AE Fit 716 Website Build

Developing a primary information hub for a woman-owned fitness studio

 
 

Objective

This project initially started as a personal brand website for April Ersing, certified personal trainer. After pausing work for a few months, the project pivoted to a corporate site for April's brand new fitness studio, AE FIT 716. The change in focus created the need for a brand new site structure, a change in the copy point-of-view, and the integration of the industry-specific tool: Mindbody.

 

Challenges

  1. Brand new company with no previous branding or SEO to build on.

  2. Need to integrate website with third-party tool.

Project Highlights

CMS: Squarespace
The site was built on Squarespace to keep maintenance and update costs low. There are no widgets to update or separate hosting fees to pay, and the owner can easily go in to make edits on her own without having to worry about anything breaking.

Brand Voice: Empowering and Friendly
All of the copy was written to support the company tagline: Get Empowered. Special attention was paid to word choice when talking about nutrition/diet and reasons for working out to ensure everything was framed positively while also avoiding cliché terms.

SEO: Local
Both the back-end website SEO and Google My Business page content was written with local search in mind. As a new fitness brand with a physical location in Buffalo, NY, appearing in local search is more important than ranking nationally or worldwide.

Site Evolution

Since the initial build of aefit716.com, I’ve worked with the owner to evolve the website to fit her needs. During the spring of 2020, we created a policy and cleaning protocol page, and implemented on-site pop-ups, to ensure studio members were aware of the “new normal.” Then, throughout 2021 and 2022 we experimented with both a blog and member’s-only hub for pre-recorded videos and workout documents. Currently, we are doing a methodical overhaul to the entire site that includes brand new color photography (instead of the previously used black and white), trimmed down service offerings, and revamped copy that aims to foster a community space with a focus on overall wellness, not just fitness in the traditional sense.