How to Find a Web Designer for Your Wellness Website

How to find a web designer for your health coaching or wellness website // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches: business tips and resources for health coaches and wellness entrepreneurs // how to start a health coaching business and become an onlin…

Melissa, integrative nutrition health coach and founder, Four Wellness Co. // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches: business tips and resources for health and wellness coaches, fitness instructors, personal trainers and other wellness professionals

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Your health coaching website (or personal training website, or yoga instructor website, etc.) is one of the most important pieces of your entire wellness business.

We’ve covered this lots before, but as your online storefront, your website is generally your primary tool for connecting with new potential health coaching clients, informing them about your services and specific areas of wellness expertise, and converting them from website visitors into email subscribers and paid health coaching clients!

So, a quality website is one of the absolute most important investments you can make in your health coaching business (to say the least!).

And, as such, it tends to be a challenging (and somewhat expensive) process to design and build a health coaching website that fully and accurately represents you and your health coaching business, and is designed to attract and connect with your target audience of ideal health coaching clients.

Depending on how much free time and tech savvy-ness you have, you may feel confident DIY-ing your own health coaching website. (In fact, one of the key reasons I love and recommend Squarespace websites is how easy they are for health coaches and other wellness entrepreneurs to DIY yourselves!)

If you’re on the fence about whether to get your wellness website up and running yourself, or to hire a professional web designer to help you, here’s another post with a few reasons why you might want (or need) to hire a professional web designer for your health coaching website.

And, if you do choose to work with a professional web designer to design your health coaching website, here are some recommendations for finding and hiring a web designer who fits your needs and can help you build a gorgeous and effective health coaching website you love and are proud to promote:

How to choose a web designer for your wellness website

Web design portfolio

Past work is one of the best ways to visually understand the possibilities of the web designer’s future work.

However, an important caveat: As most portfolio pieces were developed for specific clients with specific project needs and goals, keep in mind that a designer’s portfolio is not necessarily indicative of their own personal style or preferences—often, web designers are tasked with interpreting and bringing to life someone else’s style and branding.

If you see one overarching design theme in a web designer’s portfolio, you can fairly safely assume that’s their primary aesthetic, and your site might be developed along those lines too. If you see a wide range of styles and aesthetics, it’s likely because the designer works with clients from a range of backgrounds.

When assessing a web design portfolio, also look beyond the design aesthetic and review the general professionalism of each site. Some things to consider:

Does the site flow well and “make sense” to the visitor?
Does it look great on both desktop and mobile?
Check out the footer: does the site have copyright information, a privacy policy, and other legal requirements?
Does the site have a branded favicon (the little icon in the browser tab)?
What types of additional functionality is incorporated? (email opt-ins, e-commerce, blogs, membership programs, etc.)

Some web designers will only share screenshots of their prior work, while others will link to live sites. One important detail to note about live sites is that they’re often influenced by the site owners, who have taken over updating them, and in doing so may have made some changes to the designer’s original work.

Web design + wellness industry knowledge

Does the web designer have any other material you can review for a sense of their skillset or industry knowledge?

Do they write a blog, or have a YouTube channel that highlights their expertise? Have they been featured as a guest on a reputable podcast or published in a reputable publication?

In addition to design skills, it’s important to know that your designer is up-to-date on other aspects of web design—SEO best practices, email marketing integrations, etc.

And, it’s helpful to get a sense of whether the web designer has experience working with the wellness industry specifically. There are some particular things to keep in mind for wellness websites, like legal disclaimers specific to health coaches and wellness professionals, health coaching session scheduling tools and client management platform integrations, etc.

Website cost

Cost is definitely important to consider in web design, as it is in any type of purchase—as a business owner, you need to be aware of what’s in the budget for you, and what’s not.

That said, your website is arguably one of the most important pieces (if not the single most important piece) of your health coaching business—it’s your storefront, it’s where many potential health coaching clients first find you, then learn more about you, then hopefully purchase from you—so it’s mega important to invest in a quality website that attracts your target health coaching audience, tells your personal brand story, and converts your website (or wellness blog) visitors into paying clients.

The investment you make in your website will likely be one of the greatest returns in your health coaching business.

So, of course, ultimately keep in mind your personal and business finances (which are often combined for new health coaches), but also be aware of the importance of quality web design and find a number that you’re comfortable working with to achieve the best health coaching website you can.

Sure, it’s possible to purchase a $500 brand-new website… but you’ll likely see a significant difference in quality between that site and a $5,000 site.

