Websites for accounting firms, starting with who they are for

Say who you are for, not what you do

Every firm offers the same services, and the only thing a visitor can use to distinguish one is who it works with.

A list of services tells a visitor nothing, because every competing firm lists them too. The information they need is whether this firm understands businesses like theirs.

Naming the client is more useful than naming the service. The industries you concentrate in, the size of business you suit, the situations you handle regularly.

It feels exclusionary and it is, deliberately. A firm that appears to be for everybody is for nobody in particular, and a visitor who recognizes themselves stops comparing.

The specialization usually exists already and is invisible. Most firms have a concentration of clients in something and have never said so on the website.

Claims about specialization and expertise are governed by state boards and the rules are not uniform, so how this is phrased is worth confirming rather than composing for effect.

Publish the pricing model even if you cannot publish prices

Prospects want to know how they will be charged, and silence reads as a firm avoiding the question.

Exact fees depend on the work, which is a real constraint and not a reason to say nothing. How you charge is entirely publishable and it is what people are actually asking.

Hourly, fixed fee or monthly arrangement, what a typical engagement includes, whether an initial conversation costs anything, and what causes a fee to be higher.

Ranges for defined services help considerably where they exist. A monthly bookkeeping arrangement or a standard business return can usually carry an indicative figure.

The fear is being compared on price. Prospects compare on price anyway, and the ones who select purely on it are the ones a capacity-limited firm should be filtering out.

It also improves the first conversation. A prospect who understood the model before contacting you is discussing scope rather than being surprised by an unfamiliar billing arrangement.

Credentials mean nothing unless you explain them

Letters after a name are meaningful to other professionals and largely opaque to a business owner.

A list of designations, memberships and certifications reads as decoration to somebody who does not know what any of them required.

Explaining what each one involved, and what it means for the client's work, converts it from decoration into evidence.

Team pages deserve the same treatment. Which people would actually work on the account, what they specialize in, and how long they have been doing it.

Continuity is a real concern for clients and is rarely addressed. Business owners worry about being handed to somebody junior or having their contact change every year.

Keep descriptions accurate to what was actually earned and confirm the phrasing against your board's rules, since how designations and firm names may be used is regulated and varies by state.

Document exchange is the part clients actually judge you on

The portal is where a client experiences the firm most often, and it shapes their opinion more than the website does.

After the first month, a client's contact with the firm is largely uploading documents and receiving things back. That interaction is the service as far as they experience it.

A difficult portal produces friction every single time, and it is the most common source of ordinary irritation in the relationship.

Worth evaluating on the client's experience rather than on the firm's. How many steps to upload something from a phone, whether it works without an account being reset, and what happens when somebody forgets a password.

Security expectations are real here, since these are financial records and clients are increasingly aware of it. Email attachments are still common and are not the right answer.

Where the portal is a third-party product, the website's job is to make getting into it obvious. A client who cannot find the login writes to somebody instead, which is a support cost with no upside.

The deadline calendar is a utility worth owning

Business owners need to know what is due when, and a firm that answers reliably becomes the reference.

Filing and payment deadlines are a recurring anxiety for anyone running a business, and the available information is scattered across official sites written for professionals.

A plain calendar of what is due when, for the kinds of business the firm serves, is genuinely useful and is the sort of page people return to and share.

It has to be maintained and dated, since dates shift and a stale calendar is worse than none when somebody may act on it.

Link to the authoritative source for each item so a reader can confirm, which is both useful and appropriate given that this is general information rather than advice.

It works as a reason to be in contact too. A note before a deadline that matters to a particular kind of client is welcome in a way that a newsletter is not.

Where you can act shapes what the site should say

The structure above suits any firm. Where you can act does not.

Much of this work does not require proximity, so the reachable market is often wider than the city, while practice-privilege requirements affect where a firm can act across state lines.

Which industries concentrate locally shapes who the site should be speaking to and what the specialization should be.

We work through market specifics one at a time, and we are glad to look at your site with you.