If you've been trying to figure out how to create an online coaching website & leap into your online entrepreneurial journey...
This guide is for you.
We've provided you with the key steps, tools, and tips you need to start building a thriving online coaching business that positions you as an authority in your niche and, most importantly, generates sales.
Let's dive in.
Important Considerations When Building Your Coaching Program
You're a coach, which means you're probably not a web developer!
It follows that building your own website to grow your online presence is a little daunting. There are lots of marketing channels where you can advertise and reach your target audience (social media, coaching platforms, and search engines), but this is only a small part of the business model.
The first essential element you need is a website where you're in control. This means that you're able to host your coaching materials, implement your marketing strategies, and optimize conversions. Without this, you're always going to be leaving money on the table, missing out on new clients, and letting others take an outsized cut of your hard-earned income.
No matter what coaching niche you're in, we're going to show you how to take control of your coaching business without the need for specialist web design skills.
7 Steps to Create an Online Coaching Website
This easy-to-follow tutorial will help you set up everything you need to attract coaching clients and build a sustainable business.
1. Download & Install Thrive Suite
The goal of your online coaching website is to show your potential customers that you're a high-quality coach they can entrust with helping them achieve their goals.
So, your website needs to look great, communicate your value clearly, showcase social proof, and provide your site visitors with an enjoyable, seamless user experience.
To achieve this, you need to build your online coaching website with the right set of tools. One of the biggest challenges online coaches face is finding a reliable set of plugins that work well together…and don’t cost an arm and a leg.
If you’re looking for top tier plugins that are compatible with one another and can help you create an impressive online coaching website…you need Thrive Suite.
Build a professional-looking website that leaves your visitors feeling impressed and eager to learn more about your products and services…without writing a single line of code.
No scrappy templates, janky themes, or hard-to-configure features – when we say our plugins and templates are high-quality we mean it.
With Thrive Suite you can…
- Build a stunning, professional-looking website with our library of customizable templates and intuitive theme builder
- Create attention-grabbing landing pages to successfully generate leads and sales
- Grow your email list with our library of 400+ opt-in form templates
- Design engaging quizzes to generate leads & interact with your audience
- Build an impressive membership site, online course platform – or both
- Collect, manage, and showcase customer testimonials from one place
- Moderate comments, boost reader engagement & build a community right on your blog posts
- Create smart automations to connect your website with your favorite tools
- … and so much more.
Thrive Suite puts you in complete control of your coaching website, giving you the tools you need to engage and convert potential clients.
And the best part? There's a 30-day money-back-guarantee, so you can try it risk free!
2. Activate & Launch Thrive Theme Builder
Thrive Theme Builder helps you create your website’s structure in less than 10 minutes. And you get immediate access to it when you purchase Thrive Suite.
Once you’ve activated Thrive Theme Builder, you’ll need to select a theme for your website. Each theme comes with a set of fully-customizable, professionally-designed templates that are perfect for your online coaching business.
3. Select & Activate Xpert: Our Companion Theme for Online Coaches
Xpert is the perfect theme for professional coaches.
Whether you are a coach, consultant, speak at live seminars, run your own professional development workshops, host a business podcast or more... Xpert is designed for you.
This online coaching theme uses a squared, strong, confident aesthetic partnered with clean oval-shaped call-to-action buttons. Fonts are sans serif, but with a wider spacing.
It's a theme that oozes professionalism without ever feeling cold— exactly the right tone to hit for an approachable, helpful coaching business persona.
Just like all of our Thrive Theme Builder companion themes, Xpert comes with all the website templates and landing page templates you'd need to launch and scale a coaching-based business, including:
- 2 x personal-branding focused homepage templates to choose from
- A product page, for selling your coaching services, eBooks or anything else
- Lead generation funnel pages, including the opt-in page + thank-you page (and an optional 2-step email confirmation page)
- Webinar registration pages + thank you pages
- Speaking & Media service promotion pages
- Podcast promotion page
- Professional reviews and testimonial page
- Cohort-based coaching session info page
- Contact page
- About page
These templates give you a perfect starting point, and combined with the visual-editor, you can quickly build a website that reflects everything you stand for as a coach. Whether you offer online or in-person, group coaching or individual consults, you're a life coach, health coach, career coach, financial consultant, or anything in between, Xpert has you covered.
You can preview the Xpert theme right here. Don't forget to navigate through the header menu to see and experience all the available templates!
4. Complete the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard
After you’ve selected your theme, you’ll be directed to the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard.
