How to Pick the Best Online Personal Training Software for You
Online personal trainer software can streamline operations for personal trainers, coaches, and gym owners, and facilitate communications between them and their clients. While there is a range of programs that offer basic services, the best personal trainer software will provide specialised features for trainers, including those who offer a wider range of specialities.
While some online personal training software packages include payment processing, there can be benefits to integrating a payment gateway linked to your own dedicated merchant account. An efficient platform and payment system should ultimately help your business go from strength to strength.
What to Look for in Online Personal Trainer Software
Total European revenues in the fitness industry increased by 66% to €28 billion in 2022. In this growing industry, fitness coaches need to stand out, and industry-leading online personal trainer software can help you provide a competitive experience.
If you are considering using personal trainer software, the program you choose must cater to your needs both as an online trainer and as a business. Look out for features that will help you facilitate client management and financial management as well as streamline the process of training your clients.
Why Do Online Personal Trainers Need a Platform?
It’s easy to underestimate the number of tasks involved in growing an online fitness business. Creating workout plans is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to running your fitness business online. New businesses wishing to grow their brand must:
- Deliver their personalised workouts to their clients on time
- Sell workouts online or via social media
- Run fitness groups
- Program automated time-release workouts
These tasks are all the more challenging to complete when each client and group needs a personalised workout. Because doing everything manually would simply be too laborious, software is useful to help you automate some tasks.
Using Software Gives You More Time to Grow Your Business
Any new business owner understands the importance of investing your time wisely. Online business owners need to spend a lot of time building an online presence through social media and reaching out to potential clients. Personal training software can help you focus on the tasks that are most important to you by cutting down on the time you spend on more arduous tasks.
Look for the following features in your personal training software:
Payment Processing
Some online personal training software platforms offer payment processing and others don’t. Working with a payment processor that offers payment processing for digital fitness provides a host of benefits for online personal trainers. A global payment gateway with a dedicated merchant account such as that provided by Unicorn Group allows online trainers to:
- Set up recurring billing for subscriptions and monthly billing schedules.
- Store customer data for recurring payments.
- Compile a client database for communications and e-mail marketing campaigns.
- Receive payments in different currencies. This can make your services more appealing to international clients.
- Accept different payment methods including digital wallets and direct debit.
- Protect your and your client’s money with customisable fraud prevention and chargeback mitigation tools.
Some platforms offer their own built-in payment gateway or partner with a merchant aggregator like Stripe. However, because the range of merchant services offered with built-in or partner solutions is likely to be much more limited, it could be advantageous to go with a dedicated provider, particularly as your business grows.
Workout Templates
Online trainers typically work with a large number of individual clients and groups. Rather than design each session from scratch for each client, making use of templates is the most efficient way to customise each session.
Workout templates provide you with videos of common exercises to use in your own sessions. Using the templates, you can add your own exercise videos or cut and paste programs to be used by multiple clients.
Two-Way Feedback
Communication is the key to every business, and online fitness training is no exception. Your platform must facilitate two-way feedback between you and your clients so that you can give and receive feedback on your sessions and answer any questions your clients may have.
Clients paying for personal training services need to know that they can get in touch with their trainer and receive a swift response. Efficient two-way communication promotes engagement and client retention, so make sure your platform can facilitate this.
Progress Tracking
Your platform should allow you to track client progress and adjust their workouts accordingly. For the client, it can be motivating to upload progress photos or have another demonstrable measure of their progress, such as client progression graphs.
Tracking clients’ progress is also important for you. Graphs that show how you help your clients can be used as evidence of your good work. You can display this type of information on your website and social media pages to attract new clients.
Exercise Library
An exercise library is an excellent resource for your online business—whether you work alone or are in charge of a number of other trainers in different locations. An exercise library is a collection of stored routines of individual exercises with standardised metrics (sets, reps, weight, time, distance…), descriptions of the exercises, and videos to demonstrate the best practices for each exercise.
Having a growing number of approved exercises on hand for your own reference keeps your services consistent and can help you keep track of clients’ progress. In addition, sharing exercises with your clients allows them to follow a routine at home if you offer a hybrid training service.
Keep Your Paperwork All in One Place
Once you have a good range of resources and dozens of happy clients, you can recruit almost an unlimited number of clients. At this point, it’s critical to have a good system for organising your clients’ and business paperwork.
A good online trainer software platform should have a library area or folder where you can keep all of your personal training business documents—waivers, assessments, invoices, paychecks—in one place. This will help you stay organised and keep you on top of key deadlines.
Scheduling App
This is one of the most important features of online personal training software. Being in control of your schedule is one of the most challenging aspects personal trainers face. Schedules may change regularly as new clients sign up to or cancel your services, and you can’t afford to make a mistake.
To keep yourself organised, a reliable scheduling feature is essential. Cloud-based software specifically designed for sports and exercise training can help you manage your appointments efficiently.
Marketing Features
Marketing—specifically digital marketing—is essential for online fitness businesses. That’s why modern online personal trainer software platforms often provide a few marketing features.
Good marketing software will include:
- A storefront: This is a space to showcase your programs and testimonials and provide descriptions of the services you offer.
- Program pages: Create a page for every program with descriptions of the service.
- Promotions: Publish promotions on your website and social media pages from a central dashboard.
- Data analysis: Integrate your software with other programs to analyse your programs, clients, and financials. This data will inform your marketing strategy.
Customer Support
Many of the features associated with software for online personal trainers are designed to help you provide great service to your clients. However, as a business owner, you also deserve great customer service.
When choosing a software package, look for a platform that provides excellent support for you, the business owner. There’s always a learning curve with new software and you need to know that you’ll be supported as you find your way around and learn how to make the best use of the program.
Deciding How Much to Spend on Software
Online platforms offer many benefits for an online personal training brand. However, you will notice vast differences in price, features, and usability. If you’re a new business owner, you may find some of the pricing quite high. Here are a few tips when considering software costs:
- It’s important to appear professional from the beginning. If you decide to start your business without software, make sure you still appear professional enough to prospective clients by creating a high-quality website.
- If you plan to start out with a free or low-priced software program, find out whether you can add features or upgrade to a more professional plan as needed when your business grows. Many platforms offer a free demo so you can get an idea of how the program works before you subscribe.
- If you plan to change to more professional software once you have more clients, find out how easy it is to export your current data and import it into the new program. Sometimes, it’s best to simply start off with the program you plan to use long-term.
- There are white-label software programs available to which you can add your own custom branding. This option may cut down on subscription fees but generally requires a lot of technical know-how.
In the end, it’s usually a question of finding a balance between choosing software that can elevate your brand and not over-spending before you have enough clients to justify the cost. Freemium programs and programs that can be upgraded over time are often good choices.
Stay Organised and Grow Your Business
Online personal training software can help personal trainers look professional and stay organised. Paired with positive testimonials from your existing customers, your software will go a long way to helping you succeed in your new business.
When comparing software options, consider which features are included, which are offered as paid add-ons, and which—like payment processing—might be better outsourced to a dedicated provider for the most comprehensive service.
