9 Features an Accounting firm Website must have

9 Features an Accounting firm Website must have

If you’re wondering how to build a high converting website for your accounting firm, bookkeeping business, CPA firm or tax firm, I’m going to share some of our secret sauce.

Accounting websites & marketing by Feedbackwrench

First off, if you’re not great at web design, sales copywriting, and you’re not prolific in creating engaging content, just connect with us here at Feedbackwrench and we will build you one of the highest ranking websites possible that looks amazing and actually drives users to convert. We also create all sorts of content for bookkeeping businesses and accountants like our guide on what is an outsourced accounting model, blogging ideas for bookkeepers, how to get bookkeeping clients during tax season, and 3 practical ways to get bookkeeping clients.

What should you include in a website for an accounting firm?

What makes a good accounting firm website?

How can you increase the conversion rate of your business website?

How to convert more B2B leads on your CPA, bookkeeping and accountant website?

What’s the difference between a high converting and low converting accountant websites?

Let’s dive right into this and let’s see if we can help you understand what will help your business grow into a B2B conversion machine!

Traffic vs. Conversions

Before we jump in, it’s always important to remember that there’s a big difference between driving traffic and converting traffic.

First we want to build a high converting website, that’s a lot like a mouse trap that works really well.

After you have established a sound, high converting Accountant website, then we should drive traffic through paid ads, content marketing, and search engine optimization.

Let’s dive into 5 features a website for an accounting firm should have

9 Must Have features for Accountant and Tax Firm Websites:

1 - Value Focused Messaging

What’s important to your B2B clients?

Like, what would really motivate them to switch accountants and work with you?

What are the real important pain points they have?

How can you make their life better and where are they trying to get to?

The answers to these questions start to show you what’s valuable to an accountant customer.

It’s about your customer, not you.

Your website must have clear and concise messaging that focuses on them and what’s valuable to them, not about you and your firm.

Nobody cares about you or your business, they only care how your business can help them get to where they want to be.

So the first key to a high converting website is to speak to what’s valuable to them, and don't talk about yourself.

Now, here’s where I’m different than the rest of the accountant marketing out there, I truly understand what they value because I’ve ran over 400 meetings to close outsourced accounting clients and I’ve also helped hundreds more become customers at my old firm.

Things Customers Value from Accountants:

• Never overpay in taxes
• Don’t get ripped off
• Avoid IRS audits and mistakes
• Have perfect financials and stay out of trouble.
• Keep the financials perfectly.
• Provide pro-active and helpful reports
• Help pay in taxes wisely so they don’t have a year end tax bomb go off.
• Avoid hiring full time staff
• Avoid year end catch ups and disasters from bad bookkeeping.

The hardest thing about understanding the value propositions for business owners and their accountants, is that they are generally uninterested in the subject matter itself, and it’s much more of a defensive service that they outsource to so they can focus on what they do best.

You Customers don't care about accounting or tax - they only want the benefits.

Because your business owner customer really doesn’t understand that much about the specifics of Accounting, Bookkeeping, payroll and tax, you need to do a balancing act between providing specific problems, casting vision for how the future might get rough, identifying current problems, and casting vision for a future that allows them to thrive and survive.

Your website needs to have excellent questions, statements, and communication that shows that you are in the business of solving their problem, and you deeply understand the problems that they will find themselves in or that they are currently embroiled in.

You need to cast vision for a future that is amazing, as well as sharing some of the vision you know about when things go poorly.

The bottom line, is that your accountant website will convert much better when you are tapping into what’s important to the customer instead of simply listing out the various services you provide and their features.

Talk value and benefits, not features.

2 - Problem Focused Messaging

Another tweak to this is to make sure that you very clearly and concisely frame up the problems that they have.

When you are seen as a solution to a problem, your value increases.

Business owners tend to only think about tax and accounting when it goes poorly, and you need to spend a little time reminding them of the problems that could occur and that you see throughout your week.

Your service needs to be the solution to a major problem that has real consequences to it.

When we create a website here at Feedbackwrench, we have two sections that we invest pretty heavily in. The benefits section and the stakes section.

The benefits section and the stakes section

The benefit section

In the benefits section, we want to clearly mark out all of the amazing things your customer will experience and receive when they choose your service.

Generally, we use headers and sub headers to bullet point very clear messages about lifestyle benefits that they will experience from working with us.