By the time you’ve completed the Wizard, you’ll have completed the following:
- Uploaded a dark and light version of your logo
- Selected your main brand color
- Picked a conversion-focused header
- Chosen a footer
- Selected a Homepage template
- Picked a Single Blog Post template
- Chosen a Blog Post List template
- Selected a Page template
- Chosen a Menu template
By the end of the website builder Setup Wizard, you'll have created a clean site structure that you can now go in and optimize using Thrive Architect.
5. Configure Your Site Typography
In this step, you’ll establish your site-wide typography settings.
These font settings include choosing font types, font colors, font sizes, font spacing, etc. to populate the following types of text:
Remember that once you get these settings saved in Thrive Theme Builder, they will apply automatically across your theme templates and designs. Saving you tons of time.
6. Create & Customize Your Core Pages
The following pages are must-haves for your online coaching website:
- A homepage that clearly introduces who you are, who you help, and how you help them
- An about or "About the Coach" page to provide more detail on who you are and why you've chosen to become an online coach. This is a great space to connect with your audience on a deeper level.
- A blog to share key insights, valuable advice, and other written content to position yourself as a thought leader
- A "Coaching Services" page that outlines all the products and services you offer, their features, benefits, and prices
- A "Testimonials/Reviews" page to showcase the glowing reviews you've received from previous clients
- A "Booking/Appointment Page" to make it easy for your potential clients to book a consultation or 1:1 session with you
- A "Client Resources" with guides, worksheets, videos, podcast episodes, and other resources your visitors can access to learn from you. You can use this page as a neat way to generate leads, or offer access to your exclusive membership platform as an upsell.
- A "Contact Page" your site visitors can easily access to submit a query or contact you for further information
*
Creating a new page for your WordPress website is super straightforward.
In the WordPress Dashboard, select the "+ New" button at the top of the page and select "Page".
When taken to the next screen, name your page and select the bright green "Launch Thrive Architect" button.
Thrive Architect, our powerful visual, drag-and-drop page editor, will provide you with four options:
1. Normal Page
2. Blank Page with Header and Footer
3. Completely Blank Page
4. Pre-built Landing Pages
To create clean, conversion-focused pages that are aligned with the website structure you built in Thrive Theme Builder, we recommend the "Pre-built Landing Page" option.
In the Landing Page Library, you can select a Smart Landing Page from Xpert or any of our other companion themes.
Our Smart Landing Page sets are designed to help you create stunning, conversion-focused pages in minutes.
It's as simple as perusing the Landing Page Library, finding a landing page template you like, selecting it, and customizing its design to fit your branding.
7. Additional Site Settings in the Thrive Dashboard
Once you've completed the Setup Wizard and finalized your site's typography and branding, head over to the Thrive Dashboard.
- Configure and manage user access permissions for your Thrive products
- Connect your email marketing tool, reCaptcha, and other apps through the "API Connections" tab
- Set up global information fields about your business
- Add tracking and/or analytics scripts
- Set up a pre-built "Coming Soon Page" for your website
- ...and so much more.
Key Elements of a Successful Online Coaching Website
Thrive Theme Builder helps you create a structured website that's easy for you to build on -- and for our visitors to navigate.
Thrive Architect helps turn your basic page outlines into fully-customized, conversion-focused pages that look great and make your site visitors want to learn more -- and even buy.
With this drag-and-drop page builder, you can easily make sure your site has all the key elements of an online coaching website that's ready to generate conversions:
- Clear, compelling headlines to capture your audience's attention & connect with them
- Hero section to create a great first impression & build trust
- Relevant, appealing images to showcase your brand, products, and services
- Video to support your written copy
- Crisp copy that connects with your audience & tells a compelling story
- Testimonials to establish credibility and win trust
- Detailed benefits to showcase the value of your offers
- Clear call-to-actions to prompt your audience to take action e.g. “sign up for my mailing list”, “Take this quiz”, “Book a consultation or appointment”, “Click to call or email”, etc.
- FAQ sections to answer your potential customers' questions
10 Additional Tools to Enhance Your Online Coaching Website's Functionality
If you want your online coaching website to stand out, you should consider adding a couple of these plugins to enhance its functionality & get your audience to stay on your site for longer:
1. RafflePress to run exciting giveaways & concerts, and build a raving, engaged audience
2. MonsterInsights to track your visitors' behavior on your site & make data-driven marketing decisions
3. Thrive Apprentice to build a kickass online course and/or members-only platform*
4. Thrive Quiz Builder to engage & segment your audience with interactive quizzes*
5. Easy Digital Downloads for a simple, straightforward way to collect payments for your digital products
6. AIOSEO to ensure your online coaching website is optimized for SEO, so your target audience can find your website
7. Thrive Ovation to collect, manage, and display your audience's testimonials with ease*
8. Duplicator to backup your website & ensure you don't lost any business if your site experiences a fault or blackout.
9. Thrive Ultimatum to run time-scarcity campaigns & get your potential customers to convert faster*
10. Sugar Calendar for simple, seamless event booking management, right from your WordPress website.
For more info on key plugins you can add to your WordPress website, read this guide.
