I'm perpetually stunned at how many accounting websites I see, gorgeous properly coded websites, that fail to suitably target an audience. The first thing you should do when you set off planning your CPA website design is figure out and target the audience that will attract the best return for your company. One of the plain truths that keeps my job enjoyable is that no two CPA firms are necessarily similar. The need to focus on a suitable market, however, is universal. Yes, I have a standard template that I lead with. I need to start with something. But in every case it's necessary to modify the template to suit the business.

The really fun sites are designed to a more specific audience, and of course these sites require a lot more work. There aren't many unusual accounting archetypes I haven't already built websites for, but the diversity of specialty firms continues to surprise me. Some are pretty common. Construction accounting websites lead the pack, followed closely by bilingual sites. Many accounting website designs focus on a particular industry specialty. Hotels and restaurants are common. I've also designed specialty sites for accounting firms specialized in car dealerships, vineyards, funeral homes, and many others. There's even a fellow out in California with a practice focused on athletes and entertainers.

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 isn't a complicated or difficult process, but it is a process that gets overlooked a lot. 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 antithesis of good accounting website design is the vanity site. Vanity sites are almost never appropriate to accounting firm. These sites are only appropriate if you have no need to use your website for marketing. They will not attract new prospects: they're not designed to. Instead these sites are designed to appeal to the site 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.

Make your site a friendly place. Don't get me wrong. You want a nice site, just be careful that you don't go over the top and make 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. It's much better marketing to replace these pictures with images 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. It's not a matter of being 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 number one step in your accounting website design is understanding your market. Add pages that caters to your likely clientele. Stay focused on your clients and you'll find visitors will respond much better to your website.