At ten o’clock on a Sunday night in January someone types “gym near me” and opens four tabs. What they are checking, in order: how much a month, is there a contract, when are you open, what is the floor like, and is there a day pass so they can try it first. The gym that answers all five on one page gets the visit. Websites for gyms in Dublin fail most often on the first two, because the price is behind a form and the contract terms are nowhere.
Say the price and say how to leave
A monthly price, a student rate, an off-peak rate, whether there is a joining fee, and how someone cancels. The contract question is the trust question in this trade. People have been caught by twelve-month terms before, and the gym that writes “monthly, cancel any time with a month’s notice” in plain sight wins the member who is deciding between two.
Then let them join on the page. If your memberships already run through gym software such as Glofox or Mindbody, the Join button goes straight into it and the direct debit is set up there. If you sell day passes, week passes or a trial, those can be paid for on the site with a card or Apple Pay, and the money lands in your account.
A timetable that is actually this week’s
Classes move. A coach goes on holidays, the 6am spin class moves to Tuesday, a new mobility class starts in September. Most gyms announce this on an Instagram story that is gone in a day, and the page still shows August.
Your site has a private edit page that opens from a link in your email, so the timetable is changed by whoever runs the desk in a minute. Class bookings with a cap per class and a waitlist run through the booking system, or through the app you already use, with a reminder before the class. The guide to online bookings walks through what that looks like.
Photograph it empty, then full
Take the floor at ten in the morning when it is clean and the racks are loaded. Take the free weights area, the turf, the cardio line, the changing rooms and the showers. Take the front door and the car park, because “where do I park” is a real question. Then take one class in full swing, with the members’ permission, so the place looks alive. No stock photos of a model on a treadmill in a studio that is not yours.
January, September and the summer dip
January is the flood. September is the second wave. June to August is quiet and December is quieter. A page lets you run the offer that suits the month, published by you from the edit page, and a Google listing with the right bank holiday hours means nobody turns up to a locked door on the Monday. If you want the listing posted to each month with class news and photos, that is part of Complete.
The front desk and the phone
The phone rings during an induction. The caller wants the price, the hours and whether there is a sauna, and the person inducting cannot answer. The page answers for you, the chat box on Complete answers the rest from your own details, and the monthly report shows how many calls and direction requests came from the site and the listing. There is a short checklist of the things that quietly cost a gym members in signs your website is costing you customers.
Before we start
Your membership options and prices, the class timetable with coaches and a line on each class, the rules a newcomer needs (minimum age, induction), your hours, twenty photos, and the name of the membership software you run. If you have personal trainers renting space, point them at our page on websites for personal trainers and they can sort their own.
Which plan fits a gym
A gym sells memberships, passes and class places, so Complete at €1,499 to set up and €100 a month is the fit: payments, class bookings, review requests after inductions and the chat box. A small gym that signs people up at the desk and only needs to be found does fine on Essentials at €499 and €50 a month. The comparison is on the pricing page.