The 8 Most Common Yoga Website Mistakes

I know how scary it can be to deal with your website as a wellness professional.

Telling your story online to present your services and share your message can feel overwhelming.
HELLO WORLD, here I am, this is who I am, this is what I do.

Yet, launching my yoga website has helped me massively during those early days of transition into teaching. It suddenly felt more real, in an omg-this-is-really-happening-I’m-a-yoga-teacher-now-! kind of way, sharing my message and career transition online, loud and proud.

I think there’s a real fear about bringing together yogic ideas and technology but, actually, the two need each other for a modern day wellness business to really thrive. Still daunted? Absolutely, I get that. So instead of making a massive list of website to dos, I decided to start with the don’ts .

Through my years of working in user research and usability testing of websites, I’m very familiar with website mistakes that are frequently made. To help you avoid these mistakes, I’ve created this handy list of 8 common yoga website mistakes. Let’s dive straight in.

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1. No or bad images

Images speak more than a thousand words. You want to set the right tone with your website visitors, as soon as they land on your page. Low quality pictures could shape a negative first impression, as they look unprofessional and make it more difficult for your audience to build trust.

Nowadays, there are a lot of easily accessible sites that offer royalty-free images. It’s important that you spend time choosing those that match your message and brand identity.

Ask yourself: do these poses reflect my classes? Do I need to arrange a professional photographer? Are these colours appropriate for my brand? What do people feel when they see this image?

Images play a huge part in the look and feel of your website and company, so make sure to be intentional about them.

2. No clear call-to-action

A call-to-action (short: CTA) is simply a way to guide someone who lands on your website through your content, usually in the form of a button or highlighted link (e.g. “learn more” or “book class”).

Imagine somebody is interested in attending your classes and wants to find out what’s available; an ideal call-to-action points out where they can find the information they’re after and, ideally, book a session or fill in a contact form.

Perhaps you want people to download an information sheet or free resource; again, a call-to-action would guide your audience there with ease. Making peoples’ experience of using your website as smooth as possible means that they’re far more likely to come back to it and recommend it to others.

Quick tip: Always remember that every person that comes to your website is there because they are looking for a solution to a problem. It’s your job to provide an easy journey for them to locate the information they’re after as efficiently as possible. Ask a friend to test run your website for you and take note of their feedback. I know that it can be difficult to judge your own work critically, so a friendly piece of feedback is invaluable when working on your website.

3. Unclear copy

Nobody likes reading long clunky pieces of text.

Website readers generally spend less time on a website if they cannot easily locate what they’re looking for. Make sure to invest the time to write good, easy and clear copy for your website, using short paragraphs with subheadings and visual elements to cluster your text into manageable chunks.

Things to avoid would be a really long text with no structure, subheadings, changes of font or size, etc.

A helpful tip is to think about a website that you love reading and often return to. Make notes on what they do well to capture your attention and try to emulate that style.

4. No place to collect email addresses

As a business owner with an online presence, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that all of your digital marketing must revolve around social media. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. Your most important online marketing asset is your email list.

Building a loyal list of clients who give you permission to email them is so powerful. They’re basically telling you that they are interested in your brand, your classes, your journey and that they’d like to keep up to date with the brilliant things that you’re doing. A loyal community is the key to authentic marketing that doesn’t feel weird or icky, because nothing beats an honest and sincere word-of-mouth recommendation.

Make sure that you have a clear place for people to add their email address to your list. This could be in your header, footer or in a pop-up. Make sure everything matches your branding to add to a consistent, trusted look and feel.

5. No consistent branding

This one can make a massive impact on your website success. If your branding is mismatched, it might hinder your audience in building trust and loyalty. People want to land on your website and feel like they recognise you and your brand, that they can rely on the information that you present and that they’re finding excellent service.

Consistent branding will help you to look professional and be remembered.

Make sure to be intentional about your branding, for example if you want to speak to corporate clients your branding should be rather minimalistic and sleek. If you teach yoga for kids it might be more energetic and colourful.

Quick tip: Most website builders enable you to set default fonts, colours and other design elements so that these visual elements will always match your brand consistently.

6. Hard-to-locate contact information

Make sure that you have a clearly labelled page where people can find your contact information.

Usually your contact page is the final page in your navigation menu. Make sure your name, email address and, if applicable, phone number and business address, are super clear.

People should be able to easily figure out what’s the best way to contact you. Additionally, you can also add some contact details to your footer to make them visible on every page.

Always keep in mind that your audience is on your website because they’re interested in your services - you want to make it as easy as possible for them to take the next step and contact you.

7. No mobile friendly web design

In 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones (Source: Statista). In 2015 it was still only 35.1%, and it is to be expected that the current numbers will keep on rising during the upcoming years.

Consequently, it’s super important to make sure that your website is just as easy to navigate on a mobile device as it is on a desktop screen.

Even when using their smartphones, your website visitors should land on your page and find your navigation menu easily and see all the content. You only get one first impression, so make sure to make it count (in the best way possible).

Quick tip: most website builders allow you to easily switch back and forth between a mobile and desktop site preview. This way you can always check how your content looks like on big AND small screens while you are creating it.

8. Slow loading times

Performance of your website is vital for usability as well as your SEO (search engine optimisation). Having a website that is properly backed up, secure, looked after and works at speed are all things that you need to make sure of.

An example of a hurdle here would be if you are uploading huge files or images without considering how long they may take to load on someone’s device. If you have big images make sure to resize them to a smaller size for web usage.

Do you feel guilty of at least one of those mistakes? Don’t!

I’ll tell you a secret *wise whisper voice on*: we are all making some of those mistakes to some extent on all of our websites. Nobody and no website is perfect.

It’s totally normal and ok to make mistakes, that’s how we learn and grow as small business owners :). A website will always and forever be a work in progress, common practices are changing quickly and new technologies are ever evolving.

So don’t waste any time with feeling ashamed or overwhelmed in an omg-my-website-sucks-I-will-never-be-able-to-implement-all-of-this kinda way. Use this as an inspiration to take action, act out of excitement and love for your business and clients, instead of shame and fear.

Your guiding light should always be how you want your ideal clients to feel when they use your website. This should help you avoid these 8 pitfalls.