An accountancy website has a narrower job than most people building one assume. Almost nobody chooses an accountant from a search result the way they choose a takeaway. They get a name from someone they trust, or from a directory, and then they look you up to decide whether to make contact. The website is the check, not the shop window.
So the question to ask about every page is not "does this look professional", it is "does this answer what a cautious person wants to know before they ring an accountant they have never met". Three things, mostly: are you qualified, do you handle businesses like mine, and roughly what will this cost me.
What is the visitor actually checking?
Put yourself in the chair. Someone has been given your name. They are probably a bit embarrassed about the state of their books, they may be leaving another accountant and feeling awkward about it, and they do not know what they are allowed to ask. In two minutes on your site they want:
- That you are real and local enough. A named person, a photograph, an address, a landline.
- That you are qualified and regulated. Your body, your firm's status, and how long you have been doing this.
- That you deal with people like them. A one van builder does not want to read about corporate structuring. A limited company with eight staff does not want to read about self assessment only.
- Some sense of cost. Not a binding quote. A shape.
- A way to make contact that does not commit them to anything.
Get those five right on five pages and you will convert better than a twenty page site full of tax news nobody reads.
Lead with who you work with, not what you do
Every accountancy site in the country lists the same services: bookkeeping, payroll, VAT returns, year end accounts, self assessment, company formation. The list is necessary and it persuades nobody, because it is identical to the firm down the road.
What does persuade is specificity about the client. "We look after around eighty owner managed businesses in Lincolnshire, mostly trades, shops and small care providers" tells a reader more in one line than a services grid does in a page. If you have a real specialism, lead with it. Landlords, contractors, hospitality, farms, dentists, hauliers. Somebody searching for an accountant who understands their trade will pick the firm that says so.
If you genuinely are a general practice, say that plainly too. "Whatever you are, we have probably done it, and if we have not we will say so" is an honest position and it reads better than pretending to a specialism you do not have.
Should an accountancy practice publish fees?
This splits the profession, and both positions are defensible. The case against is that fees depend on the state of the records, and a number on a page invites people to shop on price alone. The case for is that the most common reason someone does not ring an accountant is that they are afraid of the answer and would rather not look daft asking.
A workable middle, used by a lot of practices that do well online:
- Publish the simple fixed fees. A basic self assessment return, a confirmation statement, a payroll run per employee per month. These barely vary and they are what people are nervous about.
- Publish a from price for the bigger work, with a sentence about what moves it: turnover, number of transactions, whether the bookkeeping is done and how.
- Say what is included in a monthly fee if you bill monthly. Unlimited questions, the software licence, the year end, the payroll. Being clear about that is a genuine differentiator, because a lot of firms are not.
- Say what you charge for out of scope work, or at least that you will always agree it first. Nobody minds a fee. People mind a surprise.
If you truly cannot publish numbers, publish the process instead: a free initial conversation, a fixed quote in writing before any work starts, no charge for the first meeting. That removes almost as much of the fear as a price list does.
The trust signals that carry weight
Accountancy is a profession people buy on reassurance, so the details that would look like clutter on a design agency site are doing real work here.
- Your professional body and your membership status. Say which one, spell it out rather than leaving a logo to do the talking, and keep it accurate.
- The named people. Photographs of actual staff, with real names and what each of them does. Stock photos of a meeting room with models in it are worse than no photos.
- Software you work in. Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent. People search for an accountant who uses the thing they already use, and it signals you are not still asking for a carrier bag of receipts.
- Whether you handle Making Tax Digital filings for the taxes it applies to, and what that means for the client practically.
- Your registrations and cover, including professional indemnity and your data protection registration. Check your own current obligations with your body and the Information Commissioner's Office rather than copying another firm's wording.
- Reviews and references with a first name and a trade. Two real ones beat twenty anonymous stars.
The pages a small practice needs
Five or six will do it for most firms.
- Home. Who you look after, where, what you are qualified as, and how to start a conversation.
- Services. The full list, grouped, with a line each. No essays.
- Fees or how we charge. Whichever of the two you can stand behind.
- About. The people, the history, the office, the bodies. This page gets read more than any other on an accountancy site.
- Contact. Phone, email, address, map, and a short form.
- Optional: one page per client type if you have genuine specialisms worth searching for.
A blog is optional and usually a trap. Reposting tax news adds nothing, because HMRC and every other firm published the same thing the same morning. If you write anything, write the answer to a question your own clients keep asking, in your own words. One good page a quarter is worth more than a monthly feed of recycled updates.
The about page is the one they actually read
On most accountancy sites the about page gets more attention than the services pages, and it is usually the thinnest thing there. Somebody is deciding whether to hand you their finances. They are reading it to work out what sort of person you are.
Six things belong on it. Who you are and what you are qualified as. How long you have been doing this and what you did before. Who else works there and what they handle, so a client knows whether they will always speak to you. Where the office is and whether people can come in. How you like to work, meaning software, meetings, how quickly you answer. And one line that is not about accountancy at all.
That last one does more than it should. A sentence about the football team, the allotment or the two spaniels makes you a person rather than a firm, and people ring people. Keep it to a line, put a real photograph next to it, and resist the urge to write in the third person about yourself if you are a sole practitioner. "I set up in 2011" reads better than "Founded in 2011, the practice".
Handling the first enquiry without giving free advice away
The fear of the free consultation is real, and the answer is in how the enquiry is framed rather than in hiding the phone number.
Ask enough on the form to triage: business type, roughly what stage they are at, what they need help with, and when they need it. Four or five fields. That lets you tell a two minute call from a ninety minute one before you pick up.
Then set the shape of the first conversation on the page itself. "A first call is about twenty minutes, it is free, and the point of it is to work out whether we are the right firm for you and what it would cost. We will not do your return on the phone." That sentence saves everybody's afternoon and it sets a professional tone from the first contact.
Getting found, locally and by specialism
Two different jobs. Locally, most of the work happens off your website, on a properly completed Google Business Profile with your real hours, your address and a steady trickle of reviews. That is covered in getting found on Google when you only work locally, and for a practice serving one town it is the highest value hour you will spend.
By specialism is the longer game and the more valuable one. "Accountant for contractors in Nottingham" is a page you can win. "Accountant" is not. If you have three specialisms, that is three pages worth writing properly, each with the language your clients actually use rather than the language the profession uses.
What should an accountancy website cost?
It is a small brochure site with no unusual functions, so it should not be expensive. In the UK you would expect roughly £800 to £3,000 as a one off from a freelancer or small studio, more from an agency that specialises in the profession and brings the content with it. On a rental it is normally the five or ten page bracket, which with us is £99 or £149 a month excluding VAT, with the first three months paid up front and no setup fee.
Where practices do overspend is on portals. A client portal for document exchange is genuinely useful, but most firms already have one inside their practice software, and building a second into the website is money for nothing. Link to the one you have.
If you want to sanity check a quote before you get one, there is a step by step method in work out what your website should cost before you ask.
The short version
Say who you look after, say what you are qualified as, give people a shape for the cost, put the real humans on the page and make the first contact feel safe. That is the whole job, and it fits comfortably in five pages.
We build and rent sites like this for small practices, with hosting, SSL, business email and a yearly redesign included, one design revision with the build, and content changes unlimited and free so a fee change is an email rather than an invoice. You can price up your website in a couple of minutes, or read the longer piece on what a small business website should cost in the UK first.
