Do you want to make a gym website in WordPress?
Making a gym website on WordPress is the easiest way to promote your business online and get more customers.
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how to easily make a gym website using WordPress.
Here is a quick overview of the topics we’ll cover in this guide.
- Deciding on a gym website platform
- Choosing a design for your gym website
- Adding features to your gym website
- Promoting your gym website
- Example of gym websites made with WordPress
Ready? Let’s get started.
Step 1: Deciding on a Gym Website Platform
There are many different website platforms that you can use to create a gym website, but your success entirely depends on choosing the right one.
WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder. It powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet including thousands of gyms, health and fitness-related businesses.
Now, there are two types of WordPress available.
First, there is WordPress.com which is a blog hosting service, and then you have the free WordPress.org software which is also called self-hosted WordPress.
We recommend the WordPress.org software because it gives you full freedom and flexibility to build and grow your gym website. For more details, see our guide on the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
To get started with WordPress, you’ll need a domain name and a website hosting account.
A domain name is what your users will type in their browser to find your website (e.g. wpbeginner.com), and a hosting account is where your website files will be stored.
Normally, a domain name costs $14.99 per year and web hosting starts from $7.99 per month (usually paid yearly).
Now, that’s a significant investment, particularly when you are just starting out.
Luckily, the folks at Bluehost have agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name with a generous discount on hosting.
Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.
Simply visit the Bluehost website and click on the green get started button.
This will bring you to the pricing plans. The Basic and Plus plans are the most popular among our users.
Simply click select on a plan to move on to the next screen.
From here, you’ll be asked to choose a domain name for your website.
If you need help, take a look at our tips on how to choose the best domain name.
Click on the Next button to continue.
From here, you need to provide your personal information such as address and phone number, and choose your plan duration.
Below that, you’ll see some package extras. We recommend unchecking all of them to save extra costs. You can always add them later if needed.
Finally, enter your payment details to complete the purchase.
Bluehost will now send you an email to the address you provided during signup. This email will have login details to access your web hosting control panel.
Once logged in, you’ll. notice that Bluehost has automatically installed WordPress for you. You can simply click on the Log into WordPress button to access your new WordPress website dashboard.
It will look something like this:
Congratulations, you have successfully set up WordPress and are now ready to customize your gym website!
Step 2. Choosing a Design for Your Gym Website
The next step is to choose a design and layout for your gym website.
We’ll show you two ways to customize the design of your gym website. You can choose one that works best for you.
Method 1. Choose a WordPress Theme For Your Gym Website
WordPress themes control the design and layout of your website, and there are thousands of free and paid themes to choose from.
However, this abundance of choices make it a bit overwhelming for beginners to pick a theme for their gym website.
A good starting point would be our showcase of the best WordPress themes for gym websites.
You can also look at our pick of the most popular WordPress themes. All of them can be easily used for a gym website.
Now here are a few tips that will help you pick the best design for your website.
- Go for a simple design. Simplicity makes your design more versatile and easy to adapt to your requirements.
- Test the theme demo for website speed to make sure that it won’t slow down your website.
- Look at the theme demo on mobile devices to make sure it looks equally good on smaller screens.
For more tips, see our tutorial on how to choose the perfect theme for your website.
After choosing a theme, you will need to customize your WordPress theme to make it fit your gym website.
For most themes, you can simply go to the Appearance » Customize page to start setting up your WordPress theme. The available customization options will be different depending on the theme.
Method 2. Make Your Own Custom Theme for Your Gym Website (No Coding)
For this method, you’ll need the SeedProd plugin. It is the best WordPress page builder and theme builder plugin for WordPress and allows you easily create a completely custom gym website theme.
Over 1 million websites use SeedProd to build better looking websites. There is a free version of SeedProd, but to get full features you’ll need the Pro version.
SeedProd comes with a bunch of starter themes that you can use as starting point, or you can start with a blank canvas and create a theme from scratch.
It comes with an intuitive drag and drop builder.
You can drag blocks from the left column onto the page to add common web design elements to your layouts.
