Your Dojo Online: How Great Web Design Builds Trust and Increases Enrollment

Students come to martial arts for many reasons — physical fitness, family and cultural legacy, mental health, or just for the love of a challenge. With interest in both traditional and mixed martial arts rising dramatically over the past few years, you want to showcase the distinctives of your school with the best martial arts website possible.

Now, you might not think of your school, dojo, or gym website as a teaching tool. After all, that’s what time on the mat or in the studio is for, right? But in reality, your website can set the tone of your instruction and dojo culture when prospective students are just starting out their journey into structured combat arts training. 

Digital marketing is the key to doing this, and we’ll explain some of the tools you might need for effectively promoting your martial arts studio online. 

WordPress Development and Design for Martial Art Schools

WordPress hosts over 60% of all websites. Its customization abilities make it a natural choice for a good martial arts website design — you can literally design it any way you want.

The challenge that presents is that WordPress is a bit like staring at a blank canvas — you can draw anything you want, but you need the skills to make your vision take shape.

That’s where a full-service team that can handle both the development and design elements of your site is so helpful. Custom website design impresses potential students with your school’s culture right away. Technical development encompasses everything that needs to happen under the hood to make sure your website is responsive and accessible at all times.

It’s crucial to pay attention to both the visual and technical sides of website development when working with website design services. If you have a great-looking website, but it doesn’t display properly on mobile, you will lose visitors browsing on their phones. If it is technically perfect but doesn’t make your studio stand out to new students, it won’t reach its full potential as a marketing tool for you. 

Joomla Development and Design for Martial Art Franchises

Joomla is another popular martial arts web design CMS. Joomla has thousands of extensions to choose from to customize the function of your new website. 

Notably for dojos and training studios, Joomla offers gym management software that can handle functions like class calendars, scheduling, checkout areas, and customer support elements that can help you automate your martial arts studio operations. 

These can make your job as a franchise owner or manager significantly easier, but only if the martial arts software functions correctly. There’s nothing more frustrating than online calendars and checkouts that don’t work correctly.

Our team can deliver a professional, functional Joomla site customized to automate crucial franchise functions, freeing up staff time for face-to-face interaction. 

Squarespace Development and Design for Tai Chi Schools

Tai Chi, like other traditional martial arts, has a small but loyal following nationwide. There has been a steady increase in interest in the practice over the past decade, which means that people are turning to their phones and laptops to find accessible Tai Chi programs near them. To optimize your online presence, it’s crucial to pay attention to SEO. This is how people will find your school. 

Both lifelong practitioners and newbies will turn to a search engine to find the best studio near them. While Squarespace has fewer website templates to choose from than WordPress or Joomla, it’s still a useful lead generation tool for your Tai Chi School. 

Our team can get your Squarespace website up to scratch by ensuring it is fully optimized for local searches and has all the security and design updates needed to showcase your school at its best. 

HTML5 Development and Design for Martial Art Teachers

All martial arts website templates are designed with the same basic programming language, called HTML5. Regardless of how the website looks, this is the code that runs underneath the visible pages that your visitors will see.

An HTML5 programmer can tailor your website’s theme specifically to your ideal design by altering elements of the code. This means that you can keep your overall look, but make specific changes that you want — like changing colors, tweaking the layout, or including lead capture forms directly on your website — without paying for a whole new website that you probably don’t need. 

Get in touch with our team to discuss your web development needs and learn about custom-quoted design and programming packages that fit your budget. 

Shopify Development and Design for Tai Chi Instructors

The best website design for martial arts and fitness studios will make it easy for a new prospect to quickly and efficiently sign up for classes directly from your website. This means that you need a secure, responsive design that makes it simple for potential clients to take the next step.

Though Shopify is usually thought of as a merchandise vendor, it can also work well for martial arts studios or other service-based businesses. We recommend integrating promotions directly into your site. Encouraging new clients to sign up for a free trial class, waiving a fee, or getting a free t-shirt are all great ways to help your Shopify website attract new students. 

Geo Landing Pages for Martial Arts Franchises

The franchise model is popular for a variety of martial arts styles. Joining an existing franchise group gives you an instant leg-up on your marketing, since you are operating under an existing brand name.

