CPA Websites Marketing Tips

Don't waste your money on a CPA website design.

The best way to get a CPA website design is to get one for free.

But how do you get anything for free these days?

I’m not sure about other products, but to get a free web design, go with Ready-To-Go designs from a service like CPA Site Solutions.

Other services charge up to $2,000 just for the design – and using a local designer could cost you up to $7,000.

Ready-To-Go designs with CPA Site Solutions cost you nothing. They’re included with the price of your service.

Save money, save time – and get the same high quality.

A Lot of Work – and Expense

Tons of Decisions. Have you ever had your house renovated? You know how there are tons of decisions to make about every little thing? “What knobs would you like on these drawers?” “Large tiles or small tiles?” “Which shade of off-white?”

Designing a website is a lot like that.

More Than Having a Good Eye. You might have a strong idea about what you like – but do you know how to get what you like? Design is more than just rubber stamping. You need to be able to communicate your likes and dislikes to your designer and guide her along the way.

You’re Locked In. If you pay a web designer or buy a design from a web development company, the design is static. Once it’s done, each and every adjustment costs money. And sometimes, you can’t just tweak the design. You have to pay for a whole new one, a $2,000 cost.

Ready-To-Go Designs Are an Impressive Value

A Ready-To-Go design is just as professional as a custom-built style.

For the same level of professionalism, you get the site for free, you get it fast, and you get the benefit of our frequent updates.

1. Free. At CPA Site Solutions, your monthly fee includes the price of your design – making the design essentially free.

2. Instant. Ready-To-Go designs are named to reflect how ready they are to go! After you pick one you like, you see it up on the Web in 1 business day. Compare that to the weeks or months it takes a web designer to build you a site from the ground up.

3. Constant Improvements. Our team of designers are constantly updating our site styles. Last year alone, we created 107 new designs. That means that when your site starts to feel out of date – or you’re just ready for a change – you get an upgrade to a current look.

To switch designs, just give us a call and let us know which style you like. It costs nothing to switch designs.

Why You Don’t Need to Worry About Uniqueness

You want your design to be unique so it doesn’t look just like Jim CPA or Bob CPA’s site.

But here’s a secret: your design only needs to be unique in your region.

Don’t worry if your site looks like an accountant’s on the other side of the country or 300 miles south. Your competition is the CPAs within 50 miles of you.

If you want to know whether another accountant in your region has the same design, just ask us. We have that information in our database.

Leverage Your Skill Set

The best way to grow your business is to build on your skills. Your education and experience are in accounting – not web design.

Leave the design to the folks who’ve been doing it for years. Save your efforts for the work that brings in revenue: accounting services.

How Do You Get a Ready-To-Go Design?

When you sign up with CPA Site Solutions, you pick a Ready-To-Go design and see it in action within 1 business day. Try us for free for 60 days.

Already have a website with us? Feel free to pick a new design. It costs nothing to switch. Just give us a call at 1-800-896-4500 or email support@cpasitesolutions.com.

And don’t forget about our referral program. When you successfully refer a colleague to CPA Site Solutions, we give you $100.

Have you paid for web designs in the past? Share your story below.

You have a blog on your CPA website. You have published a couple of posts. However, your CPA blog just sits there in the back of your mind as something that should be done. What should you write about? How much should you write? Here is a perspective on how to answer both of those questions.

CPA Blog Content. Where is all the content for your new CPA blog going to come from? One place is from your clients and the other is from various online sources of inspiration. The key is to leverage the time you have by getting into the habit of skimming sources.

CPA Sample Blog

Tools. You can use Evernote as a way to keep track of ideas for later. That way you can highlight particular quotes out of an article for use later. Come back to those quotes and expand on the ideas. Do this in small chunks of time and eventually, over the week, you have enough content to write a post.

Come Back Later. Get the notes and ideas down so you have some outline of what you want to write about. Write for a small chunk of time with the mind of coming back later. Only have 10 minutes? Perfect. Set the timer, write until the time is up. Come back later to edit and expand. When you come back later you have a fresh perspective and the timer keeps it short.

Blog Frequency. Web Worker Daily has a great article on how often to blog. The reason you write is often tied into the question. In order to get the most out of the content for your CPA website overall then you should write at least once a week. Whatever the amount you should always be consistent.

When to Stop. Some recommend at least 300 words to be worthwhile for your CPA website and search engines. Is your message clear? Have you said what you wanted? Then you are doing both yourself and reader a favor by stopping. The value isn’t in the length but the message and clarity.

Even if you don’t have a lot of time to write a post for your CPA blog, write something. Be consistent and get in the habit. The source of content over time can be of benefit to not only your CPA website, the readers, but also to yourself in ways you might not recognize at first.

