A website is the foundation of any climbing gym’s marketing strategy. No matter what methods you are using to attract new customers, such as advertising in the local newspaper, offering introductory offers on deal-of-the-day websites, or running a member referral program, you will be directing customers to your website for more information about your facility.
Your website serves as an online brochure, storefront and brand ambassador. Yet many businesses are not maximizing the effectiveness of this marketing tool. Here are the top six most common ways climbing gym websites are falling short and advice on how to fix it.
1. SEO Struggles
If you have a website and no one can find it, does it really exist? A significant amount of your traffic will be the result of consumers heading to their favorite search engine to look up your facility by name or by searching for a climbing facility in their town.
If your website does not appear within the top ten search results, it’s highly unlikely that users will find their way to your website, and ultimately through your doors.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the technical term for making sure that your website uses appropriate search terms, is coded with the proper keywords, and is supported by inbound linking from industry directories and other relevant sites to make sure your website is search-engine friendly and ranks high in search results.
If your website is languishing at the bottom, or worse yet, on page two of search results, you need to hire a web expert that can help boost your visibility on the web.
2. Hiding the Essentials
Address
Once users get to your website, it’s important that key information is easily accessible. You could argue that for climbing gyms, the most important information is your physical address, or addresses if you have multiple locations.
It’s shocking how many websites in the climbing industry do not display their address on the homepage or in another obvious location. Is it on the About Us page, the Contact Us page or perhaps hidden in tiny print in the footer? This information should be drop dead easy to find, and should not require more than one click from your homepage.
Furthermore, your address should not be embedded in an image that can’t be easily copied and pasted into a map tool. It may be helpful to embed a small map into your webpage that has your location clearly marked, and you should provide a handy map link so that smartphone users are just one tap away from driving directions.
Contact
Even though you’ve spent so much time putting every possible piece of information on your website, customers are still going to want to call or email with questions. Prominently placing your phone number and email or contact form is a fundamental tenet of customer service and adds legitimacy to your online presence.
Hours, Pricing and the Rest
Other key information such as facility hours, pricing, class schedules and waiver requirements should be easy to get to and the navigation terminology should be obvious for new visitors (e.g. “Join” sounds nice, but “Pricing” is more intuitive).
Tip: if your staff receives calls from customers that can’t find basic information on your website, like how to find your e-waiver, your website is failing its most essential function and should be redesigned.
Central Rock provides key details front and center
3. Mobile UnFriendly
A recent report shows that smartphones and tablets combined now account for 60% of all online traffic. As internet consumption quickly moves away from desktops to portable devices, ensuring your website is optimized for the smaller screens of tablets and smartphones is critically important.
Nevertheless, the majority of websites in the climbing industry are not mobile ready. This means mobile users are wasting time zooming and scrolling through tiny versions of your homepage and unable to access the pages they want through the minuscule navigation links.
To see how your website looks on screens of all sizes and platforms, head on over to quirktools.com/screenfly/ and enter your web address. The results may be shocking!
Grand Valley’s mobile ready website
4. Leaving New Users in the Dark
While members are your bread and butter, new users are your most time consuming customer. Tailoring your website for first time visitors will save staff time and ensure that new users have appropriate expectations.
A number of climbing facilities direct new users to “Getting Started” or “Plan a Visit” pages on their website. The most successful sites have simple, clear guidance for new climbers that gently guide them toward introductory belay classes or introduce them to auto belays.
Don’t forget to include guidance for experienced climbers too. They will want to know if they need to schedule a belay or lead test ahead of time, if it costs money and what belay devices are allowed.
Upper Limits provides clear guidance to first timers
5. Annoying or Overwhelming
Websites can be beautiful and inspirational, but most importantly they need to be functional. This means they shouldn’t annoy the user. Interruptive elements like pop-ups about your waiver, flash animation and blinking images are the worst offenders. Large photos that aren’t optimized for fast loading can also make users crazy.
The biggest trap most websites fall into is drowning users in too much information. As mentioned above, the majority of your users are looking at your website from a small mobile screen, and won’t have the patience for scrolling through multiple paragraphs of text; even users with large desktop monitors want short chunks of information. The best websites keep their descriptions short and make smart use of sub-headings, bullet lists and graphic elements to deliver information in bite-size chunks.
Sender One’s pricing table is simple and elegant
6. The Wider World of Web
While your website is your primary presence on the web, many customers will check out your business through their favorite social website or app before deciding to make a visit.
Sure, you might be posting photos twice a day on Instagram and tweeting like crazy, but are your facility hours up to date on Google Maps, do you have good looking photos on Yelp, and are all of your services listed on Facebook?
Ensuring that all your essential facility information is correct, you’ve uploaded professional photos of your facility and you’ve responded to any questions or inaccurate comments on social media websites is essential to getting savvy web users to your facility.
Back of the wall training. Photo: CWA
Earlier this October the Climbing Wall Association held their first Certification Summit at the new Petzl Technical Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah. The five day event combined the CWA’s Climbing Wall Instructor and CWI Provider certifications (and re-certifications) along with Petzl’s certifications for a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Competent Person and Work at Height for Climbing Gyms.
The CWA has been offering CWI and CWI Provider training since 2010 at their annual Climbing Wall Summit in Boulder, CO. Since that time they have certified over 700 instructors and providers. Petzl has also presented shorter versions of their PPE Inspection and Rope Access for Routesetters training during the event, but this was the first time these certification-level courses have been offered to CWA members.
