This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

When people arrive, they’ve gotta jive with your site! They need to feel that this is a place that’s easy for them to navigate, easy for them to understand, what it is, where to begin, and most of all that there’s some value to be gained here. That’s your home page’s job.

If they don’t get those answers, they hit the road and almost never return. They need to know that this is the site of a coach (expert, consultant, guru, etc.) and that there’s good advice that can be garnered.

And you’ve got to do this in 8 seconds or less according to usability experts. I’d guess this number is even lower. It’s those first few moments we scan the site to ensure whether this is worth our while or not.

Here are five tips for engaging people from the get-go:

1. Have a tagline with benefits

Taglines are great for expanding on your business name (which for many coaches doesn’t say much). Get benefits into your tagline to give people the thing they really want – the better life/career/health/etc.

Over at LinkedIn, I recently reviewed over 30 websites of coaches. A good many are guilty of hiding the ultimate benefit. They often put that at the end of their business summary, services or about pages.

There’s a good chance that when you talk about your services you are doing the same – talking about benefits at the end. Try bringing those benefits out to the front.

2. Navigation that gives an overview

Not only does your website’s navigation menu help people get around, a quick scan of it also gives them a summary of what’s available at your site. Take that opportunity to give them a good overview.

For example, if you’re a fledgling coaching business, you’ll have pages/sections like these:

• Home
• Free Stuff
• What I do
• My Clients
• Services
• Events
• Blog
• Articles
• About
• Contact
• Free Consult

Don’t include amorphic things like this:

• Freedom
• ABC Technique
• Your Best
• Discover
• Learning Center
• Reach Out

These things are too vague, and while they may have meaning to you, they mean very little to a visitor.

Instead, think in terms of what THEY want and structure your site around that. Then, as they get to know you , introduce concepts, services, techniques and offers. Gain their interest, desire and trust first. Then sell em – err – invite them to discuss coaching together.

3. An obvious place to begin

If there is no obvious place to begin, we flounder around.

Home pages that are overloaded with stuff fighting for your attention overwhelm you and make you leave. Determine what your visitors really want and lead them on to it.

For many new coaches, getting them to opt-in to your email list, blog or other keep-in-touch strategy is the move. This gives you the chance to build a trusting relationship with them over time.

Whatever your choice is, make it big, prominent, and glaringly obvious.

4. Your photo and your title (aligned to the client)

You ARE a huge part of your brand. It’s you who your clients will be working with. It’s you who they will follow for support. And thus, you should be right there on the home page saying, “Hi!”.

Be sure to include your name and title next to your face so people know it’s you and know what to refer to you as.

5. A lead-in headline

People come to your site because they are hoping you can help them. Thus, you want to engage them in content that does just that -> helps them.

You could begin with an article, blog post, or discussion of the challenges you help clients overcome. This headline also ought to be focused on your visitor and the challenges they face or goals they want to attain. That’s what gets attention.

Summary

Remember, your site has a few seconds to make a great first impression. It must be clear what your site’s about, how to get around, where to begin – and of utmost, the big benefit to be gained. Else why should people stick around?

This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

If you’re networking on LinkedIn often, then this signature move outlined below can bring more qualified traffic to your site – leading to new subscribers, clients, and product sales.

If you’ve noticed, LinkedIn has no signature feature – that is, they do not automatically put your signature when you make comments.

As a result, in order for people to discover your coaching website, they need to click into your profile first and then find your website link.

Hoping for traffic from curious passersbys doesn’t work well.

A better approach is to append your own sig directly to your comments.

Simply, put your own signature line after your comments or discussions.

Doing so puts your message right in front of those who are reading your comments. It reminds them briefly what you’re about and how to get to your website.

Here’s how mine looks:

Important notes

1. Your link. Be sure to include “http://” before your link or else it won’t be clickable.

2. Give a reason to click to your site. You may have a blog, articles, free audio or video, special report, assessment, or top-10 list.

Use an enticer to drive traffic. As you can see in my signature, I invite people to get my free report.

If you don’t have a site or handy article, then …

… simply put a juicy summary of what you do.

