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What makes a good BJJ website?

J

junco

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Hey f12,

I'm in the process of designing a website for my BJJ school. Basically, I want the website to be useful to both prospective students and current students. Below I've put together a small list of things that I think are "good" to have on BJJ school websites, and a few things I am undecided on, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Good
  • Instructor information, with recent pictures and credentials
  • Class times, with a description of what each class is
  • Pricing, plus any discounts that are available (e.g., student, military, law enforcement). I've seen some discussion on this board about the pros/cons of having pricing information available upfront - but I'm of the opinion that it is best to let potential clients have as much information up front as possible.
  • Contact information, with a link to the location on Google maps. Also, a picture of location from the outside of the building (sometimes small storefront academies can be hard to find)
  • Announcements/upcoming events - shows potential students that the club is active, and provides useful information for current students
  • Group Photograph of Students - demonstrates team spirit, and gives a quick idea of the distribution of belts/rank in the school (obviously doesn't really apply to no-gi schools).

Undecided
  • History of Jiu Jitsu - Does every martial arts website need an obligatory page about the history of their art? If somebody can find their way to the school's website, they can probably find their way to Wikipedia.
  • Testimonials - does anybody even read these? Personally, I find them super tacky.

Bad
 
I think an updated page with multimedia is very important. It's weird when you go to a site for a school and they only have pictures from 2007 up.

This doesn't have much to do with the site per se, but please respond promptly to emails. Especially if you have a Contact Us form.
 
junco said:
Hey f12,

I'm in the process of designing a website for my BJJ school. Basically, I want the website to be useful to both prospective students and current students. Below I've put together a small list of things that I think are "good" to have on BJJ school websites, and a few things I am undecided on, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Good
  • Instructor information, with recent pictures and credentials
  • Class times, with a description of what each class is
  • Pricing, plus any discounts that are available (e.g., student, military, law enforcement). I've seen some discussion on this board about the pros/cons of having pricing information available upfront - but I'm of the opinion that it is best to let potential clients have as much information up front as possible.
  • Contact information, with a link to the location on Google maps. Also, a picture of location from the outside of the building (sometimes small storefront academies can be hard to find)
  • Announcements/upcoming events - shows potential students that the club is active, and provides useful information for current students
  • Group Photograph of Students - demonstrates team spirit, and gives a quick idea of the distribution of belts/rank in the school (obviously doesn't really apply to no-gi schools).

Undecided
  • History of Jiu Jitsu - Does every martial arts website need an obligatory page about the history of their art? If somebody can find their way to the school's website, they can probably find their way to Wikipedia.
  • Testimonials - does anybody even read these? Personally, I find them super tacky.

Bad
Click to expand...



Wow, you are 100% completely backwards. good luck...
 
stile0 said:
I think an updated page with multimedia is very important. It's weird when you go to a site for a school and they only have pictures from 2007 up.

This doesn't have much to do with the site per se, but please respond promptly to emails. Especially if you have a Contact Us form.
Click to expand...

I agree. Once I get a bit better with video editing, I wanted to put together a promo video for the homepage.

Goat Gobbler said:
Wow, you are 100% completely backwards. good luck...
Click to expand...

Sarcasm? Troll? Explain...
 
First off Lloyd Irvin probably gets more than 50 new students a month off his website alone.

Second you are looking at this as if people looking for your school are already BJJ competitors. They aren't. With that mentality your website will only appeal to about 2% of the people that look it up, and the whole 2% will already be training somewhere else.
 
This is pretty basic for any sales page, and this is a sales page if you're looking to get new students. you need to get their info and make a great offer. That is all the page really needs, a great offer. Most people barely know what BJJ is and think getting first place in the naga worlds masters division sounds more impressive then the ibjjf mundials open. You have to educate them and get their info for continued education until they're convinced you have what they need. pretty basic stuff. I'm a student right now, but helped design a website for my old school a while back
 
I say tutorials, information, memberships, affiliation with organizations like Gracie Barra, etc
 
Your list is good but if you want it to sign up new students, what you need is SEO, a clear call to action and good lead collection.
 
