Have you ever wondered what the importance of having a presentable website for your accounting firm? For beginners, it is the first experience and interaction point for your clients, staff firm and prospects. It does not matter whether the site is active or not, some factors must be considered.
Having a website does not necessarily mean it’s effective. Some firms are running websites with outdated designs and links that are no longer functional. Others are troublesome and not easy to navigate.
The problem of lacking a website is that firms may miss out on new prospect contacts and other marketing benefits associated with owning a website. Poor sites create a negative impression of the firm to the site visitors.
Tips for keeping your site as a valuable resource and effective to your visitors
Fresh content
It does not have to be a news website. However, it is important to choose and offer fresh and relevant content about events or products. The news should be beneficial to visitors to the site; it may be the clients or the suppliers.
Keeping the brand in focus
Even the firm with the best award needs branding. Branding makes the goals of the firm clearer thereby creating more traffic to the site. The logo, about us and contact sections, must be present. The “About Us” page should give insight into factors that make your firm unique to potential clients. Also, find a name that is short and easy to recall.
Write for prospects and clients
Your primary focus should be on the clients. Write in a manner that the customers and prospects can easily comprehend. Understand that they may not be tax pros and accountants, therefore, go slow on the jargon.
Keep the site useful
The site should not only contain the contact information and the bio as it will be of limited use to new and potential clients. Adding features such as savings and tax calculator will make the site useful thereby making attractive to new site visitors.
Spell check
Typos and spelling mistakes are ugly and an eyesore. Before publishing any new content on your site, run a quick edit. Most sites have a spell checker. For sites that may lack such features, copy pasting the content into a Word document and edit it before publishing. Better still; let someone else help you proofread it.
Test the site
It is important always to ensure that all aspects of the website are working correctly. The external links to other pages and sites should be functional.
The basic design of the site should be intuitive. It should guide users by making site navigations easy. The home page should be appealing and straightforward. A slow website is a major turn off.
Promote your specialties
The site should contain pages that list and describes the service the firm offers. If the company offers any specialized services, it would be advisable to create landing pages on the website. Alternatively, one may create a different website specifically for the specialized services.
Make yourself visible
Some tools promote online visibility such as SEO. Ensure that tags, headers, and site descriptions are utilized as they make the site findable.
