Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
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14 October 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com THE BLEEDING EDGE 10 Deadly Accounting Website Mistakes Tat was excusable two decades ago, when most web sites looked like ransom notes awash in fonts, frames, colors, left-side justif ication and p i c t u res stol en f ro m G o d- o n l y- knows-where. In those days, the value of a website was tentative at best, difcult-to-impossible to quantif y, and described mainly as a minor f o o t n o te to t h e f i r m's b u s i n e s s development plan. Te accounting website of the 21 st Century is an interesting, dynamic, content-rich environment that draws in prospects, informs existing clients, keeps pace with an ever-changing regu- latory environment, ofers solutions to problems clients do not even know they have, and puts the frm on the short list of accountants a business will call when they need help and advice. At least, that's the theory. In practice, the state of the accounting website is much bleaker than that. Not that accounting firm websites have not improved dramatically, but rather with the growth of other social media – Linked-In, Twiter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, et al – websites have become the first-generation marketing tool e v e r y o n e f o r g o t a b o u t . In f a c t , accounting frms with a robust social media program have long since goten rid of their "webmaster" position. Or contracted it out to their Internet Ser- vice Provider. W hich explains why accounting websites continue to make the same deadly design mistakes today that have rendered them ineffective in years past. You don't have to stop at the 10 top mistakes – web designers can cite more than a hundred. But we have to draw the line somewhere, and if you were to avoid just these 10 you would have made major progress toward reviving what should serve as the foundation of your online mar- keting presence. Here's my list: 1 WHAT BUSINESS AM I IN? Professional frms are delighted to tell you about their reputation, the quality of their people, the ethics of their founder and the glowing praise they have won. W hat they fail to do is prov ide a simple, 200-word description of what they do. Tis should be on the frst page of the site, repeated on the "about" or "history page." 2 DISABLING THE "BACK" BUTON. How clever is this? By disabling this buton in the u p p e r l e f t c o r n e r o f t h e browser, the visitor is forced to reboot their browser to escape. Clever, perhaps, but that person will never visit the site again. 3 NO LINK S TO SO CI AL MEDIA . Even if the frm does use social media, there is no link to those sites from the website. It's a virtual online orphan. Te links should be on every page where they may be rel- evant. 4 WHO'S ON FIR ST? The smaller the frm, the more it relies on the personal style a n d e x p e r t i s e o f i t s to p people. If there is one partner or a dozen, clients and pros- pects want to know who they are and what they can do. Te staf – including key administrative people – need to have their capabilities listed. Hire a photographer to take good staf pic- tures, and update them every fve years. 5 BROKEN LINKS. Few things will irritate a visitor more than the dreaded Error 404 – Page not found. It's easy to have someone check the site to make sure that no links are broken, just to avoid the aggravation. 6 CLEVERLY HIDING THE F I R M ' S C O N T A C T I N F O R M AT I O N. In the pan i c to avo i d s pam an d viruses, firms deleted their contact information from the website years ago, replacing this vital information with a long, invasive email form few will bother to fll out. Here's the rule – the name, address, phone number and a generic email address 14 October 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com By Dave McClure Mr. McClure is a consultant and widely published writer on technology issues. He can be contacted at dave. mcclure@cpapracticeadvisor.com I t's a sign of the sad state of accounting frm websites that in 18 years of competition, none have ever won a Webby award for site design. Some fnancial and banking sites have won, and even the Arizona Society of CPAs was an honoree in 2006. But no accounting or tax preparation frms, which is astounding given how critical websites are to the overall mar- keting and communication eforts in support of new business development.