors like who they are, where they go, what they are looking for, where they leave and what turns them off, you might be losing many potential customers. By analyzing your website along with your marketing efforts you can improve the overall performance. Web analytics is measuring the results against your goals and check how much success your website has been able to achieve.

Goals - Current Results = Website Success rate.

To improve your results you need to measure, understand and adjust the events that lead to the result. You need to drive targeted traffic to your site and use web analytics to analyze and measure user behavior.

There are mainly three steps you need to follow in order to improve your website traffic. The first step is to drive targeted traffic onto your site by various marketing strategies like SEO and PPC. The next step is to persuade the visitors to take desired action on your site. You can have an appealing website with newsletter subscription or software demos to download. The third step is to use web analytics to analyze customer behavior. Using web analytics to analyze your site is a new method. This helps you keep track of the end results produced by the former two steps. With the help of this you can monitor and make improvements of the previous steps. You can keep track of the website traffic by knowing where the visitors are coming from, the area where they leave the site, the keywords that were used to find your website, where they navigated your site from and keep track of the actions taken by them on your site. This information can help a great deal to improve your business.

There are two types of web analytics: on-site and offsite web analytics.

On-site web analytics: This type of web analytics measures visitor's session on your website. It means it checks the pages that encourage people to buy your product, the pages that drive them away and the ones attracting more visitors. It measures the website performance in a commercial context. The data collected from here is used to compare against the key performance and used to improve the webpage of the marketing campaign.

Off-site web analytics: You can make use of this even if u do or do not own/ maintain a website. It measures the various opportunities in the market like potential customers, the visibility of a website and other factors that affect a website promotion.

Setting Up Web Traffic Monitoring Devices:

You need to track your site users using more discrete methods. Here are some methods you can adopt to check your website visitors' status:

1. Install hit counters on your site: You can install hit counters on your site or blog to check the amount of visitors. With the help of this you can keep track of the increase of decrease in the amount of users on your site. There are number of counter providers that'll let you run their script on your website. You can paste their code on your website and keep track of the daily visitors. Few of the counter providers are Counter.com, eXTReMe Tracking, Promotion Stat.
2. Use your web host statistical package: The good thing about using a reliable hosting service is that every time someone visits your site, you web host server records the user's activities in a log file. The data in this log is usually abbreviated and cryptic making it difficult and time consuming to use. Your Web host uses a software tool to import the log-file data into a built in database which in turn transforms the data into readable and easy to understand statistical reports. Analog (analog.cx) is of the popular software tools used by Web hosts. You can visit their websites to learn more about it. Web host statistical package includes daily transmission statistics, total transfers by client domain, transfers by reversed subdomain and total transfers from each archive section.
3. Purchase a web traffic analysis software: The log file provided by your Web host is not in a user-friendly readable form. There are many web traffic analysis software applications available to collect the required data. These software applications summarize the results in an easy graphical and readable reports based on the information provided by the web host. Some of these applications work with your web ISP's web server and hence saves you time and freedom to manage the entire process. Being flexible, these applications help you control what you want to include or exclude.

In the past, web analytics used measure things like server hits, entry pages, exit pages, unique visitors, repeat visitors, first page visited and the time spent on the site. The advanced web analytics are more business specific and can show us conversion ratios, browse to buy rates and customer acquisition costs. As the technology improves web analytics are able to help us find other aspects of web as well. At present web analytics help us analyze visitor's behavior. This information could be used to improve your SEM strategies, keyword selection, site architecture and design. You can also improve the marketing methods and follow the appropriate steps to bring relevant traffic on to your site. Web analytics is the best way of improving your return on investment (ROI).

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Cost to Build a Website - Are You Paying Too Much?

It is easier than you thin to create a website. So why are you paying to have your own website designed?

Many of you want to create a website online, but their is so much information being thrown your way that it's confusing you. But, it's not that difficult to get your own website designed and created online. You have to understand what the masses are using, and follow those that are successful. Don't go with or take advice from anyone who isn't building websites and making money online.

You cost to build a website can be overwhelming, once you get any of those professional web design services to build your website. It doesn't have to cost that much. You can learn how to build a web site online, and the best part is, design it yourself with your own website building tools. It is easier than you think, but everyone is misleading you. they are only trying to take money out of your pockets.