When prospective clients are looking for the best martial arts studio in town, however, they might have trouble distinguishing specific locations from one another. That’s where geotargeted landing pages can be an ideal marketing strategy. A properly-designed geopage will update for each searcher based on their physical location, showing information for the nearest franchise when they search.

We recommend using this approach to increase online sales with local promotions and to show just how customizable your training options can be for each student. 

Dynamic Landing Pages for Martial Art School Owners

Just like geotargeted landing pages, dynamic landing pages are coded to display different offers to searchers depending upon their search criteria, location-based data, demographics, or other preselected factors.

This can be a great way to create custom memberships and training packages that are tied to social media or Google display ads. Are first-time adult learners interested in booking a month’s worth of lessons at a discount? You can tie that offer to a landing page. What about advertising martial arts to other athletes? Your landing page can update to display cross-training information for searchers who clicked on your link from their home gym.

There are endless ways to make it easy for prospective students to take the next step with your school. Request a free call with our digital marketing experts today to brainstorm tailored marketing solutions that show just what you have to offer. 

Application Development for Tai Chi School Owners

People are increasingly comfortable scheduling classes and lessons online. Additionally, over one-third of Americans regularly use an app on their phone to keep track of health-related metrics. 

A customized app for your school can be a great way to build a sense of community and identify with your students. An app can host almost any kind of function you want — students can reserve classes and view upcoming calendars, or sync with their smartwatch to track their heart rate during practice. Consider adding exciting fitness challenges to show how tai chi can be integrated with other health goals.

As a full-service digital marketing agency, SEO Design Chicago doesn’t stop at providing a great-looking website. We also offer customized application design that can integrate any fitness or scheduling tools you need to connect with your students more effectively. 

FAQ: How to Turn Website Visitors into Students

The first step is making sure that your website design includes top-notch SEO to help prospective students actually discover that your school exists! Once they’ve found you, the best websites are designed to help them take the next step, whether that is booking a class or signing up for a new event.

Here are some of the most common questions our design and development team receives about building a cutting-edge website that converts. 

What makes a great website for martial arts or Tai Chi schools?

Your website should appear warm and welcoming to potential students. All the visuals should indicate that this is a place where they can belong. You can accomplish this with high-resolution images of your school or studio and text that encourages them to take the next step by booking a class.

It’s crucial that potential students be able to view your school’s welcoming home page properly. Since most searches happen on mobile devices, your site should prioritize mobile display. Once you’ve welcomed them with your appealing home page design, you need to make it easy to take the next step. We recommend including a clear call to action on each page, like a “book now” or “try a free class.”

Which platform is best for my martial arts website: WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace?

They each shine in different respects. For the most customization, WordPress is the clear leader. For a fast, plug-and-play option with easy website themes and templates, we recommend Wix. Squarespace is also easy for most small business owners to make small tweaks without going into the background code. 

How can my website help me get more students?

New students need to be able to find you and take easy action online. A fully optimized website with a conversion-focused design helps your school rank higher in online search results, which makes it far more likely that local students who are already interested in martial arts instruction will find your school. Then, once they’re on your site, a conversion-focused design makes it easy for them to take the next step with clear calls to action on each page, like “book now” or “try a class free.” 

Do I need separate landing pages for each class or program?

Online searchers increasingly default to the result that requires less effort. This means that if you want to direct students to a specific class or program, it’s helpful to have a dedicated landing page for the programs you are actively promoting that includes all the information — location, times, cost, and scheduling forms. This makes it easier for students to find the information and book right away, increasing your enrollment. 

How much does it cost to build and maintain a martial arts school website?

All sites vary based on the size and requirements, but martial arts websites generally fall within the $500–$2,000 range. A key principle to keep in mind is that you want to build your website to last. It’s more expensive in the long run to have to scrap your entire website and start over from scratch each time you want to add a new feature, like online booking. It’s much smarter to start small and build a website that can be scaled and updated as needed to accommodate your business growth. 

Request your free consultation now to see how our marketing experts can transform your website to bring increased enrollment to your school!