Understanding Your Your Audience Can Improve Your Accounting Website Design
I really enjoy accounting website design, and over the years I've gotten exceedingly good at it. As is often the case you'll find that loads of the most imperative decisions you'll make respecting designing your site are made during the planning phase, way before the designer writes a line of html. Possibly the most relevant of these choices is identifying your target market. Alas I'm not asking what you wish to focus on, although that's absolutely a valid choice. If your aim is to build your practice, though, you need to find and focus on the marketplace that will bring in the most money. Whether you decide to chase your heart or your wallet, every CPA practice and every market is distinctive the need to target a reasonable audience, however, is an absolute. OK, I have a stock template that I get started with. I have to. But in every case it's necessary to modify the template to suit the business.
Often these changes are pretty minor. Most accounting firms are small and can't afford fancy custom sites with fat setup fees. A standard accounting website design assumes a small operation with an existing client base and marketing hard to bring in small businesses. This description adequately describes 7 accounting practices in 10. No matter how closely the client conforms to this standard, though, they still need to modify the site by removing services they don't provide and adding staff information.
Some firms have very unusual practices. These tend to be a lot more work, but they're also a lot of fun. I've done all manner of these, and whenever I think there's nothing new under the sun another client comes along and throws a curve ball at me. Some are pretty common. Construction accounting websites lead the pack, followed closely by bilingual sites. There are a lot of industry specific accounting firms out there. Hotels and restaurants are common. I've also designed specialty sites for accounting firms specialized in car dealerships, vineyards, funeral homes, and many others. CPAs with a CFP have particularly strict guidelines they must follow.
The very first thing you need to do when you decide to publish your website is identify your target market so you can design it to appeal to this audience. This isn't a complicated or difficult process, but it is a process that gets overlooked a lot. The big advantage to having an industry specialty is that the client doesn't need to teach you her business. Illustrate this by using common problems the owners of these businesses face as talking points. For example, my target audience is accountants so I increase my support hours and do everything I can to avoid bothering them during tax season.
The antithesis of good accounting website design is the vanity site. A lot of accounting firms have a poor understanding of marketing and these clients often design "vanity" sites. These sites are only appropriate if you have no need to use your website for marketing. They will not attract new prospects: they're not designed to. These site are usually designed to appeal to the site's owners. These sites tend to be elegant and smart. This is not always a good thing. It's easy to go too far. These sites tend to be stuffy and boring. The people are overdressed and the bios read like bad resumes. The writing is dry, verbose, and overly technical. I suppose there may be some big corporate accounting firms for whom sites like this are appropriate, and it would be a blast to design one, but so far I've yet to be contacted by anyone who didn't want to attract new clients with their site. Vanity sites tend to scare customers away. Making a visitor feel small and/or stupid is not a good marketing strategy.
A friendly site is much better for conversions than a "l33t" one. An elegant design is fine, but be careful about making it intimidating. People have a natural fear of strangers. If you give your site a friendly feel people will have a much easier time overcoming their anxieties and picking up the phone. Don't write too smartly. An average small business owner reads at about a sixth grade level. If your site content is too smart it will leave most small business owners feeling confused, frustrated, or dumb. I'm the best in the business and even my websites need a little work out of the box. You'll notice the templates have lots of pictures of skinny, beautiful people in business suits. Replace them with real pictures of yourself and your staff. This helps me sell websites, but it's not necessarily the best look for your finished design. It's much better to have pictures of actual people that people can relate to. You don't need to be pretty. All that matters is that you be there. It gives people a sense of empowerment to feel like they know you before they call, and pictures can help them in this respect.
The number one stage in your accounting website design is working out your market. Keep your attention on the prospect and contacts will roll in much quicker.