It could be as simple as “Learn how I help you free up 10 hours a week while getting more done” or “Helping busy professionals eat well, lose weight, and feel great!”

Be sure to highlight the benefits you bring!

One thing that sucks is that you have to type it in each time.

If you’re posting often, then writing your signature in each time could be a bit of a pain in the butt.

What you can do is write out your signature and save it as a text file on your desktop and then copy and paste it in when needed.

Another option, if you use Firefox, is to use this trick for quickly entering in your signature: http://lifehacker.com/text-substitution.

Also, don’t be annoying!

Don’t make your signature very long and your comments very short. This screams unprofessional. You’d be acting like a spa-mmer.

Also, if you’re making many comments within a single discussion, you don’t need your signature on every single comment. Go for the bigger comments – the more meaningful ones.

In summary …

If you’re actively seeking clients and growing your coaching business and hoping to make LinkedIn a viable source, then take advantage of your efforts and include a solid signature to drive traffic to your site.

This post was originally published on Kenn’s blog Coaching Sites That Work.

While having a gorgeously designed email template gives eye appeal, the harsh reality is that trying to implement a visually stunning email newsletter often causes more problems than its worth for new coaches starting a business.

Here are five common problems with designed newsletters:

1. Accessibility is poorer.

When you send a designed email, it requires coding to properly position the graphics.

The email program that people use to read email (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.) needs to interpret that code to make the graphics show as intended.

Since there are a wide range of email programs (again, Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.)  out there and a wide range of browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) that these programs run on and a range of machines and devices to consider (PCs, Macs, Iphones, etc.), the interpretation of the code is almost never consistent.

Thus, graphical newsletters end up looking like a mess.

People avoid messes.

2. It takes a lot of time.

A newsletter is traditionally seen as a small pamphlet containing many different writing pieces: welcome letter, article, tips, events, news, etc. It’s quite a beefy publishing to make.

This can be very time consuming for a new coach who may not be the best writer, may not have a lot of time to compile all of those elements.

Even on a monthly basis, many coaches have struggled to be consistent.

3. Costs are higher.

Designing a visual layout for your newsletter can take a lot of time to create. Or it can cost you money to hire a designer.

Even the designer might not be testing out that design on every browser, device, and email program out there to ensure a consistent display.

4. You’ll get blocked more.

Email filters review each piece of incoming email to determine if it’s junk or not. The filters look at the words used in the message.

In an attempt to avoid those filters, S.P.A.Mers will embed the words of their offending message into an image.

Thus, emails with images tend to get blocked more by filters.

Just think, how many emails do you send in a day that have images in them? Almost none. People use email primarily for sending text.

When you send a designed email, you are sending images and are at a higher risk of getting blocked by email programs.

Incidentally, you’re also sending code with those images, another common flag that can get your email message blocked.

5. Images are frequently turned off anyhow.

To move information faster, to preserve bandwidth, and to save on space, the often defaulted setting for many email programs is to NOT show images.

This makes sense because most email is simply text based. Think about emails you send to friends and colleagues.

Also, for people who have slow internet speeds, they often browse the web with images turned off.

These could be people in hills or mountains where high-speed data lines aren’t available. Or, they could be people using PDAs that don’t come with high speed access.

As internet access reaches more areas of the world on more kinds of devices the speeds will, at first, be slow.

I suggest starting out simply with blogging.

Just to clarify, when you blog, you don’t have to write about your Smurf collection or how you like Goji berries in your oatmeal.

A blog doesn’t have to be that personal and in your case, as a new coach growing his or her business, you shouldn’t.

Instead, focus your blog content on serving your market. Simply send out a helpful article to your email list on a weekly basis. This will ensure that your subscribers are more than happy.

When you blog, simply send a copy of that blog article to your email list as a text (as opposed to a designed newsletter).

If you do want a graphically enhanced newsletter …

If you do create a visual for your email newsletter, keep it ultra simple and just have a header followed by body text.

Keep the layout to a one column layout with your welcome message first, then main article, followed by promotional content, and then contact information at the end.

In summary, for new coaches with limited resources, go for a text-only newsletter (or blog article that you send to your list). You’ll avoid a lot of red-tape in your efforts to market to your list subscribers.