Wondering what an ideal coaching website development process is?
Your website plays a significant role in running a successful online coaching business and leading in your niche.
However, building a successful website requires more than just figuring out a domain name, buying web hosting and adding generic pages.
The coaching website development process is no different from building a house.
It involves:
- Dreaming
- Planning
- Designing
- Building
- Maintaining
- Optimizing
Leaving any of the above to chance can ruin all your hard work.
What is the website development process?
It is a list of steps you must take from start to finish to complete a coaching website project.
You go through a lot of things before you start building a website.
Such as:
- Choosing a domain name (your address on the web)
- Hosting (where you store your website files online)
- Website strategy
- Choosing the best website builder or content management system
- Website content
- Website functionalities
- Website wireframe
- Website design/color scheme
Like building a house, you go through a drawing and planning process before a builder can lay the first brick as a homeowner.
A website development process for creating a website document should have:
- A website development plan
- Important website development sections
- A list of resources you need
- Estimated timeline
- Approximate cost
- Who is responsible for each section
The coaching website development process consists of all the steps involved in developing a website.
Website development stages
Standup comedian Cameron Esposito on success:
“There is no formula for success—you just begin, and then you continue. I’m often asked how to have a career in stand-up, and the answer is confoundingly simple: Do the work. Over and over again, just do the work. After you build the courage to get on stage that first time, it’s all about repetition.”
The internet contains far more information about building a website than anyone can digest.
The question is not how to build a coaching website but which website building method you should choose to build your website.
Here are the seven critical elements for website development scope of work:
- Keywords
- List of web pages
- Wireframe
- Content
- Content management system/website builder
- Custom design or theme
- Plugins
Our favorite website development framework is self-hosted WordPress.
Choosing the best website development framework and deciding your website development scope of work can help complete your website development project.
Many non-technical but highly significant stages are involved in the development process.
Let’s explore these stages briefly.
1. Information gathering
Clarifying your needs and knowing what you want is crucial in getting the required information. Once you know your requirements, eliminating options and decision-making will become easier.
A few essential pieces of information to know before starting a website are:
- Coaching niche
- Your target audience
- Website strategy
- Website development tools
- Your budget
- How much time do you have
In short, you’ll need a lot of information before you should jump into developing a live website. The more informed these decisions are, the better it will be for your business in the long run.
2. Planning
Once you have all the necessary information, you must plan it out. Planning is not as simple as it sounds.
Even if you hire a developer, there are multiple things you need to plan.
For example:
- Type of website
- Brochure
- Lead generation
- A complete online coaching machine
- Number of pages
- Keyword research
- Type of content
- Sales funnel
- Launch date
These are just a few examples of the planning required before building a website. You need to have a clear step-by-step plan of what you’re expecting from this website. Planning will always pay off whether you do it yourself or hire someone.
3. Design
Once you have the information you need and have planned out the process step by step. Now you need a design for your website. This step will be more straightforward once you have the above two steps streamlined.
Your website is your first impression online; if it’s not well-structured, haphazard, or all over the place, it is highly likely that you will lose customers. Therefore, it is essential to pay attention to the web design.
There are two ways to design a website.
- DIY
- Hire a designer
However, a designer can make you a beautiful website design, but he or she usually is not the best at:
- How to tell your story
- How to organize parts of your story into the design
- How and where to use the call to action to convert more
It is your responsibility as a project owner to ensure that your website design looks good and converts visitors into customers.
4. Development
Once you have the website design sorted, there are two ways to convert your design into a live website.
DIY
Building a coaching website on your own can be tricky and time-consuming, but not impossible. If you think you have the skills to take up this challenge, go for it!
Hire a developer
Hiring a developer to develop your website may cost you more, but if your website is your business, the chances of higher ROI are more significant, saving you a lot of time and energy.
Self-hosted WordPress is our favorite content management system. Over 40% of the websites on the internet use WordPress. You will be in good company if you use WordPress to build your coaching website.
Custom design or theme
Custom design can cost you a lot of money and time. Picking a premium WordPress theme and customizing it as you go along can save you money and time.
Plugins
Use plugins only if you need them. Avoid adding unnecessary plugins to your website.
Collect emails
Collecting emails and regularly sending helpful information to your email list can do wonders for your business.
5. Content creation
Consider your website your business book and have one master keyword.
Brainstorm how many chapters you need for your book. Each chapter title should cover your secondary keywords (5-10).
List of pages
Most businesses need the following standard pages and the chapters of their business book.
You should invest your resources in creating better pages instead of adding more pages, which you cannot maintain and optimize regularly.
You can find many people to outsource this to, but no one knows your business as you do, so you should create and assemble the content yourself.
Content is the most crucial element of a website. It is what makes or breaks your clientele. The conversation rate will drastically increase if you have a solid aspirational identity or one-line.
Now it’s time to add content to your website related to your online coaching course; add all the things which are necessary for your online coaching course, like:
- Course material
- About us page
- Instruction pages
- Pricing
- Details about course etc.
You should have a few extra things on your website as a coach.
