When you're starting a new business you probably ask yourself, "Do I need a website?" The answer is most definitely YES.
There are a handful of different ways to create a website for your yoga studio. At Tula, we recommend Squarespace or Wordpress. Some people even use Weebly. Your website is far less important than your physical yoga studio, so don't make it too complicated. Squarespace or Wordpress will help you create a suitable website for your yoga studio. The most important goal is that you should be able to update your content quickly and easily.
After you create the website for your yoga studio, are you done? No. You should take advantage of some of the many tools out there to measure the traffic coming to your website.
We'd like to tell you about Google Analytics today. I'll show you what it looks like and tell you some of the great reasons you should be using it. In the tech world, it's the de facto standard. You just don't put a website out there without it.
Here's what it looks like. This is just one of many views of the traffic into your studio's website.
Your dashboard can be customized so you see the data you want to see.
Traffic Trends
The graph on your left quickly shows you your traffic trends. It's a graph of the daily visits to your site. You may be able to tie your spikes in traffic to specific events. You might notice a spike when you send an email blast. Someone influential might share one of your classes on Facebook or Twitter. You'll never know unless you're keeping track.
Your traffic comes from somewhere. Keep track of it with the referral traffic section on Google Analytics.
Referral Traffic
One of my favorite screens to look at is referral traffic. This section will tell you where your traffic is coming from. This is important because you may not actually know. If you see an interesting website referring to yours, you may want to reach out to them and thank them. You may realize your studio's Facebook page has been driving more traffic to your site than usual. If that's the case, you can start to recognize where you should focus your efforts online. This can be the difference in boosting your revenue or missing out on some big opportunities.
Yelp
Tula Yoga Studio has a 5-star rating on Yelp.
This is Tula Yoga Studio's Yelp page. They have a glowing 5-star review. Yelp is known to drive a lot of traffic to businesses. A bad yelp review can unfortunately cripple some. If you notice your yoga studio's website is getting traffic from Yelp, you may want to start keeping track of your Yelp score. Chances are, if you ever get a bad review, you will lose that traffic from Yelp. Add Google Analytics to your website today and start keeping track.
Your Class Calendar
Most yoga studios have a schedule of classes on their website. Do you know how much traffic your calendar gets? If you knew it received a lot of traffic, would you make sure it was always updated with correct information? If you use Google Analytics, you'll know. You probably get more traffic than you think.
Search Engine Optimization
What happens when you search for yoga studio chicago?
Simply by typing "yoga studio chicago", people can easily find your studio.
Tula Software is the world's best software for independent yoga studios. We provide an embeddable class calendar with class registrations and an embeddable online store for students to purchase passes. Sign up today for a free trial.