Even If Your Practice Is Full....

An Open Letter from the COO of a Website Developer for Accountants

When our firm started selling back in 2003, we knew one thing: That the CPA market for websites was unsaturated. Our lead developer, Chad Brubaker, had developed a website development tool that was rather unique to the industry back then. However, rather than make it a generic tool available to any small business, he decided to create a niche product available to only one industry. Why was this important?

If you purchase a web development template, for example from Yahoo or Google Web builder tools, they do not know what industry you are in. You could be an accountant, or a plumber, or a lawyer; anyone, in fact, who wants a website. Therefore, what content or pages can Yahoo or Google offer you in their web builder right off the bat that is specifically related to your industry? The only general page that every industry wants is a “home” and a “contact” page. Therefore, when you buy from one of these giants, you start, literally, from page one.

However, Chad realized that if our product was available to only one industry, our web builder could “start” with much more content and relevant page traffic. Sure, for us it eliminated the market for every other industry, but for that one industry to which we market, he figured we could be paramount. Ask yourself, is it likely that a firm, catering only to accountants, is able to provide more content, more pages, and more tools for you specifically, than a web builder for any small business? Of course it is.

So, back in 2003, that was the choice we made. When I partnered with my colleague to expand the business, I must say that I was a bit naďve to the accounting industry. As I mentioned, we wanted to specialize, and we noticed that the accounting website industry was basically empty, so we entered. I started to make some phone calls to accounting firms to test-market our product. I quickly found out why the market was so unsaturated...

Even today, five years later, our firm still dials outbound calls to the accounting market. A large portion of our business is garnered this way, in addition to the inbound calls we now receive due to the value of our product. Sometimes, I still pick up the phone with our sales team to showcase my knowledge in the market. As soon as I mention that we exclusively create websites for accountants, I hear the same thing I heard 5 years ago:

“Justin thanks for the call, but my practice is full. I cannot even field any more clients.”

I believe, in my tenure growing this company, I personally have spoken to over ten thousand C-level executives in the industry; you the accounting owner. Some of you have purchased our product, some of you have considered us after lengthy online presentations, and some of you have cordially turned us down. I understand that there are reasons for all firms to make decisions based on their practices, but I want to educate you on why a full practice, in as unbiased a manner as I can, should not be the reason to decline a website for your firm. First, there is the obvious movement of all things online. Most of you, no matter how technically savvy, could not operate your practices without email. Realize that even email was not a widespread phenomenon as little as ten years ago. That is when I had my first email address. Your clients are moving online if not for benefits of online shopping or buying airline tickets, at least for search. Google’s share price rose over 500% from its initial offering, with a foundation of search. People are looking for information, and what I ask you as an accountant to consider is this: The original purpose for having a website as it existed ten years ago, advertising, is dissolving.

I know accountants, as a whole, do not advertise heavily. Grab a Yellow Pages (if you can find one!) and look up “attorneys.” You will see huge multi-page ads and pictures of ladies of justice and gavels. Attorneys do not have the luxury that an accountant has: one of a cyclical client base. You have the luxury of a client who needs you year after year. To illustrate this, flip the Yellow Pages over to “accountants,” here is what you will see: Name, phone number, name, phone number. There are no images and maybe one or two business card-sized ads. So therefore, if the traditional ideology of getting a website is to advertise, and accountants do not particularly rely on advertising for new clientele, there you have the initial problem for us! No wonder over 50% of the phone calls we make end within ten seconds after we proclaim that infamous sentence, “we specialize in creating websites for accountants.”

So, here is why I am suggesting that you do not hang up. Whether you are considering a website with us, or another vendor is irrelevant as that is not the point of this letter. Your industry is changing and those vendors specifically selling websites to accountants realize that you do not advertise. We currently manage over thirteen hundred websites for private accounting practices, and I can wholeheartedly tell you that less then 4% of them advertise heavily with their website. As a quick tangent, this is not to say that there is not business out there for you accountants on the web. As a matter of fact, I believe that the advertising market out there for accountants is as untapped for you as the websites for accountants market was for us five years ago.

So if websites for accountants do not provide advertising for a firm, what good are they? I will describe the two most common reasons of firms who do business with us, and I would like you to keep in mind that we have effectively eliminated the problems I will describe within the offices of the firms with whom we do business.

The first problem is related to QuickBooks or other bookkeeping software. A bookkeeping file for one of your clients just grows and grows and grows. Since one needs to analyze assets and liabilities from year to year for a firm, a bookkeeping file cannot be broken up by fiscal year. The real difference for your client’s small business between December 31 and January 1 is irrelevant, as they need to see charts and graphs from years back. However, for taxation December 31 and January 1 are literally night and day. The result, of course, is that they have one bookkeeping file with more data then they can usually interpret. Now, how do they get this bulky mega-file to you, the accountant? It is usually too big for email, right? So now you and your client have resorted to archaic mailing of a disk back and forth, or trying to download a PC sharing software and praying that your client entrusts you enough to let you access his / her entire computer, or vice versa. Then why don’t you just move everyone to an online bookkeeping software, like QuickBooks online? Well, all of a sudden you run into a cost / user issue where you, or your client, have to pay in the ballpark of $30 / month per user to move their books online. You know that all your clients are not going to pay $360 annually on top of your tax preparation fees, so you’re stuck using a local, desktop version of the bookkeeping software, and you still have this file sharing problem.