6. Testing, review, and launch
This depends on whether you have outsourced your website development or not. If you have, your developer will take care of most of it.
Nevertheless, once completed, you must review and ensure it’s up to the mark and represents exactly what you had in mind.
Don’t rush to launch your website if it’s not what you think it should be. It should be tested properly, for example, making sure all forms are working and reviewed for content and design errors by you. Also, make sure to cross check it on different web browsers.
Once you are satisfied with it, you can now launch your website and start promoting it. Make sure to follow this pre-launch website before launching your website.
7. Regular care and growth
It is often thought that building a website is a one-time job. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Only a well-maintained website helps to promote your brand, work, and mission. Regular website management is invaluable for better website SEO as well.
Again, either you can go with the DIY option or outsource it.
The right people for the right role are vital in any business. All your energies should be focused on your business while a professional team takes care of your website. There is no shortage of WordPress management companies. If you want to concentrate on your coaching and need help with your WordPress website management, you can use services like our website maintenance services to avoid the hassle.
Website development tools
Here is a list of my favourite website development tools:
Keywords research
- Ahref
- SEMrush
- Ubbersuggest
Content creation
- Google docs
- Dropbox paper
- WordPress content editor
Content management
- Self-hosted WordPress CMS
Custom design or theme
Plugins
- LearnDash
- Gravity forms
- Yoast SEO
- Sucuri security
- WP rocket
- Backup buddy
- TinyPNG
Website development services
There are different website development services available to help you with your project.
Let’s explore some of the widely used ones.
Website consultancy services
Website consultancy services help you simplify website design, development, and promotion to grow your coaching business.
It can help you in the following areas:
- Save time on research
- Tried and tested website strategy that works
- Website wireframe and design that converts
- Easy to build and maintain website development tools
- Website promotion channels that you can afford and manage long term
- Continuous website optimization ideas to improve your results
A good website consultancy firm should save you a lot of hassle and resources in the long term.
Website design
Your website design represents you to the world, which includes your website’s overall design, User interface, and structure.
Consumers are bombarded with marketing messages nowadays. Having a simple and clear website design can help you connect with your customers big time.
Many companies provide website design services. You can present them with your idea, and they will help you develop it.
This is no doubt that the best way to design a website that should look and feel much better than a DIY design is by hiring a company or a designer. However, a designer can make you a beautiful website design, but he or she usually is not the best at telling your story.
Therefore, It is your responsibility to ensure that your website design looks good and converts visitors into customers.
Website development
We have already discussed the website development life cycle in detail and the possibilities of doing it yourself and outsourcing it.
Like the above services, numerous companies and freelancers offer website development services.
If you go through the website development process again, you will realize that taking this on yourself is a lot of work. You need skills, time, energy, and resources to do that, while what you do best will be neglected.
The right people for the right job are always the key to success.
Website maintenance and support
You invest a lot of time, energy, and resources in developing a website. However, websites are always a work in progress, requiring time and technical skills to keep them in top shape.
Generally, the following things are categorized as WordPress website support:
- Website customization tasks
- Online course setup and management tasks
- Membership/E commerce site support
- Fixing something that is broken on the site
- Emergency support
Like maintenance, you can outsource the support to a professional WordPress management support company like ours.
Especially, If you are running a business website, it would probably be better to outsource to a reliable company to avoid the hassle of finding freelancers all the time.
Website development timeline
As discussed in the planning section above, it is highly important for your success. You can achieve your goals if you have a step-by-step, well-structured plan. If not, a three-month project can be delayed to 12 months, costing you more time, money, and stress.
While planning a website development project, you must plan and set a timeline for the following elements:
- Strategy and planning (2 to 4 weeks)
- Design (1 to 2 weeks)
- Content writing and assembly (2 to 4 weeks)
- Development and programming (2 to 4 weeks)
- Beta testing and review (1 to 2 weeks)
- Site launch (1 to 2 days)
These timelines are for guidance only because the actual time required to complete a specific project could be different depending on your project requirements.
As a rule of thumb, for a standard coaching website project, you should aim to complete it within 3 to 4 months.
Website development checklist
Thomas Mitchell, a farmer, on productivity:
“It is wonderful how much work can be done in a day if we go by the rule—map out our time, divide it off, and take up one thing regularly after another. To drift through our work, or to rush through it in a helter-skelter fashion, ends in comparatively little being done. “One thing at a time” will always perform a better day’s work than doing two or three things at a time. By following this rule, one person will do more in a day than another does in a week.”
A web development process can be overwhelming and take a lot of your precious time.
Following Thomas Mitchell’s productivity formula (“One thing at a time”) can be your best friend.
Pick one thing, complete and move forward.
You can follow the following flowchart to stay focused and productive.
Conclusion
A website development process often never ends.
Building, maintaining, and continuous website optimization is an infinite game if your website is your business. You must have a system in place to continually review the performance of your website and continuously optimize for better search engines result for your business.
Have a question about your coaching website development?
Feel free to schedule a call with one of our website development consultants or ask your question in the comments below.
Get in touch with our support team to book your consultation and maintenance services to build your own online coaching business.
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