Have a CPA blog? How often do you write? Where do you find your motivation? Comment below and share with other readers.

You have a CPA website with outstanding content and tools for your firm. You have the expertise behind that website when someone contacts you. You know that getting yourself on Google local is a powerful way to advertise your firm. The Workteam Collaboration Suite gives you easy email contact, but what about your phone? Web Work Daily recently had an article on Phonebooth. Here is how the service applies to CPAs.

If you are a smaller company or just starting out, what phone number should go on your CPA website? Phonebooth is a free solution that offers you a bit of flexibility without detriment to your CPA firm’s professionalism.

Phonebooth. A local phone number without a land-line for free? Now you can be on the go and still manage to be right in your local office without giving out your personal phone number.

Auto-Attendant. You can direct your phone calls to specific lines. Even if you are a smaller firm it can be great to organize incoming calls to the clients concern. For example: are they calling about Individual Tax Services or Business Services? You can set up a line for each of these with the auto-attendant.

Click-to-Call Widget Free with Phonebooth

Read Your Voicemail. The service sends up to 50 messages direct to email. This gives you the chance to read your messages from just about anywhere. It also makes it easier to pick out the key details and see the immediate reason for the call.

Contact Us Widget. There is a great widget all ready to place on your CPA website. Any potential client can click to call or email. They even get a choice of who to call. Instead of just calling the main line, the choices for different people are all right there.

Although there are other online solutions available, Phonebooth is easy and free (although there is paid service). Just keep in mind that it does advertise itself as being in Beta. Beta means the although the business has tested the service, it is still fairly new and under development.

Are you a smaller firm or just starting your CPA website? What do you use for your business phone number? Share your own solution with other readers in comments below.

Note: CPA Site Solutions is not an affiliate of Phonebooth. As with other online tools, Phonebooth presents itself as a great tool for CPAs and other tax professionals to use with their CPA website.

CPAs and other tax professionals can get CPE credit and 10% off an April Jennings Seminar. The topic is Lunch with Bob-Extensions on April 27th and is worth 1 hour of CPE credit!

Limited seating! The seating is limited so you will want to sign up early for this event. Be sure to test your system to make sure that you meet all of the system requirements.

Jennings April Seminar at 10% off!

1 CPE credit hour! This is a great way to get 1 hour of CPE credit. If you attend this event and answer 75% of the polling questions at the conclusion then you will get 1 credit hour for this event. There are no prerequisites for this seminar.

To get your 10% discount: Be sure to use the code aprilcpasite during the checkout process to get the 10% discount. Regular price $49. CPAsitesolutions.com customer price: $44.10

Event Description. “Time to get those extensions done! We will discuss improving efficiency.” This event is worth 1 hour of CPE credit.

Jennings Seminars was founded by Bob Jennings CPA, CFP, CITP, a national and World renowned speaker. Jennings has published articles in such magazines as The Journal of Accountancy and The Practical Accountant along with authoring several accounting and technology seminar manuals.

If you can’t make this event look for another posting in April for a similar offer for a May seminar. Click here to take advantage of 10% off seminar in April.

CPA Site Solutions is fortunate enough to have a guest interview for today’s blog post. Nick Hodges is known online as “The Lazy CPA.” Nick has had a website with CPA Site Solutions since 2007. Although this post is much longer than usual, we are thankful that Nick has taken time out of a busy season to share with our readers. Want to share your own story on the CPA Site Solutions blog? Send an email to blog@cpasitesolutions.com.

Brian: How did you come up with the name The Lazy CPA?

Nick: When my wife became seriously ill in 1998, what I needed most was time to facilitate her recovery.  Part of that care was to move my family from California to Mississippi to be closer to our extended family for support.

I was the managing partner of a thriving tax practice in California, and could not take a sabbatical; I needed to find a way to free up my time while staying involved in the business and continuing to take exceptional care of my clients.

Necessity is truly the mother of invention.  Every activity on my plate was analyzed for value and I discarded many of the old legacy practices associated with our industry.  What I came up with was a new perspective of the value of systems and team-based services that kept me in the role of decision-maker and client manager.  My top clients and partners had direct access to me by cell phone, and all decisions were implemented by my on-site team.

When my wife recovered from her illness, I found I had more free time than ever before and focused on bringing expanded services to my clients. The cycle of free time and new services helped me create a unique and profitable lifestyle within the tax professional community.

I worked with my broker-dealer, Money Concepts Capital Corporation to help develop a series of educational seminars that would help CPAs add financial services to their tax practices the way I had.

