Accounting Website Design- Focus on Your Real Prospective Clientele

I'm always astounded at how many accounting websites I see, gorgeous nicely coded sites, that fail to satisfactorily target an audience. The first thing you should do when you kickoff planning your accounting webs is identify and target the market that will bring in the best return for your company. Every accounting firm is unique, and a site must be designed to lure that particular firm's clientele. OK, I have a stock template that I get started with. I need to start with something. But in every case it's necessary to modify the template to suit the business.

These are usually minor changes. The standard template is designed to support a small to mid sized full-service accounting firm that works with individuals and small businesses. This describes about 70% of my clients, but even they need to modify the site to suit their firms by removing pages that reference services they don't actually offer and adding staff biographies.

The really fun sites are designed to a more specific audience, and of course these sites require a lot more work. 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. Construction is a common specialty, and I do a lot of sites that are specialized to non-English speaking populations. Many accounting website designs focus on a particular industry specialty. 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 is actually pretty easy to do. A lot of web designers just don't bother. Having an industry specialty gives you a HUGE advantage. Your clients don't need to teach you their 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. Vanity sites are almost never appropriate to accounting firm. 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. In point of fact, they tend to be too elegant and too smart. They're very formal and full people in expensive suits with exceedingly professional and utterly impersonal bio pages. The content tends to be verbose, very thorough and often highly 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. They make visitors feel small, often even stupid. This pretty much eliminates any chance that this visitor will ever call you.

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. It's much better marketing to replace these pictures with images 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. You just need to be there. Having some idea who's going to pick up the phone will make people more comfortable calling you.

You need to work out your target audience first and foremost. Before you even write down one line of code take a little time to work out who your accounting website design should focus on. Sustain your attention on the prospect and new clients will roll in a lot more rapidly.