“Given the overwhelming growth of our certification programs, we wanted to create an event focused on certification and continuing education for our certification pool and members”, said CWA’s CEO Bill Zimmermann in a press release. “This gives us the opportunity to offer enhanced education for new and existing instructors and to add a much-needed second CWI Provider course to our annual calendar.”
Work at Height
The event drew 29 attendees from 19 organizations and 3 countries, including Clint Searle, General Manager of True North Climbing out of Toronto, Canada. For him the foremost reason for attending was to keep all of his employees safe. “When the Work at Height for Climbing Gym Employees certification was announced I knew this was a course I had to attend,” Searle told CBJ.
Safe climbing demo. Photo: CWA
Routesetter safety and complying with regulations when working on or behind the wall are one of the more important, but often dreaded, topics of conversation among climbing gym professionals. That’s why the CWA teamed up with Petzl to offer a training program that tackles the largely ignored fact that routesetters work in potentially dangerous places with only limited knowledge of what it takes to be truly safe.
Though any company with 4 or more employees is governed by OSHA standards, many gym operators don’t understand the requirements or the implications of not following them.
According to Rick Vance, Petzl America’s Technical Director and a CWA Board Member, many people that attend the Work at Height training initially have a lot of fear that OSHA regulations are unattainable. However after getting familiar with the equipment and learning new techniques they realize it is within their reach.
“People see pretty quick that [being in compliance] isn’t too far off. They just need to tweak their procedures a bit, maybe buy one or two pieces of additional equipment.”
The Back of the Wall
One of the most dangerous places in a climbing gym is the back of the climbing wall. Though there are very few reported accidents involving falls behind the wall, every setter understands the potential tragedy that could happen with one misstep. For the sake of setter efficiency few gyms have taken measures to ensure setters’ safety when accessing the back of the wall, and even fewer hold setters accountable for using the safety equipment provided.
For Searle of True North, which opened in 2010, he came to the Certification Summit looking for ways to improve his operations. “I want to stay ahead of the curve. I want to be an industry leader when it comes to safety and I am always looking for ways to expand my knowledge base,” he said. “ The more I know the more prepared I am to prevent myself and others from falling into potentially dangerous situations, or worse, help someone escape an already hazardous position.”
Petzl’s “lobster claws”
During the work at height class participants were shown several different ways to ascend the back of the wall. One way is to use “lobster claws” attached to a personal energy absorbing system attached to a full-body harness (Vance also recommends a helmet and eye protection). These lobster claws are giant hooks that can be clipped to the existing steel skeleton of the climbing wall and do not require any additional rigging.
Though buying more equipment and slowing down your setters may put some managers off, Vance said that any wall can be easily retrofitted with a safety system, as long as it’s an engineered wall. “When we’re talking about fall arrest you don’t need to have big 5,000 lb anchors, you just have to know how your system works,” he added.
After the event Searle went back to Toronto and immediately started making changes. “I am currently in the process of setting up a series of anchor systems with safety lines behind our walls so that when staff are at heights behind the walls the risk of them being severely injured drops dramatically.”
The Rescue
One other popular subject at the summit was making sure your facility has a rescue plan in place for all employees who are working at height and in confined spaces. A rescue plan can be as simple as calling 911, though Vance warns that not all fire & rescue squads are trained for high-angle recovery. He recommends that you check with your local EMS/fire departments to make sure they are trained for the types of rescue that may be needed in your facility before adding them to your official rescue plan.
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Rescue from the ground. Photo: CWA
The class also taught more self-sufficient methods for rescuing an incapacitated fall victim. One way is to rig a vertical lifeline system so that if an employee falls they can be safely lowered by another employee; setting up a safety line with a releasable anchor, such as an auto-locking belay device, and enough rope at the bottom will allow the rescue team to stay safely on the ground.
Perhaps the most important part of a rescue plan is to make sure it is written down and covered during the training of every new employee. Vance argues that, “in terms of regulation it doesn’t really exist until it’s in writing.” OSHA also requires employers to create a Job Hazard Analysis. According to the OSHA website JHA’s should be written for:
Jobs with the highest injury or illness rates;
Jobs with the potential to cause severe or disabling injuries or illness, even if there is no history of previous accidents;
Jobs in which one simple human error could lead to a severe accident or injury;
Jobs that are new to your operation or have undergone changes in processes and procedures;
Jobs complex enough to require written instructions.
A Wealth of Knowledge
As with most gatherings of climbing gym professionals, the best part for many is getting to sit down and talk about common issues facing others who work in climbing facilities.
For event attendee Michael Baker, new GM of the Stone Summit Kennesaw location, the most valuable part of the training was being surrounded by a wealth of knowledge. “Spending a few days with other professionals in the climbing industry, discussing important topics for climbing wall instructors, is a great tool for myself being better able to impart knowledge to my staff,” he told CBJ after the event.
Baker believes that offering his instructors the CWI certification is “immensely valuable” and added that, “Attending the summit gave me another opportunity to grow within the climbing industry by meeting other professionals and staying up to date on the current trends and topics.”
Searle from True North agrees, “I would highly recommend everyone in the industry to start attending these trips so that we can raise the level of professionalism in the sport. The more informed we are the lower the risks become.”