Nick Hodges is The Lazy CPA

I spent about five years presenting new methods and concepts to an average of 3,000 tax professionals per year.  At one of the early seminars, I was jokingly introduced by Denis Walsh, the President of Money Concepts, as a lazy CPA – because I lived in Mississippi, worked five weeks a year in my tax practice in California, and took at least three family vacations a year while earning substantial amounts of money throughout the year. As I looked over that group of CPAs sipping their coffee and staring casually out the window, and knowing that CPAs are some of the most over-worked and under-loved professionals, I thought that I needed to catch their attention in a new way.

I responded to Denis’s introduction by saying that I was not just A lazy CPA, but I was THE Lazy CPA! We had such a great reaction to it that we just continued introducing me that way.  Many times an attendee would call my office and ask for “that Lazy CPA guy” because they couldn’t remember my name.

Brian: What sort of responses did you initially get from the name?

Nick: Continuing education courses are typically an opportunity for tax professionals to be out of the office and kick back for the day, detached from the presentation. After being introduced as THE lazy CPA, all eyes would be on me, suspicious and looking for any mistakes I might make in the presentation.

The point is, the moniker worked: everyone in the room was engaged, albeit angry at first.  That involvement created discussions that were lively and honest, with the attendees thinking about how my systems might work for them.

By the end of the presentations, many would come up and ask how we might create some sort of partnership.  This was, of course, impossible due to time constraints, but I felt good about being able to deliver new concepts and systems to them that would help them create better lives.

Brian: How have things changed (in the industry) since you started?

Nick: I’ve been sharing my story nationwide for about 10 years now.  When we first started providing seminars for adding financial services to the tax practice, we used to spend an hour or more on the question of the conflict of interests.

Since the AICPA has clarified this position, there is very little conversation on this topic any more.  Five years ago, the questions were about how to manage a tax practice to create more time; the result was my tax practice manual and training programs. Now, we are hearing directed questions about the practical application of HOW to add financial services to the tax practice.  We are seeing more and more CPAs adding financial services as a way to retain clients and improve their firm’s profitability.

At present, I am spending more of my time mentoring young CPAs in how to seamlessly provide tax, accounting, and financial services to our clients in line with what I’ve learned over the past decade.

Brian: What are some of the best tools you use for your practice?

Nick: Of course, I LOVE the tools provided by CPA Site Solutions!  I am happy with my website options, and have received positive comments of the professional look of the pages.

My clients use the calculators and enjoy reading the professionally prepared articles. We have been delivering our clients’ tax returns electronically through the on-line vault for years.  This means that we no longer print tax returns and we use a fraction of the toner, paper, and labor costs during tax season.

With the newsletter feature, I keep in touch with each and every client monthly. In addition, during the recent economic downturn, I was able to create and send a personal messages to them each week at no extra cost.  My clients loved it.

We also use their online Quickbooks and Payroll for many of my small business clients.  It has substantially streamlined how we deliver our bookkeeping services.

Other tools I use are Emoney Advisor as the platform for my financial planning operation.  I use Jennings Seminars live and streaming continuing education.  Money Concepts is my broker-dealer and delivers key online resources and other training in delivering financial planning to my clients. In addition, I have an internal operations manual that we keep in a constant state of update and revision as we refine our methods and systems.

Brian: Advice you would give a fellow CPA?

Nick: I am reminded of the scene from Alice in Wonderland when she meets the Cheshire Cat at a fork in the road.  She asks, “Which road do I take?”  He responds, “Where do you want to go?” When Alice answers, “I don’t know,” the cat replies, “Then, it doesn’t matter.”

My advice to my fellow CPA is to have a bold vision for not just your practice, but also for your lifestyle.  To challenge you to understand that the only one preventing you from living the lifestyle you truly want is you – trapped in old ways of thinking.  That there is always room for improvement in your systems and methodologies.  I’m hoping that like my moniker, The Lazy CPA, that readers will be upset and engaged enough after reading this to rethink what they’re doing and why.

You can enhance and advertise your CPA seminars with your CPA firm’s website. Here is another way to leverage an audience for what you have to offer. CPA Site Solutions now has an events blog that you can post your CPA seminar on for free.

New CPA Site Solutions Events Blog

CPA Events. Events is a regular updated blog with CPA seminars, events, and webinars that are related to CPAs and other accounting professionals. You can check the events blog on a regular basis or subscribe to the RSS feed and get automatic updates. You can also submit your own CPA seminar or event.

How to Submit. The events blog is soon to have a form to submit your CPA seminar or event. For now just email support@cpasitesolutions.com with your CPA seminar or event details.

