Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today are facing an increasing number challenges created by the web economy.

Challenges Accounting & Financial Firms Face Online

Today, more than ever, accountancy organizations must work harder to stand out from the crowd, source new clients, and retain current clients. Not only do you have to become more involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also develop an active web presence. This includes having a website and learning better ways to market your business online.

As well as investing dollars advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., you will probably find that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated to develop and manage a website that drives new clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and helps you gain a wider degree of marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change in time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires a sound web and content management strategy.

One other problem that accounting organizations (and most businesses) face online, is that your site has around 30 seconds to give visitors the information they are searching for or they will go elsewhere.

“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”

Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website

Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting profession that can adapt to meet the challenges of the online economy and can think progressively about marketing their business services better online.

This detailed guide will help you uncover ways and opportunities to source more business and improve your business online.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your accounting business online, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your accounting business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform, see the articles below:

• Learn How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• An Online Guide To Building Your Successful Small Business With A WordPress Site

Useful Tips To Improve Your Accounting Website

We’ll start first by going over the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your accounting website and get better results. We show you what web pages you need, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services sites, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, go here: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Improving Your Website Pages

All business websites require several essential web pages. Let’s go over the pages your  need and how to set up your accounting or financial services website for best results.

Your Products And Services

You need a page that describes your products or services.

Your page should include services such as:

• Business accounting – planning, company formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate accounting
• Wealth creation
• Superannuation/retirement plan (401k) advice
• Audit risk assessment and assurance
• Quickbooks – setup, training, tune up, and support
• Specialist services – mergers, acquisitions, information technology, secretarial, rentals, trusts, fiduciary accounting, succession planning, selling a business, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should book an appointment with you.

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, community activities, etc.

This page should list any industry awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your company and set it above your competitors.

(List all of your industry awards certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in the About page. Screenshot image source: deloitte.com)

Meet The Team

If you are searching for ideas to sell more products online and increase user interaction with your site, then help visitors get to know you, your team and your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be very well-versed in accounting terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. It should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow your staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your team member’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Image source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily add an easy-to-update simple staff directory to your WordPress site using a free plugin, go here: Adding An Employee Directory To Your WordPress Site

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities available within the company. It could include training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You should also include stories of recruits who have worked their way up in your company and information about new career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your contact list, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients the benefits of doing business with your company. By adding a page with client reviews and case studies, you will also help to will also be providing prospective clients with social proof.

(Add a page with testimonials and case studies. Screenshot source: pcg-services.com)

If you want to learn more about using case studies, testimonials and reviews, see this article: Discover How To Turn More Visitors Into Prospects Using Profit-Boosting Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should include the following:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Location
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Online Chat/Skype (optional)

If your business operates out of several areas you will want to make this clear when showing your address and contact info.

You could also include links to commonly-asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content like industry events, product releases, useful articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established accounting website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your organization.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting site is very hard to keep updated or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can act both as your business website and business blog.

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that can help drive targeted visitors to your business, simply by publishing new content on a regular basis to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive new visitors automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more: Website Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your WordPress Website Into An Automated Web Traffic Machine

Legal Pages

It’s important to ensure they have a compliant website, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws or regulations wherever your do business in.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your accounting website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

Go here for a detailed article about adding legal pages to your website: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s highly competitive global economy, being generous with content that educates and informs readers has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.

You want to provide great content with information and tips that will get your readers to share your content online and come back for more. Using content is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about doing business with your company.

For example, topics for an accounting business could include:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• Tips on structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, business accounting, business budgeting, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords in your articles that your prospective clients would search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content for your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways Of Improving User Experience

Improving user experience (known as UX) will help to keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.

Syndicating Content - RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide lots of benefits for your accounting business.

If you provide valuable information, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• RSS feeds allow users to subscribe
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website by searching online for tax-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

For example, here are a few feeds you may want to consider adding to your site:

• Taxation Policy Center: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/press/rss.cfm
• Australian Taxation Office: https://www.ato.gov.au/RSS-news-feeds.aspx
• Canada Revenue Agency: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/rssfeeds/
• UK HM Revenue and Customs: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rss/rss.htm
• South Africa Revenue Service: http://www.sars.gov.za/Pages/RSS-Feeds.aspx

(Add RSS feeds to improve your accounting website’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. They can provide users with useful instructions and resources to get necessary tasks done. They are great planning tools.

You can provide a range of checklists and forms (or links to these) covering areas such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Checklist
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Provide Online Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools to add to accounting websites. Other applications could include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part two, we discuss a number of online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can help improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

***

This is the end of section 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence.

To continue, click this link:

• How To Build And Grow An Accounting Or Financial Services Online Presence – Part Two

Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Are Published – Subscribe Using The Form Below!

***

***

***