Side note on cost: Even sites that look somewhat comparable at first glance can be significantly different in all the little back-end details that make a site more or less successful—SEO, favicon, mobile responsive design, page loading speed, etc.

Scope of work

In addition to considering the cost and quality of work, it’s important to look at the full scope of work included with different web designers.

What does the designer include in their quoted fee?

Some web designers include logo and favicon design in their projects, where others will require you to hire a graphic designer for that. Some designers will offer a customized cheat sheet or screen share tutorial to walk you through the back-end of your site and the updates you’ll need to make to it moving forward, while others simply pass over your finished website and wish you the best of luck.

It’s also nice to know what additional skills a web designer could assist with, either in your initial website design or down the road.

Do they assist with email marketing set-up and template design? Do they have experience setting up e-commerce or online membership programs? Can they help you connect your client scheduling software to your website?

Factor all of these elements into the equation too as you consider cost.

Credentials

Web design happens to be an industry in which you don’t really need to worry about formal credentials. While, as health coaches, we need to be sure we’re properly credentialed before providing services, many quality web designers actually have no formal training in web design.

So, though you don’t have to inquire if a prospective designer has a PhD in Computer Science, you can look for other credentials that acknowledge their experience and connection within the industry.

For Squarespace designers, you can look for the Squarespace Circle badge, which denotes someone is a member of Squarespace’s community of designers. (And this also means they can offer you 20% off your first year of Squarespace services!)

Squarespace Circle Member // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches

Timeline

Especially if your website project has a specific launch date you need to meet, it’s important to know and consider a web designer’s timeline—both for creating a draft of your new website and for any revisions.

Some web designers can turn around a project in just a couple weeks, while others will have longer turnaround times. Popular web designers may even have waiting lists for new custom projects.

Though in the grand scheme of things, timeline is not as important as the other factors mentioned (you’re most likely better off waiting a couple weeks longer for a more quality website), this is just an item to note if you do have a specific hard deadline.

Personality

It’s a good idea to communicate with a potential web designer (either via phone or email) prior to hiring them to determine if your communication styles match. It’s essential for you to understand and feel comfortable with them and vice versa.

In addition to all the tangible factors to consider, there are also some intangibles it’s good to pay attention to: Do you like this person? Do they strike you as genuine, honest and dependable? Do you feel comfortable talking with them and sharing your ideas and concerns? Do they make you feel heard and understood (but not in a shmoozy way)?

These “soft skills” are also important details to note and consider as you choose someone to help you bring your health coaching website vision to life.

Testimonials

And, finally, there’s a lot of power in consumer reviews.

There’s not really a centralized review platform for web designers that includes all reviews, both good and bad (unless you’re using a freelancer platform like Upwork). So, just keep in mind that designers have the ability to select and feature only positive experiences in the testimonials they choose to share on their own websites.

However, it can still be helpful to see where positive experiences exist. In order to get those testimonials, the clients had to be willing to share them, and the designer had to have a good enough relationship with them to ask. It’s also particularly helpful if the designer links to a client’s live website, which confirms they’re a real person who had a real project with said designer. 👍

Now, where to find a good web designer?

You can do a Google search for web designers who work on the specific website platform you’re planning to use (if you have a preference—again, I use and recommend Squarespace), and/or the specific industry you’re in (some web designers are industry-specific, which is great, as they get to know it even better!).

Another option is to connect with a freelancer on a platform like Upwork. You can search for freelancers, as well as list a project that available freelancers can apply to.

You could also research web designers in your specific location—but that’s only really necessary if your business will be geography-specific (for example, if you have in-person services). Web design is something that can be easily done remotely, so if you limit your search to local designers only, you may miss out on a great fit. However, there is certainly a benefit to using a local designer if there is specific local knowledge that should be applied to the design of your site.

It’s a good idea to reach out to, correspond with and even interview several designers in your search to get a sense of how they work, how they communicate, and any ideas or recommendations they have for your project.

However, note that most designers will not be able to provide you specific design ideas or mock-ups for your project before officially beginning work on the project together (as that’s asking them to do design work unpaid).

Do I need a web designer for my health coaching website?

Now, all that said, you still don’t need a web designer to launch your own health coaching website.

It’s certainly a great and useful option if it’s in your budget, you’d like the most professional and effective site possible, or you don’t feel you have the time or skillset to design your own website.

But, if you do prefer to try your hand at DIY-ing your own wellness website, here’s more about how to build your own health coaching website. And, be sure to grab my free Health Coach Website Checklist below!