December
2008
A successful website lets your business do more with less.
Check your website's results below, and plan now to improve its
performance in 2009.
1) Did your website increase revenue for your health club or
wellness center?
Increase leads by enhancing your online visibility to
potential customers in your community
Optimizing your site for local search greatly increases the
likelihood that potential customers in your trade area will
stumble across your business at the right time.
Implement one tip each month from
Local Search: The Missing Link To Your Website to improve
your website's lead generation results.
Encourage a sense of virtual community among your members
and clients.
The relationships that your customers build with other
customers are often even more important than their ties to your
staff.
Use
online social media tools to encourage this sense of community
through blogs, email newsletters, photo- and video-sharing,
widgets, and other online techniques.
Use e-commerce tools to capture low-hanging fruit.
For example, allow members to renew online. Sell punch cards
for classes, massage or personal training online. Provide
automatic replenishment of nutritional supplements and energy
bars.
Use tools like Amazon's aStore to offer your favorite health
and wellness books and products for purchase online.
2) Did your website cut the cost of running your health and
wellness business?
Provide online scheduling to cut front desk costs and
improve client satisfaction.
Online scheduling lets clients make their own arrangements
24/7. Forcing clients to call for appointments - and sit on hold
while your front desk deals with walk-ups, other incoming phone
calls, etc. - is not respectful of their time or your staff's
time.
Use email or
mobile reminders to avoid last-minute cancellations and
no-shows.
Post and email class schedules to cut printing and
mailing costs and phone calls.
The key: online and emailed schedules must be absolutely
up-to-date. In fact, we suggest that you put the date and time
they were last updated in a prominent position at the top of the
schedule so customers don't wonder whether the info's up to
date.
Make sure students know that any changes - for example, a
sick instructor's cancelled class - will be posted online
immediately and emailed to them.
Use online forms to streamline recurring activities.
For example, allow members to update their contact and
address information online. When you hold events, provide online
registration forms.
If your wellness business receives frequent requests for
charitable donations, post the donation request form online.
3) Did your website increase your staff's productivity?
Pre-qualify potential customers to make your sales
staff more productive.
Many Radial clients come to us with the mistaken belief that
their websites should be designed to appeal to everyone. They're
afraid of putting anything on the website that might possibly
steer a potential customer away.
In fact, you WANT to weed out people who are a bad fit for
your business as quickly as possible, with as little actual
contact as possible. Why? Live contact is expensive, whether
it's phone calls to the front desk or face-to-face meetings with
a sales rep.
For example, if your health club is really tailored for
fitness overachievers, say so. People with chronic health issues
and serious weight concerns aren't going to feel at home, and
you're probably not going to do a great job of supporting them.
Weed out highly price-sensitive prospects.
We strongly recommend that
our clients post at least basic or starting prices online. For
example, a personal training studio that offers training in
half-hour chunks might say "Individual personal training from
$35..." A health club might say "Family memberships from
$45/month...".
Being secretive about prices wastes everyone's time.
If
someone is completely unwilling to even consider paying your
lowest rates, are they really likely to turn into a long-term
loyal customer? Are your sales people so amazingly persuasive
that they can overcome that problem? Of course not.
Sure, you'll
"talk them into a free trial" or an introductory offer - but
they'll be gone as soon as the special ends. Don't waste time on
phone calls and visits with these folks.
Post new client forms to make better use of your staff and client's
one-on-one time.
Post your intake packet for new clients or patients in PDF
form. If your customer volume is high, eliminate data entry by
using online forms that automatically transfer this information
to your customer database.
Clients will be ready to hit the ground running when they
first come in, and you'll reduce postage, copying, and faxing by
your staff.
Documents typically included in a new client packet:
- Basic contact information
- Payment authorization
- Health risk assessment
- Brief medical history
- PAR-Q or similar assessment tool
- Privacy release
