How to Plan a Coaching Website That Gets More Enquiries

If you’re about to redesign your coaching website, pleaseeeee don’t open Squarespace and start choosing fonts just yet. Because the design is actually quite far down the list of decisions you need to make.

A great coaching website needs to do more than look polished. It needs to help the right person quickly understand whether they’re in the right place, whether they trust you, why they’d choose you, and what they should do next. And those things need to be worked out before you start moving sections around a page.

I’ve seen so many established coaches end up with beautiful websites that still leave potential clients doing far too much work to understand the business. The expertise is there. The results are there. The offer works. The website just isn’t making enough of that obvious.

So before you touch the design, here’s what I’d work through first.

1. Decide what you actually want the website to do

A lot of website projects start with something like “I want it to feel more premium” or “I’ve just outgrown the current one.” Both can be completely true, but they’re not quite enough to build a strategic website around.

You need to think about what you actually want somebody to do once they get there. Maybe you want more of the right people to book a discovery call, apply for your 1:1 coaching, join a group program, download a free resource, join your email list or buy a lower-ticket offer. You might have more than one possible next step, but there should still be a clear commercial priority.

Once you know where you want people to go, you can start working backwards.

What would somebody need to understand first?
What questions might stop them?
What proof would make them feel safer?
What needs to happen between “hmmm, this looks interesting” and “yep, I want to work with this person”?

That’s a much more useful starting point than deciding whether your buttons should be blue or green.

2. Get much clearer on who you’re actually speaking to

And I don’t mean something like: Women aged 30-45 who value personal growth. That tells me almost nothing about what needs to go on the website. I want to know what’s happening in their world when they start looking for someone like you.

What are they fed up with?
What are they trying to change?
What have they already tried?
What are they worried might happen if they choose the wrong person?
What would make them feel like “ohhh she actually gets it”?
What language are they actually using to describe all of this?

Your enquiry forms, discovery calls, emails, testimonials and client conversations are gold here. If your clients keep saying, “I’m exhausted, but I feel like slowing down means I’m failing,” that is infinitely more useful than deciding your audience struggles with “work-life balance.”

The better you understand the actual thoughts running through somebody’s head, the easier it becomes to write a website that feels relevant to them.

3. Work out what someone needs to believe before they’ll choose you

This is the bit I think gets skipped aaaall the time. Most people plan a website by asking, “What pages do I need?” I’d ask: what does someone need to believe before they’re ready to take the next step?

I tend to look at four things: clarity, trust, differentiation and conversion.

Clarity is about whether someone can quickly understand who you help, what you help with and whether they’re in the right place.
Trust is about whether you’ve shown enough proof, expertise, experience and personality for someone to feel confident in you.
Differentiation is about whether they can see what makes your approach, perspective or way of working meaningfully different from the other perfectly good options available.
And conversion is about whether the next step feels obvious and easy once they’re interested.

If one of those pieces is missing, you can have a gorgeous website and still lose people. So before you plan pages, I’d look at the business through those four questions first.

4. Map the journey instead of thinking about pages in isolation

Your potential client doesn’t experience your homepage, About page, testimonials and offers as four random pieces of content. They experience one business.

Someone might find one of your LinkedIn posts, click onto your homepage, look at your 1:1 offer, go and have a nosey at your About page, read three testimonials, download a free resource, hear from you by email for a few weeks, and eventually come back and book a call.

That whole journey matters. Your exact site structure will depend on your business, but a simple coaching website might include a homepage, an About page, individual offer pages, a Testimonials page, a blog page, and a clear Contact or Booking page. Each one has a job to do, but they should all feel like part of the same journey.

And one important note on testimonials: I LOVE a dedicated testimonials page for someone who wants to have a proper nosey through all your proof. But don’t only put them there. Your strongest proof should also be sitting throughout the website, next to the claims it actually supports.

5. Work out the message before you design the page

This is probably the quickest way to turn a website project into a six-month nightmare: designing first and trying to squeeze the copy into it afterwards.

Before you worry about layouts, work out the main message you want somebody to understand, the problem they’re coming to you with, the outcome they actually want, what makes your approach different, what proof you have, what your offers are, and what someone should do next.

I also really recommend watching how much of your copy focuses on the ingredients rather than the cake. Eight coaching sessions, WhatsApp support, worksheets, assessments, and a personalised framework (the ingredients) all matter because they explain how you work.

But your potential client is much more interested in what all of those things are there to create (the cake). More confidence. Less anxiety. A business that feels manageable again. Being able to lead without completely burning themselves out. Actually enjoying their life instead of thinking about work at 11 pm.

Lead with the cake. Then show them the ingredients.

6. Gather your proof before you start building

Please do not wait until the final afternoon of the website project to suddenly think: oh yeah... testimonials. Go through everything you already have. Testimonials. Emails. DMs. Screenshots. Case studies. Numbers. Before-and-after stories. Specific client results.

The strongest proof usually isn’t someone saying how lovely you are to work with, it’s someone who shows the tangible results you helped them achieve. And when you know your proof upfront, you can actually build the website around it instead of sprinkling random testimonials on at the end.

7. Make sure your brand actually reflects the level of your business

For an established coach, branding shouldn’t just be about choosing colours you like. The question is: does the way this business looks and feels match the experience, positioning and price point behind it?

Because sometimes there’s a huge disconnect. The coach has years of experience, amazing clients, strong results, and a sophisticated offer. But then the website still looks like something they pulled together during their first year in business.

Your visual identity should help reinforce the perception you’re trying to create. Professional doesn’t have to mean boring. Premium doesn’t have to mean beige. And differentiation definitely doesn’t mean copying whatever aesthetic everyone else in your niche happens to be using this year. The goal is to create something that feels recognisably you while supporting the level of trust your business needs.

8. Choose a platform you’ll actually be able to look after

Your website will change. Your offers will evolve, you’ll collect better proof, launch new things, and get clearer on your positioning. So choose a platform that makes those updates realistic.

For a lot of the coaches + service providers I work with, Squarespace hits a really nice sweet spot because it can look incredibly polished without requiring you to contact a developer every time you want to change a sentence, add a testimonial or upload new imagery.

Your platform doesn’t need to be the fanciest option available. It needs to support the business you actually have and be manageable once the website designer disappears.

Before you design anything, work out what needs to become obvious

A great coaching website makes sure that when their dream client lands there, they can see enough of the value already inside the business to feel confident taking the next step. The right people need to understand that this is for them, that you know what you’re doing, that there’s a reason to choose you, and that the next step is clear. Once those things are in place, the design has something meaningful to support.

And that’s where the website becomes a lot more than somewhere nice to send people. It starts helping the right clients understand why you’re worth choosing before you ever get on a call with them.

Ready to finally sort your coaching website?

If your business has grown waaay beyond what your current website is showing people, Web in a Week brings the positioning, brand identity, copy + Squarespace website together in one focused process.

You’ve already done the hard bit and built the expertise, and results. I’ll help you make sure the website finally shows it 💙

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