4 things to know from this article
- Health coach sites average 3.55 out of 10, against 3.65 for coaching as a whole.
- They're notably worse at the five-second read: 3.88 against 4.49.
- They're better than average at showing a price and capturing an email.
- Zero of the 622 scored strong, against 13 in the wider market.
Health coaching is one of the most crowded corners of the whole industry, and the websites in it are quietly worse than average at the one thing that decides whether anybody stays.
We scored 10,954 live coaching websites out of 10, against the ten things a coaching homepage is marked on. 622 of them are health, nutrition, wellness or fitness coaches, and in this article I'm showing you how that group compares with everybody else.
Not one of the 622 scored strong. Twenty-four came out decent. The other 598 were weak or poor.
Where health coach sites lose it
| What we scored | Health coaches | All coaches | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Five-second read | 3.88 | 4.49 | −0.61 |
| Being specific | 3.96 | 4.38 | −0.42 |
| Overall | 3.55 | 3.65 | −0.10 |
| Story | 2.56 | 2.54 | +0.02 |
| Proof | 1.52 | 1.51 | +0.01 |
| Clear next step | 5.62 | 5.60 | +0.02 |
| Offer clarity | 3.03 | 2.89 | +0.14 |
| Technical health | 9.19 | 9.03 | +0.16 |
| Credibility | 2.89 | 2.68 | +0.21 |
| Pricing shown | 2.06 | 1.77 | +0.29 |
| Lead capture | 4.98 | 4.64 | +0.34 |
Read the top two rows and then the bottom four.
Health coaches beat the market on price transparency, on capturing an email, on credibility and on how the site is built. They lose on the only two that decide anything: whether a stranger can tell what you do, and whether you're specific about who for.
That's an unusual shape. Most of this market is bad at proof and pricing. Health coaches have quietly got better at those and gone backwards on clarity.
Why that happens here more than elsewhere
Because health coaching has a vocabulary problem that other niches don't.
Gut health. Root cause. Bio-individuality. Functional. Metabolic flexibility. Nervous system regulation. Every one of those is a real thing, and every one of them is what a practitioner calls it rather than what the person with the problem calls it.
A man who's been bloated every afternoon for two years doesn't search for bio-individuality. He searches for why he's bloated every afternoon.
The specificity score says the same thing from the other side. 3.96 out of 10, and nearly half the market isn't specific about who it helps. "Helping you become the healthiest version of yourself" describes everybody, which means it describes nobody.
What to do about it
Say the symptom, not the system.
Your method can be as sophisticated as you like. It just can't be the first thing on the page, because the first thing on the page has to be the thing she recognises.
And go one level down. Health coaching isn't a market, it's about eight of them, and the woman whose thyroid is the problem wants something different from the bloke training for a first marathon.
Is 622 enough to draw conclusions from?
It's enough to be worth showing you, and I'd rather say how we got it than have you take it on trust. We identified those 622 by the domain name containing health, nutrition, wellness, wellbeing, fitness or weight loss. So a health coach whose domain is their own name isn't in that group, and a nutritionist selling recipes might be.
Does that skew it? Probably a little, and in a direction that makes health coaches look better rather than worse, because a coach who put their niche in the domain is already thinking about specificity.
Zero strong out of 622 is the number I'd be looking at. In the wider market it's 13 out of 10,954, so nobody's doing brilliantly. It's just that in health coaching, nobody's doing brilliantly at all.
Questions coaches ask about this
How do health coach websites compare with other coaches?
Slightly worse overall, 3.55 against 3.65, but the gap is concentrated in clarity and specificity, where they're 0.61 and 0.42 points behind. They're ahead on pricing, lead capture and credibility.
What do health coach websites get wrong most often?
Writing in practitioner language. Gut health, root cause and functional are what you call it. Your buyer describes a symptom, and the five-second score of 3.88 is what happens when those two don't match.
Do any health coach websites score well?
Twenty-four of the 622 scored decent. None scored strong. In the wider market 13 sites out of 10,954 managed strong, so it's rare everywhere and absent here.
How was the group identified?
By the domain name containing health, nutrition, wellness, wellbeing, fitness or weight loss. It's a rough cut and I'd rather tell you that than imply it's a curated list.