Goat Gobbler said:
First off Lloyd Irvin probably gets more than 50 new students a month off his website alone.
Click to expand...
I doubt it.

Goat Gobbler said:
Second you are looking at this as if people looking for your school are already BJJ competitors. They aren't. With that mentality your website will only appeal to about 2% of the people that look it up, and the whole 2% will already be training somewhere else.
Click to expand...

How so? I don't think I mentioned anything about competition in my original post.
 
Aesopian said:
Your list is good but if you want it to sign up new students, what you need is SEO, a clear call to action and good lead collection.
Click to expand...

I agree to an extent. However, I think it depends on the market a school is trying to appeal to.

For example, my school is located in a pretty small town, and there is only one other "competitor" school in the area (which only does MMA and no-gi grappling).

Should my website try to interest people in martial arts in the first place? Or, should it try to convince people who are already interested in martial arts to train jiu jitsu? Or, should it convince people who are already interested in jiu jitsu to train at our club, as opposed to training with our local competitors?
 
I like it when schools frequently post pictures from their gym and what not.
 
neutralmilkh said:
I like it when schools frequently post pictures from their gym and what not.
Click to expand...

Same here. I also like it when the website has the prices. I hate going to places w/o the price because I don't even no if I could afford the training. Plus if you have hidden fee's list that garbage I cannot stand last min hidden fee's.
 
Depends on your target audience.

For example, when I decided to train BJJ I didn't really need to be sold on the benefits of BJJ nor how much weight I could lose etc. Additionally, at the time I didn't care about competition, so any site I read, when they started talking about those features I skipped to the next paragraph.

I do like knowing about the instructors, and more than just "This guy is a BJJ brown belt under So-and-So and a Judo black belt under so-and-so." That's good to have, because I probably will look up the names to see if anything fishy comes up, but personally I also like to know a bit about them. Did they start training because they got bullied in school? Did they start later in life? Stuff like that helps people identify with them.

Also, having the schedule up on the site are a definite must, as far as I was concerned. I might call about price if I knew I could attend classes, but if you can't even tell me when your BJJ class is, I think you more than likely don't have your stuff together.

Then again, like I said, I wasn't looking for a "What is this BJJ stuff and should I train?" But rather "Which of the 3 gyms in town should I train at?"
 
zomoplata said:
Same here. I also like it when the website has the prices. I hate going to places w/o the price because I don't even no if I could afford the training. Plus if you have hidden fee's list that garbage I cannot stand last min hidden fee's.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on the pricing problem. At my old school, I was able to e-mail the owner and get a price. I just graduated and moved to a bigger city looking for a job, but the schools want you to come in first, before they quote you. Apparently that's the standard though.
 
Make it concise and easy to navigate.
 
junco said:
I would be shocked if anybody was ever convinced to train at Lloyd's school just from visiting his website.
Click to expand...

You'd be shocked at the number of dumb, impressionable people in the world.
 
I think its unlikely that existing students are going to use the site. From personal experiance, between attending classes and facebook group pages, you'll get all the information you need on whats going on at the club. Really, a website is just an advert for those looking to train somewhere that haven't found the facebook group yet.

I'd keep it simple, a few pages. Some stuff on the instructor, assistants, maybe a little on the club history. infomation on pricing, timetable, facilities. Avoid having anything that may date too quickly. Keep it clean of clutter. and of course contact details
 
taylonr said:
Then again, like I said, I wasn't looking for a "What is this BJJ stuff and should I train?" But rather "Which of the 3 gyms in town should I train at?"
Click to expand...

This was the same situation I was in when I started. However, I do appreciate that some potential students might be looking for any martial art to train - which is where I could see some benefit to including a bit of BJJ history/salesmanship.
 
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