The steaks section

While the benefits are like the flour, butter and sugar within a cookie recipe, the stakes is like the salt pinch included to complete the recipe.

Without going a little negative and reminding them of the potential problems of choosing incorrectly, the website just doesn’t have teeth to it.

The stakes section is going to be where are you list out three or more costs of getting it wrong, reminding them of all the potential problems you will save them from.

When people associate your service as the solution to a problem, you’ll see that you can charge more and your conversion rates will skyrocket.

3 - Google Reviews & Testimonials

We need to build credibility, and nothing does that more than clearly showing other customers that are excited about their experience with you.

You need to work hard to gather up as many Google reviews as possible because that will lead to more traffic and higher conversions, and we also want to invest in a more personalized testimonial.

The key to getting more reviews is simply following up with customers, asking them to provide a review, and provide them a clear path by sharing the link to your Google my business profile. It becomes much easier to get reviews when you also shrink the commitment that you are asking for, simply framing it up as “letting people know that you’re not crazy and that you actually help people.”

Get Google reviews for your website!

Testimonials

It’s also helpful to take some of those quotes, edit them down to their core, and then show large photos and logos associated with their companies in a prominent way on your website.

It’s not enough to simply paste in quotes from people, it’s much more effective when you show that they are real folks, with real businesses, just like a prospect might be.

Reviews and testimonials will dramatically increase your conversion rates, and will show that you are a credible solution to a problem.

Work to get more Google reviews and then find ways to grab photos of some of those customers, and even request short video testimonials, and then feature them on your website and even post them throughout your social media profiles and such.

Whatever you do, make the review real.

Never fake a review and always try to show a photo or video.

It’s also really good to edit the testimonial down to its core so it doesn’t ramble.

4 - Each Service Gets a Page & Deep Content

Another important feature that an accounting website or CPA firm website should have, is significant and compelling service pages.

Every service that you want to rank for in Google, should have its own highly developed an optimized landing page with significant content on it.

The Service page should also do all the heavy lifting of sales and winning over customers because they will often be a Gateway page used in advertising.

In other words, your service pages might end up being the only page that a customer sees or will at least be the first page lacy, so make sure that it has all the credibility building and trust turn signals that the other pages have including customer reviews, customer focused language, and calls to action.

You should also have relevant blog posts, sorted by a category that represents the service keyword, so that people can learn more even if they r latent ready to commit to a consultation yet.

Your core service pages will end up sending signals to the internet that you’re in the business of doing that particular business, and you will rank higher and close more customers because if it.

5 - Lead Generator Lead Magnet

Asking for a consultation is a lot like going for a marriage proposal on the first meeting.

Most people need to advance at their own pace and develop to a place where they know and trust you before they actually book.

We want to create intermediary steps, just like when you’re dating for marriage.

A lead generating PDF or lead magnet is a great way to have people join the conversation and start building up a connection to you without asking for a consultation right away.

A lead magnet is meant to get them some a value piece of information without asking for much more than their email.

People are getting more and more hesitant to give up their email for lead maintenance, but if it’s actually valuable, then they will definitely jump on your newsletter and download it.

One of the most important parts of a lead magnet is the follow up.

A - the landing page in video sales later with the lead magnet page.
B - email follow up after they download it.
C - the retargeting advertising campaigns after it.

A lead magnet is a great first step and it allows you to build connection, add value and position yourself as a trusted guide that has credibility, empathy and authority in your industry.

B - Real and helpful emails are a must. DO NOT say too many words, do not assume this person wants to hear you drone on, you need to keep focused on adding value & speaking clearly to what's important to them.  When your emails are done just for email sake, you will lose people.

C - Make an audience on Google and Facebook of the people who've downloaded your lead magnet.  Hit those people with a healthy advertising campaign and keep in front of them as you're not deepening the relationship.

6 - Niche Landing Pages for SEO and Ads

If you target a niche, you’re very likely to be able to advertise effectively and eventually rank pages for that niche in search engines.

If you write an article about “how to setup accounting for a real estate agent”, you would be 10 times more likely to rank in search engines than if you write an articles without the real estate niche.

Besides being more focused and easier to rank, we know that people are inclined to trust you and see you as an authority much more if you approach their industry niche.

Niche marketing and content writing is super effecting, and you’ll want to be able to create robust landing pages that help you target those niches.

