subject: Use Your CPA Website as Work Station [print this page] Your website could be much more than an advertisement tool. It could be a high tech platform to serve your clients better. It could help you take care of several day-to-day problems while dealing with your clients.
"Thanks friend, but I am already full. I really have no room for more clients."
I know this is your typical answer to a phone call of a marketing executive of a firm specializing in accountant websites. Most often, you are serious with your answer. Understandably so as why would you seek a website when you already have enough clients on board? But I suggest that you still need one and I have drawn the virtue of my capacity to suggest you thanks to my long experience in the field.
I acknowledge all firms take decisions based on their practices and requirements. I just want to educate you on why a full practice should not be the reason to decline getting a website designed for your firm.
Firstly, the times are changing and you need to move with the times. There is the obvious movement of all things online and you will drag yourselves backwards if you fail to walk with the times. To illustrate your point, I will give an example of E-mail. How many people used e-mails in the beginning? Most of us considered e-mails listless when compared to traditional letters and now, e-mails have become an integral part of our daily lives. We just cannot do without them. What I mean to say is your competitors are moving online so you better move too.
Secondly, your clients are also moving online. As the surveys tell, they are increasingly turning online to search. Google's share price has risen to several hundred times from its initial offering, with a foundation that is based on the operational word of search. People are looking for information on the web and if you not present online, you are going to lose your share of business, slowly but surely.
Thirdly, a large market lies untapped before you. Accountants, as a whole, do not tend to advertise heavily. If you have a look at online Yellow Pages, you will find a few advertisements of accountants as compared to professionals from other streams. If you look around yourselves, you will find several peers who are still doing without websites. Even those who have their websites running don't try to advertise themselves with these for some strange reason. So what does the scenario spell for you a large untapped market? If you enter it now, you will have large swathes of online business field to grab for yourselves.
Fourthly, if you get your website developed by a firm specializing in CPA websites, you get to use tools specifically designed for the stream. The foremost problem faced by the accountants is while working with bookkeeping software. Bookkeeping files for clients just keep growing. As an accountant needs to analyze assets and liabilities from year to year for a firm, a bookkeeping file cannot be segregated by a fiscal year. These results in a huge bookkeeping file with more data than people can usually interpret. The file is just too big to email. You are scratching your head to find a perfect way for sharing files. Online bookkeeping software could help you solve the problem. A firm specialized in CPA accounting website building can recognize such problems of their clients and offer accurate solutions.
What I mean to say is you need not think about your website just as an advertisement tool. You can use it as a platform to serve your clients. It would help you eliminate several practical problems. You could just ask your developer to center your website on a file transfer system which would help you and your clients handle bookkeeping files and archive copies of all client tax returns for online access.
So think again about your answer.
Choosing an experienced CPA solutions provider is crucial to getting the right kind of website developed for you. Discuss in detail all your requirements with the service provider before beginning with the task.
