4 things to know from this article
- 86% of coaching websites fail the five-second read. It's the biggest single hole in the market.
- Sites that score well on it average 9.25 out of 10. Poor sites average 2.92.
- Nearly half the market, 49.2%, isn't specific about who it helps or what it fixes.
- Passing it costs you nothing and takes one sentence.
A woman on her phone, waiting for the kettle, has landed on your homepage from a search. She'll give it about five seconds.
In that time she's answering one question. Is this for me?
We scored 10,954 live coaching websites on whether a stranger could answer that. 86% couldn't, and in this article I'm showing you what the ones that pass do differently.
It's the widest gap in everything we scored a coaching website on, by some distance.
What we actually measured
Whether somebody who has never heard of you can say, from the homepage alone, what you do and who you do it for.
We scored that out of 10 across all 10,954 sites and counted 7 or better as a pass. 85.7% came in under that.
The average across the market is 4.5 out of 10. Among the sites that scored well overall it's 9.25. Among the poor ones it's 2.92.
That's a gap of more than six points, and it's the widest of any of the ten things we scored. Wider than proof, wider than pricing, wider than anything to do with how the site was built.
Why so many miss it
Because a coach writes their homepage from the inside.
You've spent years learning the work, talking to other coaches about the work, and getting good at the work. So the words that come out are the words you use with people who already understand it. Transformation. Alignment. Holding space. Your framework's name.
Then a woman with a kettle boiling reads it and has no idea whether you can help with the thing she typed into Google four seconds ago.
She isn't stupid and you aren't vague. You're just not writing from where she's standing.
How to pass it
Say who it's for and what you fix, in the first thing anybody reads.
Not in the second paragraph. Not on the about page. In the headline, before she scrolls.
"I help people find clarity and purpose" fails, because clarity and purpose are what a coach calls it. "Coaching for women whose sleep fell apart when the menopause started" passes, because that's what she'd type.
The test for your own headline is whether a stranger could repeat it back. Read it to somebody who doesn't know what you do and ask them who it's for. If they hesitate, you've got your answer.
Is five seconds not a bit harsh?
It's roughly what you get. Somebody scanning search results has three tabs open and no loyalty to any of them, and she's deciding whether to stay, not reading carefully.
Is 7 out of 10 a fair pass mark? It's a judgement, and a defensible one. At 6 the failure rate is 50% rather than 86%, so the picture is less dramatic and still not good. I'd rather show you both numbers than pick the scarier one and hide the other.
Does passing it guarantee enquiries? No. It gets her past the first five seconds, which is where 86% of coaching sites lose her. What happens next is everything else on the scorecard.
Questions coaches ask about this
What is the five second test for a website?
Whether a stranger can say what you do and who you do it for, from the homepage alone, in about five seconds. We scored it out of 10 across 10,954 coaching sites and counted 7 or better as a pass.
How many coaching websites fail it?
86%, using a pass mark of 7 out of 10. At a softer pass mark of 6 it's 50%. Neither number is good.
How do I test my own homepage?
Read your headline to somebody who doesn't know what you do, then ask them who it's for and what they'd get. If they pause, a stranger on her phone has already gone. You can also have it read the way a stranger reads it.
Is this about design?
No. Technical health averages 9 out of 10 across the market and barely differs between good and poor sites. This is about the sentence at the top.