Playlist

Playlist is reimagining the role of the fitness website by connecting discovery, booking and operations.

Fitness consumers can discover a business almost anywhere today. A recommendation from a friend might lead to an Instagram search. A ClassPass listing might introduce someone to a studio they have never heard of. Google, TikTok and, increasingly, AI assistants can all play a role in putting a fitness or wellness business on a prospective client’s radar.

But before that person commits, there is a good chance they will take a familiar next step: pull up the business’s website.

“The website is often still where someone decides whether to give you their money,” says Grace Dale, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Playlist, the parent company behind Mindbody, ClassPass, Booker, EGYM and Kite. “People find a studio a dozen different ways now and almost all of those paths end with someone typing the business name into a browser to look it over before they commit.”

And they don’t necessarily spend long doing it. Prospective clients may give a business about 30 seconds to answer some basic questions: Is this place legitimate and open? What does it cost? When can I go?

“If the site answers those quickly, you’re more likely to get a booking,” Dale says. “If it looks like it was last touched in 2019, or the schedule is a PDF, people are more likely to bounce and find a different option.”

For Dale, that makes the modern fitness website more than another marketing channel.

“I see a website as less of a discovery channel and more where trust gets built, where your brand ethos comes through, and where a transaction can happen,” she says.

Connecting the Website to Operations

The challenge is that many operators have historically managed their websites separately from the software running the business itself. That creates another place where information must be entered, updated and maintained, and another opportunity for what the business knows and what the customer sees to diverge.

“When you run a studio, what you’re selling is a specific class at a specific time with a specific instructor, and all of that already lives in Mindbody or Booker,” Dale says. “If a website keeps its own separate copy of that information, the copy starts drifting the moment anything changes.”

The consequences can appear small at first. A price on the website no longer matches the price at the front desk. A class that moved a month ago remains listed at its previous time. A customer tries to book a spot that is already full.

“Each of those turns into a support call, a refund, or a client who may decide  not to come back,” she says.

There can also be a conversion cost when a website and booking platform operate separately. A prospective client may click “book” only to be sent to a different-looking platform to complete the transaction, adding another handoff at the moment they are ready to buy.

Playlist’s newly launched Customized Websites service is designed to eliminate that separation. Available to Mindbody and Booker customers at no additional cost, the service pulls pricing and scheduling information directly from the operator’s software so that changes are reflected on the customer-facing site and bookings can happen directly from the page.

“Clients see what’s actually true and can book without leaving the page,” Dale says.

Take the Website Off the To-Do List

Building the website is only part of the workload. A custom site can cost as much as $10,000, according to Playlist, while DIY platforms transfer much of the work back to the operator. Then comes the ongoing job of maintaining it.

“Prices, instructors, schedules and class names all change, and those updates crowd a to-do list, either taking up time or leaving you with an outdated site,” he says.

Customized Websites uses AI to build a site from what a business already has: its Instagram content, photography and branding, plus the services, pricing and scheduling details in Mindbody or Booker. The result is a fully customized site that reflects the business’s own look, tone and ethos. A Playlist team member then reviews and refines every site before it goes live. “That step matters,” Dale says. “Our team catches anything important, confirms booking works end to end, and goes back to the operator before launch.”

The combination has significantly shortened the traditional website production process.

“What used to be weeks of production now takes days,” Dale says. “We’ve launched hundreds of sites with this same process.”

Turning Website Visits into Bookings

Ultimately, reducing an operator’s workload is only valuable if the resulting website also works for the customer.

During Playlist’s pilot of Customized Websites, one beta customer saw bookings increase by more than 126% in the month following the launch of its new site. 

“When schedules are visible and accurate, pricing is clear, and booking is integrated directly within the page instead of detached, more people are likely to book,” she says.

Mobile experience is particularly important.

“Most of the traffic is people on their phones deciding what to do for classes the next day,” Dale says. “If it takes more than a few taps to navigate someone’s website, you can easily lose them.”

Customized Websites also connects with Playlist’s AI Concierge, a 24/7 front-desk assistant designed to capture inquiries and help turn them into bookings. 

“AI Concierge helps catch missed inquiries,” Dale says. “The website is where people arrive to find accurate information, and AI Concierge handles the questions usually dedicated to front desk staff. Once the consumer gets their answer, they book directly on the website, so the whole thing happens in one place without any handoffs.”

Customized Websites also incorporate traditional SEO elements and signals used by AI crawlers. Regardless of how a prospective client arrives, the objective is the same: make accurate information easy to find and the next action easy to take.

Less Technology to Manage

The broader opportunity, Dale says, is reducing how much technology fitness and wellness operators have to initiate and maintain themselves.

“Most operators have been left to assemble their own tech stack, paying for a website builder, an email tool, a texting tool and a reviews tool separately, then figuring out how to make them talk to each other,” he says.

The goal, Dale says, is to make technology require less from the operator. 

“The measure I care about is how much technology work an operator has to do themselves,” he says. “Every product we ship should take some of that off their plate, and it should show up inside the software they already use rather than as another login or integration they have to configure with their existing booking software.”

That leaves operators with more time for the work that brought many of them into fitness and wellness in the first place.

“Studio owners got into this industry to teach classes, build community and create experiences that people come back to over and over again,” Dale says. “We want the software they use to do that to be additive rather than an obstacle.”

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