Accounting Website Design can be a Long Term Marketing Campaign
Accounting website design is a somewhat highly-developed art. We've worked out how to make use of your CPA website to benefit your practice in numerous ways. A modern accounting website has hundreds of pages of special content, but if you really scrutinize one close up you'll see all the content on a suitably designed accounting website is focused on a solitary purpose. Your website will entice customers. It will help you improve client satisfaction and client retention. It will even help you operate your accounting business more efficiently. but all these functions have the same focus: Making money. A professional website is a place of business, and it's content should be chosen to that end. If something doesn't make you money, or save you money, don't put it on your site.
For the most part these profitability benefits are fairly obvious. Just having a website shows your prospects that you're keeping up with the times, and suggests that you can be trusted to adapt to their needs. Perhaps more importantly it gives people a chance to get to know you a little before calling you. A good web design can go a long way to helping people overcome their natural fear of strangers. Your website is a natural vehicle for providing useful tools to improve client satisfaction. Providing online file transfer and storage and posting tax forms on your website not only improves client retention, it also increases your office efficiency and reduces your expenses.
Your email newsletter and on line tax organizer saves you a fortune every year in printing, postage, and lost work hours.
Some of these benefits, however, are not as obvious. Many people think we give too much away, but this isn't so. Features like interactive financial calculators and free reports may seem frivolous, but they are actually powerful marketing tools, and prospecting for new clients is arguably the most important function of your website.
There have been many occasions that I've had to beg my clients not to remove these features. Others have wanted to use them to trap people's email addresses by password protecting the content. Ive done it. I admit it, but it's just bad marketing. When we design these websites we add this content intentionally, and our intent is to make you more money.
Free reports, I'm often told, give away what the accountant is selling but nothing could be further from the truth. Free reports and financial guides are carefully written to cross-sell your services. They're specifically chosen to showcase ways your client can save money and position you as the expert to turn to fort help. It's a dreadful mistake to remove them, or even make them harder to access. There is, however, an even more important reason to keep these features public. This seemingly frivolous content is also central to bringing new clients into the practice.
Most of your visitors won't necessarily be looking for a new accountant. At least not right away. I've seen it happen a lot, but it's an exception rather than the rule. There are a lot of reasons not to push too hard for a first visit sale. Dedicated buyers are going to buy whether you push them or not, but maybe our visitor already has an accountant she likes. Maybe she's still able to use the short tax forms. Remember, the average life expectancy of a client/accountant relationship is 6 years. Assuming you're actually planning to stay in business for any length of time this means it would be wise to treat just about everyone who visits your site as a long term prospect. In a few years her accountant may retire. Or get married. Or take a job with a large firm. Any number of things could happen. Even if the visitor is dirt poor there's no telling what the future may hold. Income changes. They could marry into different circumstances. One day they could start their own business or even just buy property. I'll never forget the panic I felt the first time I laid eyes on a 1040 long form and knew I needed to fill it out.
By eliminating this content you will be seriously reducing the marketing potential of your site. Even if all you do is require a login you will reduce participation profoundly. People don't like to give their email address away, and even if they give it to you they won't really use it. People rarely bother to log in during a visit, and even if they try they often forget their login information. The value of having regular users far outweighs the value of any emails you might trap by requiring a login.
Look at the Big Picture
Even if a visitor isn't necessarily ready to hire you today, we still want her visiting your site. Your accounting website design ought to be arranged accordingly. Give your visitors a caliber and amount of content that will keep them to visit persistently. It's all about putting your brand seen by prospective customers. If you can keep your brand in front of the prospect until they need you it's a fairly good bet that you'll be receiving a nice, hot phone call from many of them sooner or later!