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The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Health Coach Website 

You’re a new health coach. Maybe you’ve had a few clients, or maybe you’re still in school. But you know it’s time to create your health coach website – and you have no idea where to start!

Sometimes your health coaching school might give you a free website to get started. That might feel good for awhile, but ultimately, you’ll want to customize your website to communicate your unique message and vision.

After 11 years of running websites myself, I can tell you that your website will never be finished.  Within a few weeks of getting it “done”, you’ll want to evolve or change something on your site. So, just go with the flow and launch it. Don’t wait for it to be perfect! Start where you are, setup your first website, and let it evolve with your business.

In this wellpreneur Ultimate Guide, I’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of setting up your own Health Coach Website. Here’s what we’ll cover:

The Only 2 Options to Create a Health Coach Website

Let’s start by simplifying. There are only two ways to build your health coach website:

  • Do It Yourself (DIY)
  • Hire a Web Designer/Developer

That’s it. You either do it yourself, or you hire someone.

In this guide, I’m going to explain the process as if you are choosing to DIY your health coach website. But even if you want to work with a web designer/developer, you’ll benefit from understanding the different steps in this guide. Knowing how a website works makes it much easier for you to get what you want from your web designer or developer!

3 Essential Parts of Your Website

There are 3 parts of your website that you’ve got to understand.

  1. Platform
  2. Hosting
  3. Domain

Your platform is the software that runs your website. The platform I recommend is called WordPress. You can think of the platform like your online house. This IS your website.

Hosting is where your website lives online. What physical computer server does your website exist on? If the platform is your house, then hosting is your land. It’s where your house is physically located. So web hosting is where your website lives online.

Your domain is your web address. My domain for this website is WellpreneurOnline.com. Using the house example, if the platform is your house, which is physically on the land (hosting), then the domain gives your street address. It tells people where to find your website online.

Does that make sense?

So to have a website, you need to have all 3 of these parts. You can buy them separately, or sometimes from a single provider. I’ll explain more below…

Choose Your Website Platform

Your first decision is which platform (software) to use to create your website.

WordPress is the best software to create your health coach website. It’s an open-source platform that is widely supported (that means it’ll be easy to find expert help, when you need it!) There are tons of companies who support WordPress, and who create themes and plugins to customize WordPress.

There are two types of WordPress:  WordPress.com and WordPress.org

WordPress.com is an online service which provides you with a free WordPress website.  You do NOT want this option, because it limits your customization.

WordPress.org is the platform you want for your health coach website.  It’s fully customization via a ‘dashboard’, and lets you add themes and plugins to make it look and feel just how you want. It’s super powerful and runs some of the biggest sites on the internet. It’s what the pros use, and it’ll grow with your business.

WordPress.org is my top website recommendation for most health coaches.

However, if you’re just getting started, want to DIY your website, are not technical, and want a simple all-in-one solution, I also recommend SquareSpace.

Choose Your Website Hosting

Web hosting is where your website physically lives. (And no, it can’t live on your computer. There are special web hosting providers which have super fast and secure machines to host your website – you want to use the pros for this!)

I have experimented with different types of hosting, ranging from very inexpensive ($5/month) to higher-end ($99/month) – and I have to say, you don’t want to go super cheap here. Low priced hosting will likely be slow, may cause your website to crash or have lots of downtime, may not have security (which means you could get hacked!), and probably will not include website backups. Honestly, it is not worth the headache!

My recommendation for your health coach website is to choose managed WordPress hosting. That means that there’s a company who stands behind their hosting and ensures that your website is up and running, with good security practices and regular backups. It means much less stress for you and better performance!

My top recommendation for WordPress managed hosting is WPX Hosting. They’re fast and affordable, with great customer service!

If you’re using SquareSpace for your website, it includes hosting, so you don’t need to worry about this.

(If you choose any other option, please make sure they include daily website backup! Don’t risk losing your entire health coach website to a server crash, please, please, please always have a backup! That’s why I recommend WPX Hosting who does nightly backups automatically!)

Choose Your Domain Name

Your Domain Name is the web address of your business. You’ll absolutely want to buy one of these to use with your website!

For this website, the domain name is Wellpreneur.com.

Domain names are inexpensive, so there’s no harm in buying several versions.

For example, you might buy the .com and .net versions of your domain name. I also always recommend buying the domain for YOUR name, because you never know when you’ll want to use it! (And to make sure you own it before someone else does!)

You can buy domain names for 1, 2, or 3+ years.

I personally recommend buying domain names through GoDaddy.com (I do not recommend their websites or web hosting, I only use GoDaddy to buy domains.)

You will need to buy a domain name whether you’re using WordPress or SquareSpace.

