The 24-Point Martial Arts Website Checklist

How a parent actually shops for a school

Picture the real moment. It is 7:40 pm. A mom is sitting in her car outside a soccer field. Her son said he wants to try karate. She types "karate near me" into her phone. Google shows her three schools. She taps the first one.

She is not reading your philosophy page. She is answering four questions as fast as she can: Is this for my kid's age? When are the classes? Roughly what does it cost? How do I try it? If the site makes her hunt, she hits back and taps the second school. You never know she existed.

That is the whole checklist in one sentence: answer those four questions on a phone, fast, and make the next step one tap. Every point below serves that. Nothing here is about looking fancy. A plain site that answers the questions beats a beautiful one that hides them.

Points 1-4: speed and mobile

Assume the parent is on a phone, because a phone is what people search on while they are out. Speed is the first filter, and not in the "a little annoying" sense: on a phone with two bars of signal, a slow page is a blank white screen, and there is nothing on a blank screen to book a trial with.

PageSpeed Insights is Google's free speed test. Paste your address, pick the mobile tab, and it tells you how long the page takes to show something useful and what is slowing it down. The usual culprits on academy sites: giant uncompressed photos, a video background, six tracking scripts from a marketing tool you stopped using, and a cheap shared host.

1. 1

   The homepage's main content appears within 2.5 seconds on a phone, on cellular data.

   2.5 seconds is Google's own published threshold for a good Largest Contentful Paint, not a number we invented (web.dev Web Vitals). Test with Google's free PageSpeed Insights, pick the mobile tab, fix the red items first.

2. 2

   Nothing jumps around while the page loads.

   Images and banners that pop in late push the button a parent was about to tap. Every image needs a fixed width and height.

3. 3

   Text is readable without pinching. Buttons are big enough for a thumb.

   Minimum 16px body text. Tap targets at least 44px tall.

4. 4

   The site works on the phone in your pocket right now.

   Open it on cellular, not the academy Wi-Fi. Tap every menu item. If anything is cut off or overlaps, a parent already saw it.

Points 5-9: the first screen

"Above the fold" is an old newspaper term. It means the part of the page you see before scrolling. On a phone, that is a small rectangle, and it has to do a lot of work. A logo, a slogan, and a rotating slideshow will fill it completely without answering a single question. Spend it on the trial offer instead.

1. 5

   The trial offer is visible before anyone scrolls.

   "Book a free trial class" or "First week free" as a button, not a sentence buried in a paragraph. This is the one job of the first screen.

2. 6

   One tap to call.

   The phone number is a real tap-to-call link, in the header, and big enough to hit. Plain text means memorising it, leaving your site, and typing it into the dialler.

3. 7

   The first sentence says what you teach and who it is for.

   "Kids karate and adult Muay Thai in Sioux Falls" beats "Welcome to our dojo family." Search engines read that sentence too.

4. 8

   Your city or neighborhood appears in the first screen.

   A parent checking three schools wants to know where you are without hunting. So does Google.

5. 9

   A single, obvious primary button. Not five.

   Trial first. Everything else (schedule, programs, about) belongs in the menu.

Points 10-14: schedule, programs, and pricing

These five points are about a parent who has already decided they like the look of you and now needs facts. Three things commonly stand in the way: the schedule is a photo of a printout, pricing says "call for details", and the kids program is a paragraph on the homepage with no ages listed. Each one turns an answer the parent could have had in two seconds into a phone call they have to make during business hours.

On pricing: you do not have to publish your full rate card. You do have to say something, because a page with no price gives the reader nothing to compare and no way to rule you in. "We quote after your free trial so we can match you to the right program, and there are no contracts" is honest and it answers the question. "Memberships start at $X" is more concrete still, if you can stand behind it.

1. 10

   The class schedule is on the site as text, not a photo or a PDF.

   Photos of schedules cannot be read by a phone's search, cannot be found by Google, and are usually out of date.

