CPA Practice Advisor - 18

THE FIRM GROWTH ADVISOR
Profit-Focused Bells
and Whistles to Add
to Your Website
MAY IS THE perfect time of year to finalize your marketing strategy for the rest of 2019.
Your website is the centerpiece of your digital presence; its 24/7 worldwide reach is the
perfect place to make a few tactical upgrades to increase your chances of success. Here

SANDI SMITH LEYVA

CPA, President
Accountant's Accelerator
sandi@accountantsaccelerator.com

are seven ideas for your consideration.
PROMINENTLY DISPLAY YOUR
CREDENTIALS.
Accountants have a chance to earn many
certifications (here's a list of 34 accounting
and tax certifications https://bit.ly/2V4esrl
and there are even more software certifications to
earn https://bit.ly/2V4eXBJ). Once you've earned
them, display them prominently to differentiate
your firm and staff from your competition.
We recommend placing a ribbon (a thin
horizontal section) on your home page as well
as creating a row of them under your partner
and staff bios on your "About" page. The www.
crulliance.com website has a good certification
ribbon that features the vendor brands they work
with, memberships, and the certifications they've
earned:
If possible, try to position the ribbon so that
it's "above the fold," meaning you don't have to
scroll to see it. This term originated with print
newspapers: any big news should have a headline
in the top half of the paper so that it's seen before
it's folded.

PRESENT THE FAQS.
FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. It's a web page you can add that
helps to answer common questions
about your firm. An easy way to start is
to write up the top 10 questions your receptionist
gets asked with answers into a FAQ web page.
You might have noticed that more and more
Google search results include one or more answer
boxes relevant to your search. Google selects what
it thinks is the best answer to the searcher's question and displays the web page with the snippet
of the answer. This is prime search real estate to
have so that your site can dominate more of the
search result page.
It's worth spending time on deeper questions

MAY 2019 ■

and putting them on your site in Q&A format so
Google can find them. You can also add them to
the new Q&A feature on Google My Business.

LET CLIENTS SET THEIR
OWN APPOINTMENTS.
Apps like Calendly and ScheduleOnce
allow you to delegate your appointment-setting. Once you have the app
set up, add a website button labeled "Schedule
an Appointment" with the appointment link and
let clients self-serve. ScheduleOnce has saved
me about $20K in admin labor, plus clients like
having control over choosing the best time as well
as making changes without having to call.

MAKE FRIENDS WITH
GOOGLE THROUGH
SCHEMA.
Schema is a huge advantage for
improved search results. It's code
that labels items on a web page, such as businesses, people, and services. It allows Google to
understand the context of the content on your site.
Schema is invisible to users and doesn't affect the
visual aspect of the site. Here are two articles I've
written about Schema:
■■Managing Your Online Influencer Presence in
Google https://bit.ly/2DTYgDa
■■Structured Markup (which is another term for
Schema) https://bit.ly/2VIfBt2
Read more about Schema in general here:
https://schema.org/.

COMMUNICATE WITH
VIDEO.
Videos get far higher ROI than text
or graphics formats. Plus, they don't
have to be long or professionally shot.
Video lengths can range from 10 to 90 seconds.

www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

The biggest thing is you don't have to be in them!
Firms that embrace video have an edge since
most firms don't know how to get started. And
while it's easy to get started, there are many
guidelines about tools, format, length, content,
sound, live vs. recorded, and placement that
you'll want to learn to optimize your marketing
spend.
Here's one course by the author starting in
late June where you can learn more about video:
https://bit.ly/2H5NFHt

SPEED UP THE MOBILE
EXPERIENCE WITH AMP.
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile
Pages and is a technical feature that
should be added to all website pages.
It's code that allows web pages to load faster for
mobile purposes.
Nearly half of all users will see your website
on a mobile device, and every millisecond counts.
See how long it takes your site to load on mobile
(and desktop for that matter; we use the free
GTMetrix https://gtmetrix.com/). We aim for
about three seconds on the sites we build. If
your site takes longer than five seconds to load,
call your webmaster and ask to have the speed
increased.

SAVE ONBOARDING TIME.
Post generic intake forms like tax
organizers and ACH authorizations
in PDF format online so the client
can easily download them, complete
them and send them back. Every website has a
library area where forms can be stored. Collect
all of your forms and add links to them on your
site to save on customer service time.
Try any one (or more) of these ideas, and let
me know which one you like best. ■

https://www.bit.ly/2V4esrl https://www.bit.ly/2V4eXBJ https://www.bit.ly/2H5NFHt http://www.crulliance.com http://www.crulliance.com https://www.gtmetrix.com/ https://www.bit.ly/2DTYgDa https://www.bit.ly/2VIfBt2 https://www.schema.org/ http://www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

CPA Practice Advisor

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CPA Practice Advisor