What You Can Find. You can find any number of CPA seminars, events, or webinars throughout the country or online all in one location. You can use the search or just look under a category.

iPhone Ready. The events blog and the regular CPA Site Solutions blog can now be viewed on an iPhone or iPod Touch. This makes it that much easier to read about any new tips and tricks for leveraging your CPA website.

Where is your favorite place to go to find CPA seminars, events, or webinars? Send a comment and share with other readers.

Making connections with others helps bring people together while increasing your CPA firms overall influence. An example would be to showcase your clients. In fact, sometimes even the smallest gestures, like buying a random stranger a cup of coffee, can influence in ways you might not imagine.

Giving Is Easy

Give and Grow Rich. That is the recent title of a blog post from Copyblogger. An unlikely place for a CPA and other accounting professional to go on the internet? Maybe, but the clear and touching message behind the post make it an excellent read for anyone.

Generosity Speaks for Itself. When you give without the need for something back, you gain. The generosity speaks for itself so you don’t have to. There may be nothing that comes of it but often you do gain in unexpected ways.

Free Content. There is all kinds of free content, like the Financial Guides, available to any website hosted by CPA Site Solutions. A person could come to any CPA website, grab that free content, and leave. Even so you are better off keeping this type of information available.

Free Tools. Along with the free content are free tools, like in the Tax Center of your CPA website. These again could be used and you could never gain a client from the experience. Again you are better off keeping these openly available.

Free Newsletter. There is also the free newsletter with fresh, useful, information each month. Some try to hide the newsletter, or any of these free items, in password protected pages. Yet that would be a mistake. You want visitors to have access to all this free information.

The Value of Your Expertise. In the end a visitor is not necessarily looking for any of those free things. They are looking for reasons to trust your CPA firm. They find that in the information you give for free.

In the end what they really want is the value of your expertise.

They want to trust the general value of what you have to offer. Once they have this, then they know they can trust you with their specific, and personal, situation. When that happens you have naturally converted a visitor into a client.

What do you think about giving information away for free? Do you have your own experience from something you have done on your CPA website? Send a comment below and share with other readers.

Give others reasons to talk about your CPA website and your firm becomes a natural part of conversation. Potential clients come from these impromptu conversations all of the time, it is a true case of social marketing. Here are three ways to keep talk about you and your firm alive.

Helpful Information. Most important, of course, is content full of helpful information that potential clients can use. Any accounting website hosted by CPA Site Solutions has plenty of content available. Including your own fresh and unique content, such as a blog, is an important part of this process.

Fun Widgets. You can add some fun elements such as the Free Debt Clock that you can see at the bottom of this blog post. You can also add a fun online poll or create a unique signature. Keep on the lookout for other fun ways to draw humor or light interest to your accounting website.

Client Spotlights

Showcasing Clients. Another way to have your website, and ultimately your firm, talked about is by showcasing your clients. A great example of this comes from the client spotlight page from Rhodes, Young, Black and Duncan.

Their firm has set up a regularly changing spotlight page and then an archive of previous client spotlights. Doing this is not only helpful for the client, but gets people within different social venues, talking about your firm.

When you can get your clients talking about you and your firm to their friends, then you are advertising. This form of advertising is in a way that is stronger and more effective than any traditional methods available.

Remember the next time you are reading a blog, including this one, you might take some time to offer helpful comments. Not only is it fun to do, but grants some search engine benefits as well.

Have a comment? Fill out the form below.

If you have a CPA website hosted by CPA Site Solutions then you probably have multiple clients to manage. Keeping track of the amount of time spent with each one can be a task in and of itself. Here is a quick and easy solution that works automatically in the background so you don’t have to.

Chrometa. Although Chrometa does cost $99 it is worth the money considering the time saved doing things manually. There is a 30 day free trial that gets most hooked on how easy it is to use.

Automatic Time Tracking

All Automatic. After you download and install it, Chrometa works entirely in the background logging everything that you do and how much time you spend doing it. Although there are previous posts on a free time tracker, the problem still remains in terms of remembering to start and stop the feature.

Going Away. If you step away from your desk you can actually pause Chrometa while you are gone. If you forget then there is a box that automatically pops-up recording the amount of inactive time. You can type in exactly what you were doing, for example talking on the phone with a particular client.

Export Excel Document. You can even export a report to Excel that tells you the activity, what application you were using, and the time using it down to the second. This can give you great historical data that can be printed out if needed.

Training Videos. You can get off and running with Chrometa without doing anything but installing it on your computer. However if you really want to get the most out of what it holds then you might consider the free online training video.

When your CPA firm gets busy, keeping track of how much time you spend on each client can get tricky. Every minute you don’t have to spend logging your actions, you can spend on work that directly generates revenue for your company.

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