As you may or may not know, we design and create websites for all kinds of people and businesses, but our focus is Martial Arts Club Websites.
For this focus, we realised that not every single person who wants a website through us is going to know what they should have on their website – so we thought up a basic package that covers a kind of ‘template’ setup of pages. Pages that (in our opinion) every Martial Arts Website Needs
These ‘Basic Pages’ are what most Martial Arts Club websites should really have, as most people wanting to join or train at a new club are going to be looking for specific pieces of information.
So we came up with this selection of pages that we offer with all of our web design packages, that all club websites need.
Home / Landing Page
OK, so a home page isn’t optional – every website has one.
But what is optional is the content. As our ‘basic page’ set up we recommend creating a home page with acts as a portal to various areas of your website in a very visual manner. The reason for this is that when a visitor lands on your website, seeing these pages will not only make it easy for them to figure out where to go but also communicates what it is you offer.
This visual and “less wordy” way of guiding people to areas of your website will warm them up a little, as most people don’t necessarily want to land on a website and read 1000 words of text just to figure out where to go next. This is your first impression so keep things visual and communicate through imagery, so it’s effortless for new visitors. If they want more info they’ll know where to click.
Your home page is the best place to summarize updates and news, display special offers and link to important pages. The challenge is to do this in a way that isn’t busy or confusing.
About Page
If people are going to show up to your club and learn about the art of combat and violence, they will want to make sure you’re trust worthy and offer a safe atmosphere. So they will want to know about your club and who is running it.
This is a perfect place to talk about what style (or styles) you teach, who your instructors are and the history of your club.
Knowledge of your style lets them know what to expect, seeing instructors faces and names will create a stronger connection and reduce the fear or nervousness of stepping into your club and a strong history will show a proven track record. This all helps to weaken that barrier between your website visitor and their first class.
Your website is a window that reflects the quality and culture of your club, so put this information in your about page!
If your club is quite large, offering multiple styles run by many instructors, you may also need to split this into a number of pages to be truly effective – history, styles, instructors, etc.
Classes / Timetable
OK, so you’ve created a level of trust between your club and your website visitor through your about page (or some other external method) then they’re going to want to know what classes are available at what times so they can factor them into their weekly routine.
This will also save you the time of having to list classes to them verbally or constantly printout timetables to hand out, you can simply direct people to your website so that they know when to train.
This one is pretty straight forward and obvious!
Blog
Even if you only update once every 3 months, a solid blog showing recent history of your club, upcoming events and even interesting articles about your style will help boost website traffic and also give your club that ‘alive’ feeling.
When people see events, photos of people attending gradings, news and updates then they get a better feeling of community and warmth that can calm nerves and encourage them to join your martial arts family.
This also doubles as a resource for current members to go for important updates.
“Free Trial” Page
This one does depend on how your club operates, but I’ve never been to a martial arts club that doesn’t offer a free trial or number of lessons to beginners when they first arrive to train. The funny thing is not everyone looking to start will know this!
So advertise this and break down that additional barrier. This can be as simple as a page explaining the free trial and educate people on what to expect from the first class. You can then direct them to your contact page or even offer an official sign up form so you can record their contact information for future reference.
People love free stuff, they like knowing what to expect and that this is how you normally operate, I highly recommend this page as part of your main menu.
Contact Page
Before I wrote this post, I searched for a martial arts club online and couldn’t believe that they didn’t have a simple ‘contact us’ page. This is a big mistake!
‘Contact’ is the word people look for online and know exactly what to expect – how to call you, email you or where to go if they want to start training. If you run a club in the real world you need to create a path from the website to your club or club instructor.
This might seem obvious but people still hide their contact information on a page somewhere on their site so people have to go looking and digging for it! A lot of the time some may just give up and not contact you at all.
Make it very obvious, because once that decision is made and your website visitor decides to enquire or show up to training, they will go straight to the contact page to make the connection.
I even recommend some people put contact details on every page for easy access aswell as having a contact page. This might seem unnecessary, but make it effortless for your visitors to contact you.
The rest is up to you!
Every club is unique, operates in its own way and has different approaches and types of information to share. So it’s important to look at what you need your website to do for you and find ways to make that happen.
This means you may need pages specific to your website, but this adds that uniqueness that helps separate you from the websites of other martial arts clubs.
The above pages are a part of all of our web design packages, so if you need any help putting a website together with this in mind, don’t hesitate to contact us today.
If you have anything add or say about this article, please leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you. Thanks for reading!