Niche landing pages are web pages built to target and convert a particular niche or to be used in a particular campaign.

• Industry niche
• Location niche
• Service niche
• Timing niche
• Event niches

The key is that it’s built to convert and can be part of a fully integrated advertising and SEO campaign, all meant to position you as the authority and solution in the industry.

Great B2B Niches for Tax & Accounting Firms:

Here's a list of industry niches for marketing reasons that you might like.  Many people search for industry lists for marketing, and I figured I'd through out some of the best industry. niches to target with your marketing & sales efforts.  You might want need a niche for facebook marketing, a niche for Google Targeting, or others - so here's some examples.

• General contractors
• Remodelers.
• Home builders.
• Deck & hardscape companies.
• Landscaping
• Lawn care @ snow plow
• Painting companies
• Siding, roofing and windows contractors.
• Automotive & auto body
• Car dealerships
• Motorcycle and ATV dealerships.
• Restaurants &
• HVAC both commercial and residential.
• Realtors
• Real estate investors
• Plumbers
• Framer
• Electricians
• Concrete companies
• Masonry companies
• Chimney sweeps
• Manufacturing and distribution companies.

Dealerships of niche equipment & heavy machinery.

Machinists, Welders & fabricators

Logistics, Truckers owner operators, and trucking companies.

Marine dealerships, mechanics etc (boats)

Air BNB or short term rental folks.

Property management companies.

Hotels & motels

The list goes on, but each of these are the types that you could create content for and see a great deal of SEO and advertising opportunity.

7 - Video sales letters

Your website should have videos that are prominent that can do the selling and positioning for you without any commitment.

Why video sales letters are so powerful?

A - require no commitment
B - require no logistics and timing
C - much more effective than reading
D - Builds relationship and connection
E - creates leverage, basically printing time and reproducing yourself to work on your behalf
F - easy to change and update

8 - Fast and Responsive

They should go without saying, but if a website is slow, chances are that it’s not going to rank very high in Google and it’s going to be frustrating for users.

The most important thing for Paige speed is to make sure that you never have oversized photos on the website.

Whenever a webpage takes a long time to load, chances are that there are a handful of really large images throughout the page which take a long time to load.

Your website might Love fast for you, but then when you try it on another computer, it might load really slow.

It’s really hard to catch the large sized images by the person editing the website because they load in your cash so that it loads quickly for your own computer but not for others.

As a rule, we try to keep images smaller than 200 kB if at all possible and focus on ensuring that a page never has more than about 2 MB with the photos on it.

Besides slow pitch speeds from images, you’ll also want to use high-quality hosting, a CDN, and a website that’s not full of bloated plug-ins like a typical word press website.

Your website just needs to be quick and snappy or people won’t want to use it.

Your website should also work really well on a mobile screen as well as an iPad screen.

The process of ensuring that a website works on all screen sizes is called responsive design.

You should consider thinking about mobile first, and then your desktop browser.

We won’t be labor the subject here, but your website needs to work really well on all sizes of screens and should flow smoothly between breakpoints.

9 - Retargeting and Remarketing campaigns

Most people that go to your website do not convert or do anything, but someday they’re going to want to do business with an accountant.

Once people hit your websites, it would be very prudent to stay in front of them and persistently convey your value propositions and try to help them get to know you.

We can place our website visitors inside Google, Facebook, LInkedin and even Tik-Tok remarketing audiences.

If we install the Google Ads Remarketing Tag, the Facebook Pixel, the Linkedin Insight Tag and the Tik Tok pixel, we can then create audiences of various types.

We can then create different campaigns to stay in from of those website visitors.

Your accounting website will be much better off if you setup remarketing, because folks will start coming back to your website and build trust with you.

Customers could also see YouTube bumper ads, video ads, articles, calls to action and other posts from you that can help folks get to know you, trust you, learn your value propositions and eventually be ready to choose you when the time is right.

Remarketing is a huge feature of a website that your accounting firm should have,  otherwise all that hard earned traffic can go to waste!

Conclusion

A website can really help you land clients, and it’s more important than ever.

Your accountant website will serve as a lead generating machines  and help you achieve your goals and grow your overall market share while positioning you to get more of the right kinds of clients.

Please, book a consultation to get connected with us here at Feedbackwrench and we’ll help you build an accountant website that’s absolutely stunning.