A simple website should not translate to a lack of information

Although this article is primarily aimed at Websites for Accountants, it is also just as relevant to the majority of other industries/professions.

Virtually, without exception, the majority of Accountant Website Owners we speak with, significantly underestimate the amount of Web Pages required for their new Website. This is mainly due to a lack of understanding of how people will interact with their Websites and what building a Website entails. Needless to say, a lack of information/pages can have a detrimental effect on the success of any Website. How many times have you visited a Website and been frustrated by the lack of useful information?

To determine the number of pages for your Website, you need to consider;

• What type of people will be visiting your Website?
• What type of questions/issues will visitors have and expect to be answered?
• If visitors find you on the Internet, then most likely, they will also be looking at competitor Websites. In which case, how do you compare to your competitor Websites?
• Should you create a Web Page for each Service?
• How much would visitors want to know about your company?
• Should you include additional pages, more useful to existing clients?
• Can your Website be used as a day-to-day, proactive business tool?
• Have your Website visitors enough information to take the enquiry forward?
• Will the lack of Web Pages have a detrimental effect on the success of your Website?
• Why would Search Engines want to index your Website?
• How can you use your Website to get important sales messages over?

What you feel is enough information, may not be shared by your visitors

If you are keen to maximise the benefit of of your Website, then you will need to consider all of the above points in detail. There is nothing worse than working hard to attract people to your Website, only to have them leave your Website after being frustrated with the lack of meaningful information.

Not only should you, ideally, include a separate page for all your services, you should also investigate if certain services need expanding further, with their own section on your Website.

A good example would be if you offer Contractor / Sub-contractor services. There are many Accountant Websites, where nearly all the web pages are focussed on this service i.e. they are specialists. If you were a Contractor looking for an Accountant and came accross a Website that only had a brief summary of their Contractor service, how do you think this Website would compare to the specialist Website, above? Who do you think the Contractor is most likely to be influenced by? If you decide to go ahead with just a single page, then it would be prudent to ensure this page makes a good effort to answer nearly all the questions the Contractor is likely to have.

Don’t try and cram all your services into a single page. Give your content “room to breath”

Obviously, trying to include all this information on a single page, is not really advisable. Spreading the content over more pages would look more professional and give your Website a more comprehensive feel to it, allowing it to compete favourably with those Accountant Websites, specialising in a particular service or sector.

If all you are interested in is having a professional looking Web presence, then a service such our WebStarter service would suffice. It is based on three pages and is designed to give a positive first impression of your business. Please click here to view a demo of how it could look.

For those looking for a more comprehensive Website and offering all the main compliance services, the following Website structure should, ideally, be the absolute minimum.

• Home
• History/Why Use Us
• Staff biography pages – ideally, each key staff member should have their own page. Interestingly, many Accountants claim to offer a personal service, yet do not even have details of key staff on their Website, to allow clients / potential clients, to be able to put a name to a face and learn more about the people who, untimately, will be helping to look after their business.
• Request Quote – an important call-to-action.
• Request Consultation – another important call-to-action
• Testimonials – one of the most viewed pages of any Website.
• FAQ – every visitor to your Website will have questions. Make it easy for them to find answers by offering a FAQ page. It also gives you the opportunity to re-emphasise some of your key selling points.
• Newsletter registration – proactively reach out to existing clients. Why not integrate one of the Internet’s leading Newsletter Portals into your Website, Mailchimp. It is free for 500 subscribers and up to 2,500 emails per month.
• Changing Accountant – many of your visitors may be looking to change Accountant.
• Business Consultancy
• Business Start-ups – many of your visitors may be thinking of starting a new business.
• 6 further pages, covering Bookkeeping, Accounts, Business Taxation, Personal Taxation, VAT, Payroll/PAYE
• Most likely, two further pages, describing the Accounting systems you recommend / work with i.e. Quickbooks, Xero etc.
• Contact
• Terms & Conditions
• Privacy/Cookie Policy
• Visit one of our Demonstration Websites, to see how these pages could look.

Many larger practices prefer to group their standard, compliance services into a single page. They are able to do this, since, they have many other specialist services or business sectors, they would rather have their Website focus on.

For the small practice without any particular specialist services, it makes much more sense to have a page for each of the compliance services. This creates three opportunities: it allows their Website to appear more comprehensive; it allows them to include the “added value” they can bring to each of these services; and finally, it allows them to optimise each page for Search Engines e.g. bookkeeping services birmingham, business start-ups birmingham etc.

Attracting existing clients

Ideally, you want to also attract existing clients to your Website, since, it helps keep you closer to them. One obvious way to do this, is to offer some sort of Resource Centre, they can refer to throughout the year. For example, Tax Rates & Allowances, Budget Report, HMRC Forms, Companies House News etc. Why not check out our Website Content for Accountants resource, to see how it could look on your Website.