My frustration online comes from seeing people struggle, while the so called guru, just keeps on misleading them. Promoting high priced products that leaves you even more blinded. Stop, following the guru's, they have never designed anything in their live. they pay to have their website designed. They don't know what it feels like to be struggling, they have forgotten, they are filled with greed.

It doesn't have to be that way, all you need is to understand what it takes to build and design your own website, and you can be making money in just a couple weeks online. Who are you going to trust, a guru or someone who is actually making money online with simple website?

If you truly want to make money, you will have to learn how to design your own website, simple little HTML tricks, and how to monetize your websites. most important, you have to learn how to drive traffic to your sites.

Alexander Marlin, builds simple websites online. He can teach you exactly how to use Keyword Elite to target better keywords. He recommends using Cpanel Web Hosting to host your websites.

Three Stages of Website Management

Managing an internet business website basically consist of three main function. These are content research, development and maintenance of this content. The extent of work in any of these functions depends on the kind of website. It also depends on the amount of content your website needs to be competitive in its market. The more content your website has, the more work you will have. Equally the more unique your content, the more work you have, particularly in researching and developing.

Researching content entails determine what content to put on your site. For example a curios website may choose to inform on the culture behind particular pieces. They could detail the culture behind beaded Massai necklaces. On the other hand a book-store website could entail reviews of the books they offer for sale. All of this content has to be researched.

Developing content entails constructing the researched information into valuable information to your users. This stage include site structure design, page structure design, content format eg text, audio, video etc. It is important to note that this stage has implication on both user experience and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Managing content basically involves keeping your content fresh and up to date. If for example an event has been passed by time or facts have changed, you need to reflect this in the website.

If you have ever tried to manage a 50 page website, you know how easily an internet business becomes a full time job; especially for small internet businesses, that outsource minimally. The process of getting content from research to website can easily take days and this does not include maintenance.

As in any business, you need to focus on growth and increasing value and revenue. This in internet business translate to mean that researching content and to some small extent developing content should be your primary work. Most of content development and nearly all maintenance should take the least of your time. Unfortunately by the time your site is hitting 100 pages, you are tied down more in maintenance, using most of your time in the least productive function. There is a primary tool that can successfully help you focus in production function, namely Content Management System (CMS). Next week we look of what CMS is and how it has become a necessity in website management.

Learn about Site Build It Software the leading All-in-One Small Online Business solution. Find out more sitebuildit reviews here.

Build a Website Fast - 90 Second Website Builder Review

Building websites can be a whole lot of fun if you know what you are doing. Personally, I take much pride in the work that I produce for each and every site that I own. However, site building can take a big chunk of your time...especially if you are an internet marketer. The internet marketing arena is brutal. If you are not on top of things from the get go, you can lose out on good money. As the saying goes - "You snooze, you lose."

As an internet marketer, it is extremely important to be able to build a website fast. Over the years, we have seen many site building programs that use 'WYSIWYG,' or 'What You See is What You Get.' This feature allows it's users to drag and drop items, add text, links, etc. in plain view, if you will, while creating a web page. You can actually see your actions before your eyes instead of viewing codes. Unfortunately, the 'WYSIWYG' feature is somewhat limited in it's use. Typically, the drag and drop areas are confined to the pre-configured layout of the page (side menus, content, footer, etc.)

What is the best web builder on the market today? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I like a program that is an absolute "What You See is What You Get." In other words, I need the ability to place images, text, and tables anywhere I want them with the simple 'drag and drop' action, with no limitations. Furthermore, the ideal website builder should be able to create menus and buttons, again, with the drag and drop utility.

The 90 Second Website Builder can handle the aforementioned tasks with ease. This program also allows you to overlap images and create Paypal icons. Learn more about 90 Second Site Builder at Michael's marketing blog.

What a Good Website Designer and a Web Developer Should Know About Web Design

So, what it is really that distinguishes a good website from a poorly designed web site? The topic is as broadly debatable as Windows over Linux is but it all boils down to the two important keywords: development and design! A good web designer offering web site design services must know the difference between the two words.

Web development in itself is a broad term for any activities related to website, web application, web solution, e-commerce development, web content development, client-side / server-side coding, web solutions and web database system. Web development usually refers only to the technical aspects of building a website.

Web design on the other hand is perceived as the artistic side of creating a website that involves the visual styles, layout coherence, color theme considerations and all other factors that has something to do with the general appearance of the site, vis-à-vis its functions.