2. 11

   Each program has its own page: kids, teens, adults, competition, women-only.

   A parent searching "kids jiu jitsu" should land on a page about kids jiu jitsu, with its own schedule and its own trial button.

3. 12

   Ages and levels are stated for every kids class.

   "Little Dragons, ages 4-6" answers the age question before anyone has to ask it. "Kids classes" does not.

4. 13

   Pricing is honest: a price, a range, or a plain sentence on how you price.

   "Memberships start at $X/month, no contracts" or "We quote after your free trial because we match you to a program" both work. A blank wall does not.

5. 14

   The trial offer says exactly what happens next.

   What to wear, when to arrive, how long it takes, whether a parent stays on the mat side. Remove the fear of the unknown.

Points 15-20: trust, the parent test

A parent is about to leave a six-year-old with an adult they have never met, in a room they have never been in. Everything in this group answers one silent question: can I trust these people with my kid? You answer it with faces, real photos, and plain talk about safety.

Reviews matter here, with one rule: they must be real and checkable. A widget that pulls your live Google reviews, or a plain link to your Google Business Profile, does the job. Hand-typed quotes with a first name and a star row look fake even when they are real, because parents can't verify them.

1. 15

   Instructor bios with real names, real photos, and lineage or rank.

   Parents are handing you their child. They want a face and a history, not a stock photo of a stranger in a gi.

2. 16

   Photos of real classes in your real room.

   Kids in your uniforms on your mats. Blurry is fine. Stock photos of a sunset dojo are not.

3. 17

   A kids safety section.

   Instructor background checks, how sparring is introduced, injury protocol, who is on the mat, pickup rules. Say it out loud.

4. 18

   Google reviews shown on the site, pulled from your Google Business Profile.

   Use a widget that reads your live Google reviews or link straight to them. Never type reviews in by hand; parents check.

5. 19

   Full address, an embedded map, and parking or entrance notes.

   "Back of the strip mall, enter by the gym door" saves a first-day meltdown.

6. 20

   Hours that match your Google Business Profile exactly.

   Front desk hours, class hours, holidays. Keep them identical in both places so a parent never has two answers to choose between.

Points 21-24: conversion plumbing

"Plumbing" is everything that happens after the tap. The form, the confirmation, the alert to your front desk, and the follow-up. A beautiful site with a form that emails an inbox nobody checks is a leak you cannot see.

1. 21

   The trial form asks for four things or fewer.

   Name, phone, email, which program. That is everything you need to call them back. Ask the rest at the front desk, where it is a conversation instead of a chore.

2. 22

   Submitting the form sends the parent a confirmation and sends you a text or email within a minute.

   Then someone at the school calls back the same day. The site's job ends when yours begins.

3. 23

   No dead pages, no broken links, no expired promotions.

   Click every link once a month. A live "Summer 2023 camp" page is the one thing on your site that dates it precisely.

4. 24

   You can see where trial requests come from.

   Free tools like Google Analytics or Search Console tell you whether a request came from Google, Facebook, or a flyer. Without that you are guessing where to spend.

Point 22 deserves a second look. Every trial request should hit a phone someone carries, not just a website inbox. And the follow-up should happen the same day, ideally within the hour, while the parent is still thinking about it. We wrote the exact texts and emails for that in the trial class follow-up scripts.

Score your site and pick what to fix first

Add up your yes answers out of 24.

Fix-first order, if you can only do three things: (1) trial offer and click-to-call in the first screen, (2) schedule as real text with ages on every kids class, (3) speed. Those three fix the moment in the parking lot.

If your score is under 14 and nobody at the school can edit the site, a rebuild is often less work than the patching. That is what we do: a custom five-page, mobile-first site with copy included, built against this checklist, for $999 one time plus $50 a month for hosting, updates, and keeping it fast. You see a free preview of your new site within 24 hours before paying anything. Score the preview against this checklist too.

Questions