Reduce Your CPA Website Design Costs
Custom sites are ludicrously costly. If you're creating a custom CPA website you know how easily the cost can get out of control. Luckily there are some simple tricks that can greatly shrink, or even obviate, your setup costs.
Before you decide to use one ask yourself, "Do I truly need a custom website". There are startlingly few advantages to using a "from scratch" custom CPA website.
You may very well find that a template is a superior choice for your service. Lots of of the difficulties typically associated with templates, generally SEO and flexibility, have been fixed by a new generation of tools. I'll build you a custom site if you want, but do you really need to spend that much money?
Don't get bogged down by graphic design costs.
You're going to be up to your eyeballs creating content for your site. It really doesn't make much sense to obsess on the superficial appearance of the site. All this does is add to your costs and make more work for you. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to get the job done in two or three drafts. Will it be perfect? Maybe not, but perfection doesn't really matter. A custom CPA website will cost a lot of money; at least $2000. If you have a good reason to spend that much go for it, just be sure it's not a vanity expense, because in terms of building your accounting practice there are usually better ways to spend that money. There are a lot of companies that provide excellent accounting and tax website templates. These products are more than adequate for most small to medium sized firms. They also tend to come packed with content, so you'll be able to get a good site up much faster for a lot less work.
If you consider all these factors and you still feel that a custom site is the solution for you there are some cheats that might help you keep your costs way down. Some companies that provide CPA website templates will be able to modify an existing template to suit your needs much more cheaply than the cost of a full blown custom site.
Think about a few website design basics before making a final decision. Unless you plan to take up web design your website will never exactly match your vision. Accountants are often type A personalities and, as a rule, are in the habit of (and are well paid for) managing tiny details. This might make you a good accountant, but it may not necessarily make you a good graphic designer. Doing draft after draft of your website is going to get very expensive very quickly. It's not really possible to get exactly what you want unless you do it yourself. Try to come in to the design process with an open mind about what your site is going to look like.
Keep in mind that the look of the site really isn't all that important. If you look at highly successful A-list sites like Google, CraigsList and Reddit you'll see that aesthetics is really not all that important to designing a successful site.
The number one reason for design cost overruns is overestimating the importance of graphic design. Finalize your graphic design choices before the designer starts coding, and once you make your decision, stick to it. Once the coding process begins even seemingly minor changes become very expensive. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on colors. Color is an important element of a website, but some folks just don't get it. Every monitor on the planet displays color a little differently.
If you really want a custom site your best strategy is to hire a skilled and experienced designer who shares your basic vision and try to trust his or her process. Stay focused on the design elements that really matter.
Don't treat your website like a product roll-out, treat it as what it is: a marketing instrument. I've had a lot of clients refuse to publish until the website's "perfect". It breaks my heart to see perfectly good site's sit unpublished for months or even years because the owner is overly focused on making it "Perfect". Even if they succeed it's never worth the time and money they spent getting it "just so". The most ironic part is that while they may have a really nice site, it's a site designed to appeal to the website owner. This is a tragic, but common, mistake in advertising. Too many advertisers are afraid to confront their clients on this issue and just let them do this. Your website should be designed to appeal to your prospects, not to you. This brings us back to content. The function of your graphic design is to keep visitors from hitting the back button the first time they see your site, anything beyond that is just gravy. It's your content that will really showcase your practice. If your content is useful, the presentation is friendly, and the site is easy to navigate your visitors will be back again and again until they finally decide to step into your sales funnel.
Website development is an ongoing process, so don't think of your CPA website as finished just because you've got your design done. Your website will never be "finished". If you wait to take your website public until it's "finished" you'll never get it up, and if you ever allow yourself to treat your website as "finished" it will quickly slide into obsolescence.
Once the decision to invest in a website is made treat it like a proper business expense. Get the website up and working for you as quickly as possible. A website only has value if it's public. Not only will it start making money for you, it will also begin accumulating domain authority in the search engines. Once the site is open you can continue to tweak it all you like. In fact the more tweaking you do the better. The search engines respect sites that continue to grow and change once they open.
Your CPA website is an investment in your firm. Address it just like you'd treat a redesigned lobby, a cold-call campaign, or any alike marketing cost. Regardless of whether you determine to create a custom site or start with a template and shape it from there, get your website up quickly and let your contacts see as it continuously improves.