*If you purchase Thrive Suite, you get immediate access to these powerful plugins at no additional cost.
Next Steps: Start Building Your Online Coaching Business
And there you go! All the info you need to kickstart your online coaching website & start building a thriving online business.
If you're looking for more resources related to building an online coaching business, growing an audience, or generating conversions, check out these free articles:
- How to Come Up With Unlimited Blog Ideas with Two Simple Brainstorming Techniques
- How to Teach Online: A Complete Guide for Beginners
- How to Choose Membership Tier Names That SELL
- How to Collect and Display Testimonials (Simple Guide)
Now it's your turn.
Interesting. Thank you.
your articles are always so informative. thank you
Thanks, Lisa!
Does Thrive host the site as well or is it a WordPress Plugin for use on my existing site?
Hey Dena!
So Thrive doesn’t host the site. You’ll need a hosting provider for that (e.g. Bluehost, SiteGround, etc.) Thrive Suite are plugins you can use on your already-hosted WordPress website.
I’m actually thinking about adding coaching to my site. Right now I’m not sure if I want to add a membership section or just leave it open access. I guess my question is why would someone continue to pay for a membership if they can download the digital products and then unsubscribe? Or maybe I’m just thinking about the pricing structure wrong.
Hey Elijah! That’s a valid concern to have.
If you only want to offer digital products your customer can buy and use, then a membership platform might not work — but you can still offer your coaching services.
However, if you have additional perks you want to offer in your membership platform – group sessions, 1:1 sessions, webinars (that can’t be downloaded after), etc. then you can offer those + the digital products you’d want to make available in your membership platform.
The risk of someone downloading your digital products and unsubscribing will always be there. But if you offer more value, you’ll have far more who stick around and pay their subscription.
Does this help?
This is just one of the many outstanding types of websites you can build using Thrive Themes Suite. I have been a happy customer for over 7 years and have used their suite of products to build all of my sites.
Thanks for this awesome review, William 🙂
Fantastic information as always, and I’m super excited to get started with the new Xpert theme for the site I’m building. Always seams like there’s a new feature release that’s perfect for the project I’m working on.
Thanks, Corbin! Happy building!!
Thank you for the lovely theme, and loved the customising of Typography, in this design.
I have a friend who would like to do online coaching and have sent the info on to her. I will also do a proper referral shortly,
Thanks for reading, Sharlene! And for the referral as well!
Thanks so much for sharing this article on building an online coaching business, really appreciate that share.
It really seems like an easy task but I am sure in reality it still will require some more effort in managing the tech side.
Just a quick question – Can I use thrive architect with some other external theme as well? Or vice-versa?
Hey Rohit, thanks for your comment!
You can use Thrive Architect with a different theme, but it might not look the same as some of the examples we share since we use Thrive Suite for everything. But it still works fine.
But if you really want to see Thrive Architect shine, use it in tandem with Thrive Theme Builder 😉
Great tips for anyone looking to establish their online coaching business and boost their authority in the industry!
I love how much you put into this post. Most people would blog about a coaching site and give you a quick 5 step process (that wouldn’t be very useful), but you can count on the Thrive Themes team to be complete and thorough! Love it!
Always delighted with the Thrive suite!
The theme comes too late for me but the advice is always interesting, thank you.
Awesome!
I really like that thrive creates step by steps to make a seem less website. I wish it was less buggy, though. I’ve had issues with thrive suite plugins not working the way they should and the customer service takes a long time to resolve issues.
Hey Masha,
So sorry to hear you’ve had issues with the Thrive Suite plugins. That shouldn’t be happening. Our support recently updated their system, so if you reach out with your problem they can help you as soon as possible.
Wow, this article is an absolute gem! The insights and information provided here have truly expanded my understanding of the subject. I’m grateful for the valuable knowledge gained and eagerly look forward to more outstanding articles like this in the future. Well done!
Thank you for such a glowing comment, Aznan!
I have had a lot of joy working with thrive themes to make my coaching site. And this article was a really great help in that ^^
Thanks, Alexander! Glad to hear this was helpful for you!
This is definitely the way to go if you want to go into online coaching.
Thanks your this, Karen 🙂
I’m going to start implementing this right now. Great information and easy to follow in this step by step format. Thank you.
That’s awesome, Peter!
Wishing you the best and thanks for leaving a comment!
Wow, that’s cool.