Therefore, we may conclude that web development equates to a programmer's logic craftsmanship while website design is a product of an artist's imaginative and creative ideas. If this is true which I'm sure most website design firms and individual web designers in the Philippines would agree that a good website must be a combination of digital landscape and well planned programming logic. The dilemma however is that majority of web designers falls short of these two important aspects. Worst, most website developers do not realized these qualifications. I don't have anything against talented and enterprising individual with knowledge on web design and development but there is more than simply knowing the basic of html and image editing to come up with a commercial grade website. We must put in mind that a website is our business or personal identity online. It is the sum total of our being and our business that is accessible to clients and prospective clients. It means therefore that a website is our front line to the information age and that should be well planned and designed in order for it to serve its purpose.

There are however rampant offering on "create your own website in minutes" application and other template-based website. I'm baffled by these ideas simply because it directly contradicts to what I have just discussed above. Choosing to publish a website from a template equates to buying a white cardboard box in the department store and stamping it with your product's name, no branding, no image building, no identity! It's like the usual "Special Patis (Fish Sauce) label you see all over the wet market. All of them claim to be special but the sad truth is that non of them are.

As I have mentioned already, there are two important keywords in the subject, they are Website development and Web site design. Development is of course straight forward and can be learned in school. However, design is a rather different zone in the battlefield of web design. As the word design implies, it has something to do with creative ideas carefully woven by an artist - a full fledge designer who is there to collate the meaning of symbols, colors, sizes and positioning of every element in a website. It is ironic though that most web design firms out there offers template based website that are available in many template stores, worst many of them are available for free. So to say, if you have your prestigious business website made from templates, chances are that you have a twin website somewhere in the internet with only its mole and hair different from yours - the logo and text content, but they are visual replica of each other.

So if you happened to be reading this in search of a good website design firm, check out if the firm has a certified graphic artist and not just a programmer who read a crash course in image editing offering templates and who promised to create your website in minutes. Web site design and development involves careful planning, collaborating of design ideas, and putting together appropriate contents to capture the visitor's attention and to properly reflect your business' image or professional reputation..

for more visit: iConcept

Earn More Profits With Effective Website Design

The main purpose of website design is to give a unique identity to your company's business. Thus, it becomes very important to attract more number of customers by designing user friendly and interactive websites so that it increases the demand for your products.

Good content management, designing skills, easy navigation, excellent layout and storyboarding are some of the pre-requisites required for a successful website design.

Understanding the customer psychology

It is vital for website design to create a lasting impression on the customers to improve your website traffic and visibility on the internet. A good website design draws the attention of your customer and induces him to take a certain action. Hence, it becomes necessary to design the website from the customer's point of view.

If you have been to shopping in the supermarket, you might have observed, how each product is displayed there to attract the customers and entice them to buy the product.

Similarly, you should be able to apply the same principles to your website design by understanding what features of your website is most likely to draw maximum attention of the customers.

5 Powerful website design principles

-Content is the King

It is more desirable to have websites with rich content than which are simply attractive to look. Visitors measure the quality and effectiveness of your website based on the content that you provide on your website. Therefore, it is important to give them interesting and informative information that can prove useful to them.

-Eye catching visual images

Images have a high possibility of creating greater impact on the minds of the visitor. Always try to use more visual images that look more appealing and have the ability to capture the attention of your audience with your message using your website. Thus, it makes good sense to incorporate a fine balance of text and graphics in your website design.

-Self-explanatory web pages

Many a times, websites are not be able to provide an effective solution to the problems faced by the customers and leave them in a state of dilemma. One of the main principles of good website design is to give a clear picture of your website so that they do not have to delve into details. In short, your website should be self-explanatory and guide them easily by providing quick solutions to all their queries.

-Keep it as simple as possible

You main aim must to give all the required information to the visitors through your website which provides easy and simple navigation. Keep the layout of the website as simple as possible without creating undue distractions in the form of ads that pop up every time the user is browsing on your website. Try to give them a more customer friendly experience by designing a simple user interface.

-Good communication medium

It is vital to communicate effectively with your customer; this can be made possible only with a good website design. Always try to use language that is more customer-friendly and avoid using technical terms as far as possible. Make sure that you are able to put across your ideas and suggestions along with the message in such a manner that it gets across to the customer. Thus, your website design must be able to create more familiarity about your company and its products.

John Mahoney is a freelance author who writes about various technology related subjects including business card printing. For more information about John visit his website: http://www.techstore.ie