Crafting an Online Coaching Portal (incl. Software Solution)

If you’re new to coaching or just thinking about hopping into the field, you might not be aware of the need for an online coaching portal. You might be thinking, the coaches of decades past certainly managed without online coaching portals!

Although coaches in the past could practice effectively without an online coaching portal, times have changed. With potential clients spread out across the globe, it no longer makes sense to work only within one geographic location. In virtually all areas of coaching, it’s simply far more practical to move your practice online, or at least partially online.

Why Craft a State-of-the-Art Coaching Portal?

So you know you need to move at least some of your practice onto a virtual platform, but do you really need a coaching portal? Won’t videoconferencing software and email do the trick?

The answer is a resounding “no!”

Although email and video chatting are integral parts of most virtual coaching relationships, they certainly aren’t the only integral parts. Being able to email and chat virtually is the bare minimum—necessary, but not sufficient for a successful coaching process.

Consider the resources you want to share with clients. Using email to send worksheets or exercises is fine if it’s just one or two, but what about when there are multiple resources you want to send over time to multiple clients? You can keep replying to the same email chain, but that gets messy and unmanageable after just a few back-and-forth messages.

And scheduling? Imagine having to schedule each and every session with every client yourself, manually, by murmuring over your calendar while multiple clients (and leads) wait to hear about your rapidly shifting availability.

Finally, think about invoicing and collecting payments. Imagine having to craft each invoice yourself, changing the dates, names, and client information every time, and double- and triple-checking the email addresses before you send it off.

You’re likely going to be spending multiple hours per week on just these three administrative tasks, let alone the actual business of coaching. This is why it’s so important to have an online coaching portal—and not just any portal, but a state-of-the-art portal.

You don’t want to waste any of your valuable time on administrative or housekeeping tasks that could easily be taken on by software; you want to save your precious working hours for the thing that got you into coaching: helping your clients.

11 Things to Include in Your Life Coaching Portal

When looking for a good online portal for your coaching business, start with a list of the features you need. You may need some or all of the following features:

1. Scheduling/appointments and reminders
2. Client profiles
3. Invoicing and billing
4. Content sharing (e.g., resources, videos, worksheets, exercises)
5. Documentation (e.g., intake forms, collecting signatures)
6. Care pathways (i.e., your coaching programs)
7. Secure chat/messaging
8. Telephone or other voice communication
9. Videoconferencing or video chatting (perhaps with extra features like screen sharing and the capacity to handle multiple participants)
10. Data collection tools (e.g., client progress, adherence to assigned tasks/goals)
11. Business intelligence features (e.g., data analysis and monitoring)

If you’re a solo practitioner or just starting out, you might not need things like business intelligence features, but you’ll probably need most of the basic features (e.g., scheduling, invoicing and billing, content sharing). Go through the list and see which of them would benefit your practice before making a decision.

Once you have your list of required features in hand, you can start comparing available coaching management platforms.

Quenza: The Best Online Life Coaching Portal

You have options when it comes to the best online coaching portal for your business, but you’ll definitely want to consider Quenza. It was designed with you in mind: your practice, your clients, and your needs.

Quenza is a comprehensive one-stop-shop for coaches and independent mental health care providers of all kinds. It offers an interface that’s easy to use and works on all devices, a library of evidence-based coaching tools to guide your clients, and a wide array of features that allow you to build your own customizable programs and pathways, complete with coaching assessments, exercises, tools, and information, all in one place.

You can use the Quenza platform to automate your clients’ path, encourage their growth, and enhance your own effectiveness. This portal will collect all the vital information for you, like scores, completion rate, and completion dates for all assigned activities.

9 Benefits of Quenza’s Portal for Coaches

Among many other features and tools, Quenza offers these great benefits:

1. The ability to create fully automated Pathways for your clients based on their needs; may include the intake process, onboarding, progress tracking, and follow-ups.
2. A drag and drop Activity builder to assign exercises, assessments, homework, and learning activities to your clients.
3. A library of pre-made, science-based Activities and Pathways to choose from, or to modify to fit your clients’ unique needs.
4. A client app that notifies clients of new Activities, keeps a running personal to-do list for clients, sends them automated reminders for overdue Activities, and builds a portfolio of their completed Activities.
5. The ability to view client responses instantly and track their progress, choose who can view results, and download complete activities in PDF format.
6. A dedicated section for coaching notes on your clients and their progress.
7. Branding and logo functionality, so you can make all client emails and PDF results your own.
8. The ability to communicate directly with clients through chat, all in a HIPAA and GDPR-compliant medium.
9. The capacity for post-session feedback and coaching evaluation to keep on top of your clients’ experience.

Final Thoughts

Whether you choose Quenza or another option, you can see how important it is to have a good online coaching portal. Using email, Zoom, texting, and manual invoices can work when you have a couple of clients, but with more clientele comes more administrative work, and less time for you to engage in the coaching process you’ve worked so hard to create and perfect.

Leave some of the heavy lifting for your software, and focus your energy on providing the best coaching experience for your clients.

Make use of the Quenza platform and try out the $1, 30-day trial to take an admin load off your back, and allow you to focus on your clients.

Happy coaching!

Frequently Asked Questions