One of the best things about doing accounting website design is the challenge of identifying each clients target audience. One of the simple truths that keeps my job fun is that no two accounting firms are exactly alike. The need to focus on a market, however, is universal. There is a sort of “informal standard”. I use a starting template with this in mind. It’s not cost effective to start from scratch with every website. If I didn’t use a starting template each set-up would cost thousands of dollars. I have to start somewhere. 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. There aren’t many unusual accounting archetypes I haven’t already built websites for, but the diversity of specialty firms continues to surprise me. Construction is a common specialty, and I do a lot of sites that are specialized to non-English speaking populations. 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 is actually pretty easy to do. A lot of web designers just don’t bother. The big advantage to having an industry specialty is that the client doesn’t need to teach you her business. You can easily demonstrate this by adding content to your website design. Include some articles about accounting challenges common to their industry. Let me use my own business as an example. My target audience is accounting firms, so unlike other website providers I increase my support hours during tax season and make it a point to set your account up in such a way that I don’t need to contact you between January and April.

The worst sites by far are the vanity sites. A lot of accounting firms have a poor understanding of marketing and these clients often design “vanity” sites. A vanity site isn’t designed to appeal to prospects. 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. These sites tend to be stuffy and boring. The people are overdressed and the bios read like bad resumes. The content tends to be verbose, very thorough and often highly technical. This is fine if your firm works exclusively with large corporate clients, but if you’re a small firm looking to recruit small business owners into the fold be aware that sites like this tend to scare prospects 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 don’t like to call people they don’t know, and a friendly looking website full of smiling, easy to relate to people will go a long way to easing a prospects natural fear of strangers. Write your content at about a sixth grade level. If you write over your prospect’s head you’ll very likely leave them feeling frustrated, confused, or (worse yet) stupid. 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. The stock photos help me sell websites, but it’s much better to have real pictures 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 first step in your accounting website design is identifying your market. Keep your focus on the customer and the calls will roll in a lot faster.