This post provides 10 crucial tips to look at for websites for accountants.
Your website is in effect your brochure for your prospects and existing clients. It should be appealing to not only attract but engage visitors to keep them viewing pages on your website for as long as possible.
For an accounting firm, clear and bold call to actions with simple messaging and an easy to navigate menu is a solid foundation to build your website on.
Top tips for your website
If you’re looking for a new website to be designed and developed to help grow your business as part of a holistic inbound marketing campaign, here’s our top website tips for an accountancy firm to consider.
- Build your website with a good CMS: You need a good framework to build your website on. These days that means using Content Management Systems (CMS). Once the website is designed and developed, it enables easy upload of information so that content updates can be managed inhouse.
- Simple and engaging content: Review all your collateral and decide what you’ll use on the website and what needs to be cut out. For an accountancy firm, think about the services you offer and provide clear, precise information about each. If you think of who your target client is and what they are looking for in an accountancy practice, then write content that speaks to them. Make sure that your URL for these pages says exactly what’s being talked about on the page as this help with SEO to help your site become fully optimised for the search engines. So, if you’re talking about Corporation Tax or Self-employment tax, name the website page just that.
- Easy website navigation: During the design build stage pay a lot of attention to the menu and site map, think about the layout and whether it’s relevant and easy to navigate. You want visitors to find things quickly to help reduce the bounce rate and to keep them looking through your website for longer.
- Call to action: It’s not just about a clear menu, but it’s also about adding clear call to action buttons. These are often used for inbound marketing campaigns to drive visitors to: ‘download useful HMRC forms’; ‘sign up to a newsletter’; ‘book a consultation’.
- Imagery: This forms part of your content too. It makes the web sites more engaging and easier on the eye. But don’t forget to upload the right size as too large and this could impact on the speed of your website loading. You will also need to make sure that the imagery is mobile responsive so provide a great user experience whatever the platform.
- Is a blog relevant for an accountancy firm? Absolutely! Don’t be fooled by the influencer lifestyle type blogs and social media feeds you so often see. A blog is vital for a business website to be seen in organic google search and ultimatley being a lead generator for your firm. Why? Because it provides a dedicated space for uploading fresh content regularly. This keeps the website up to date and engaging for prospects, current clients and also the search engines. The one job of a search engine is to get the best result for the person searching for a particular term. Therefore, providing content with helpful tips, advice and links, will help you rise in the search rankings and help make it a lead generating website.
- Be targeted: For an accountancy firm, while you want a professional feel, as that’s what people will expect, you also need to make sure that the website design and content reflects your accountancy firms brand and appeals to your target audience. We call this the persona – a made up stereotypical client. So, this is where a blog page can allow you to create specific content which answers the challenges of your audience.
- Optimise your website: Any agency you work with will tell you about Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags and H1/H2 headings. A web designer can provide you with simple training on this once your website has been developed. Or you can engage a digital marketing agency to manage this for you moving forward. This means they can keep an eye on your keywords for you. But this is for another blog…you can read more about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) here.
- Be a disruptor: When it comes to AI this is the buzz word of the day in the accounting world. Recent reports from EY has revealed that 77% of respondents say that AI is expected to turn into an essential business driver across the financial services industry (Transforming Paradigms: A Global AI in Financial Services Survey). Therefore, if your firm is creating a new website, then should you be incorporating AI functionality? A simple chatbot is a great way to start, before embarking on an integrated CRM system for your practice.
- Back up your website: Most CMS websites provide modules to allow you to back up and to make safe against hackers. Unfortunately, it’s an everyday occurrence around the world where thousands of web robots (automated programs) check thousands of websites a second for weaknesses to exploit the owner. Do what you can to make it safe. A digital marketing agency that designs websites will usually incorporate regular backs ups into their ongoing management fee, so make sure you ask about this when you look to engage a web developer.
Stand out with your website
If you can get all this working yourself, then you will be off to a great start. Smart Cow is a digital agency for accountants so, if you’re in need of a web designer for accountants and web development book a consultation with us.