Every block is easy to customize by simply clicking on it.
You can change colors, background, height, width, and other properties of any element on your website.
For more details, see our tutorial on how to create a custom WordPress theme from scratch.
Step 3. Adding Features to Your Gym Website
The best thing about WordPress is the ability to install plugins.
Think of plugins as apps for your website. You can add them to your website to extend its functionality and add new features.
Depending on how you want to run your gym business online, there are plenty of plugins to help you get more new customers and even sell merchandise or memberships online.
Let’s check out some of the common features most gym websites use to run their business online.
Add a Gym Membership Form to Your Website
As a gym website, you may want users to be able to sign up and register for their gym membership online.
To do that, you’ll need WPForms which is the best WordPress form builder on the market.
It allows you to easily create any kind of form using a simple drag and drop tool. You can create a membership registration form and accept online payments using PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net.
You can even turn on recurring payments to automatically charge members when their membership expires.
Plus, WPForms connects to popular email marketing platforms which allows you to easily send email newsletters to your members.
There’s also a free version of WPForms available that you can use to create simple online forms. Over 5 million websites use WPForms.
Make a Gym Membership Website with MemberPress
MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin. It allows you to easily sell online memberships with recurring payments.
It gives you more flexible membership options, like discounts, trial memberships, different subscription levels, and more.
You can add educational resources to your gym website as well.
For example, you can sell online courses for your fitness plans, allow fitness coaches to sell classes online, and offer members-only content like video lessons, workout sheets, and more.
MemberPress works with all top email marketing services, payment gateways, and other WordPress plugins that you may already be using.
For more details, see our tutorial on how to make a membership website with WordPress.
Install WooCommerce to Sell Gym Merchandise
Want to add an online store to your gym website?
WooCommerce is the world’s biggest eCommerce platform and it runs on top of WordPress.
With WooCommerce, you can easily sell merchandise like gym clothing, accessories, health & fitness equipment, and more.
WooCommerce supports PayPal, Stripe, and dozens of other payment services. It also has features to help you with inventory management, shipping, taxes, and more.
For more detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to start an online store for beginners.
This brings us to the next step in our tutorial.
Step 4. Promoting Your Gym Website
Now that you have set up your gym website and everything is put in place, the next step is to start promoting your website.
Luckily, WordPress gives you access to all the best tools to easily grow your business by promoting your website.
Following are a few tools that will quickly put you on the right track to success.
- All in One SEO for WordPress – For most websites, search engines are the major source of traffic. All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and helps you get more free traffic to your website from search engines. Here’s a link to the free version of AIOSEO.
- OptinMonster – Once the users are on your website, you want them to become a gym member, sign up, or get in touch. This is where OptinMonster comes in. It helps you convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.
- PushEngage – It is the best web push notification platform on the market. It allows you to show targeted push notifications to your users on mobile and desktop devices even when they are not currently visiting your website.
- Smash Balloon – For many gym websites, social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook quickly help you build a large following. Smash Balloon’s social feeds help you built strong social media following using your WordPress website.
- MonsterInsights – It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and allows you to see where your users are coming from and what they do on your website. This way, you can see what’s working and improve your conversions and sales. Here’s a link to the free version of MonsterInsights.
Need more plugin recommendations? See our full list of essential WordPress plugins for any business website.
Examples of Gym Websites Made With WordPress
As you work on your gym website, you may want to draw some inspiration from other gym websites.
You can check what strategies they are using to sell more memberships and grow their business. After that, you can try similar strategies for your own gym business.
Healthworks Fitness runs 20+ fitness centers for women. Their website uses a minimalist design with clear call-to-action buttons.
Tonal is a smart home gym company. Their website showcases a large video header showcasing their flagship product in action.
Anytime Fitness runs gyms at several locations. Their website uses a clean layout with lots of bold colors, fonts, and calls to action.
We hope this guide helped you easily make a gym website in WordPress. You may also want to see our tips on getting more traffic to your new site or follow our complete WordPress SEO guide to improve your content.
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The post How to Make a Gym Website in WordPress (Step by Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.