Health Coach Website Design and Themes

At this point, your new health coach website doesn’t look like much. It’s just a generic, blank website template. It’s time to get creative with the design of your website – often called a “Theme.”

Let’s start by getting clear on the right style for your website. Find 3 other websites or blogs that you like.  What is it about those sites that appeals to you? What adjectives would you use to describe those websites? Are they spacious? Warm? Organic? Modern? Professional? Refreshing? Inviting? Getting clear on what you like about other websites – and what you want to include in your own – will save you a lot of time!

If you’re using WordPress, you can browse many WordPress themes online, to find one that you’d like to use for your website. SquareSpace also lets you select different designs for your site.

You might not know that the theme is like your website’s clothes. You can change the theme, without changing the ‘content’ of the website. So, in the future if you have lots of pages and blog posts, you can easily swap to another ‘theme’ to get a new look and feel, and all of that written content will stay the same!

My advice is to choose a website theme that is mostly right. For your first website, especially if you are doing it yourself, you won’t be able to make many changes beyond changing the words, images and maybe the colors. So find a theme that generally looks how you want it to. In the future, or if you have budget to invest, then you can hire a web designer/developer to make your site exactly how you want it! But you don’t need a ‘perfect’ website to get started. Just pick a theme that you like, and let’s start working on your content!

I personally recommend StudioPress themes for your health coach website. They’re built on a solid framework which is widely supported and can be customized in the future.

Create a Mailing List for your Health Coach Website

An essential part of building an online business, is growing an email list! So don’t wait to start one. You can even start your email list before you’ve created your website!

My top choice for your health coach email list is ConvertKit.

You can also use MailChimp which has a free plan, but there are limitations you’ll run into pretty quickly. First, it’s difficult to setup multiple opt-in freebies in MailChimp. It’s also hard to send emails to different sections of your list (for example, you’ll want to send emails separately to people who have purchased from you.)

If you’re serious about growing your business online, I recommend starting with ConvertKit. If online marketing isn’t a big part of your business plan, then you’ll probably be okay with Mailchimp to start.

Get Great Images for your Health Coach Website

The images you use on your website set the tone for your brand. Whatever you do – please don’t use cheesy stock photos! How many times have we seen the same image of a woman holding an apple, or a guy in the gym? We all recognize boring stock photography when we see it, and it can work against your brand. So what to do instead?

At some point, you’ll want to have a professional photoshoot for your business. You can get headshots of yourself to use in your marketing materials, but you can also do a ‘lifestyle’ shoot to get photos of you at work, shopping for food, cooking, working out, whatever fits with your business and brand.

Since the goal of this guide is to get your new health coach website setup as quickly as possible, you don’t need to wait for a photoshoot to launch your site!

You absolutely can use stock photography on your website with good effect. Look for images that match your style and feel authentic to you. You might also want to check out this special stock photography site especially for wellness entrepreneurs! (Use code ‘wellpreneur50’ to get $50 off an annual membership!)

You might also think about a logo for your new health coach website. Depending on the theme you chose, you might be able to start with a text logo (where it simply displays your business name as text.) At some point, you’ll want to create a logo for your business, to include on business cards and other marketing materials. I recommend using 99Designs, which allows you to create a ‘design contest’ to see designs from multiple designers before choosing one.

Create Content for your Health Coach Website

Now that the design of your website is setup, it’s time to customize it for you with content!

Your website content is the headlines, words, pages and blog posts that fill out your website. It’s how visitors will know that it’s your website, who you are, and what you do!

You’ll want to start with these basic pages:

  • About page – speaking directly to your target customer about the problems you solve, and your personal story
  • Products/Services page – These pages present your service offerings or products. Make sure it’s easy to buy from you or take the next step.
  • Contact Page – make it easy for people to get in touch with you
  • Blog – optional – if you want to have a blog, make it clearly available from the top menu of your site

Creating great website content is an art – and it’s called copywriting. You can hire a copywriter to write your website, but for most health coaches starting out, you’re going to write it yourself. You might enjoy this interview with a professional copywriter about how to create non-icky copy for your site!

Final Touches for your Health Coach Website

Here’s how to put the finishing touches on your new health coach website:

  • Is there an easy way to contact you? For example, you might want to include your phone number or email address, or simply have a contact button which leads to a contact form.
  • Are your social media accounts linked from somewhere on the site?
  • Test, test, test! Test your website from your own computer, and ask a friend to do it too. Also don’t forget to visit your new website from your phone or tablet to see how it looks on mobile!

And finally, make it live! Tell everyone about your new website. Share it with your friends on social media. Link to it from your email signature. Tell your clients and colleagues about it. Don’t be shy – creating your new health coach website is a big project and you should be really happy with what you’ve accomplished!

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