If you did not think that I have a hard-earned knowledge of your industry by personally talking to about 5% of all private practices over the phone, consider reason number two:

The firms we represent have been plagued by redundant questions from their client base, namely, in that their clients consistently need copies of tax returns. The IRS can audit anyone and potentially need copies of tax returns from the last seven years. If you are purchasing a home, you need copies of tax returns for assessment of credit. If you refinance, you need copies of returns. If you want a bank loan, personal loan, or car loan, you need copies of a return. Stastically, probably one or two of your clients per day, on average, needs a copy of a return (depending on the size of your firm). Additionally, the odds of your client having all of their returns that you have prepared for them over the years in a nice, neat, and complete pile at arm’s length is rare. They rely on you for copies, and every time they call, you have to access, print and either fax or mail the copy.

So what I’m telling you is that eliminating those two issues. . . major, time-consuming issues, can be done with a website. If your website is not necessarily an advertising tool, but the heart of it is centered around a file transfer system that 1) has upload capability to handle bookkeeping files, 2) can archive copies of all client tax returns for online access, and 3) is not based on a per-user fee, it probably at least makes sense to begin to consider a website for your accounting firm.

We shall now say that your website does have capability for your clients to pick up and retrieve files, and most importantly, it is easy to use and it is a system that does not force you to switch tax software or switch to the online pay-per-user version of that software. At this point I want to interject something I have learned about human nature, especially after exploring the meteoric growth of internet development over my past five years in the industry: If it is easier, or faster, or cheaper, or some combination of the three, people will gravitate to it. Simply put, we create this reality for accountants. Let alone my firm’s growth, I see growth in other websites for accounting firms across the industry, some of whom, like us, do not have contractual obligations with accounting firms to “lock them into” our sites. Logically, if accountants do not advertise, and the websites for accounting space is growing, there must be a reason accounting firms elect to keep our service. Just a thought…

At the risk of sounding like an early morning infomercial, there is in fact more. If a client is going to your website to facilitate business with you (as described above), a major, major goal of any website has been reached: VISITATION. The entire goal of a website, advertising or not, accountant or not, is to get someone to enter your web address and get there. There is some outrageous number of websites out there today, around thirteen billion, so anyone visiting your website is a success. I was on EBay the other day to buy a book, and once I got there, there was a huge ad, “Remember, Mother’s Day is May 11th.” Well, where do you think EBay was hoping I would go to search for a gift for my mother? The “more” I was alluding to in the beginning of this paragraph is the second most important goal of any website: KEEPING VISITORS THERE!

Therefore it naturally beckons the next question: What keeps someone on an accounting website? Luckily for you, I have the answer: There are hundreds of different answers. Maybe a client who visited your website to upload their QuickBooks file would be inclined to stay on your website if only you had an article on how to shelter taxes for his / her small business. Maybe a client who visited your website to download a copy of their 2007 tax return would stay on your site if only you had a calculator on your site that showed them how much they needed to save for their daughter to attend Yale. Maybe a prospective client who was referred to your site by an existing client realized that you in fact provided budgeting analysis in addition to tax preparation, and they are in dire need of such. Maybe a client came to pick up a quarterly, and they stayed to read your newsletter. The reality is that you never know what any one individual’s hot button is going to be, but you can take an educated guess, and provide ALL of them. You can maximize your odds by creating an easily navigable web page where all potential points of interest are accessible, and you therefore maximize the length of time someone spends on your website. Notice that this logic applies to any web page, but we just happen to create websites for accountants.

This gets back to two of my original points, where I shall conclude. First, erase the notion that since your practice is full, or referral-only, you do not need a website. I hope that you saw enough logic in the bulk of the text to understand that this is not an attempt to stand on a sales pedestal, but that I have personally watched accounting websites vastly improve daily firm efficiency. It is not a question of advertising, per se, but a question of the overall cost of your practice and its employees, and if with that cost, you are maximizing the number of clients. That is what I have spent my time explaining to ten thousand accounting professionals, one-by-one, over the last five years.

Second, a generic web builder from Google or Yahoo is not going to provide relevant industry tools in order to drive a client to your page, let alone keep a viewer there. If you purchase a generic web builder, you would have to discover and create all the “hot” buttons. As I tell all my clients, I do not know which end is up when it comes to taxation, which is why I pay a CPA for his skill, and likewise, I would not expect a tax professional to allot five years of discovery in the websites for accounting space, as I have, just to have an effective website. It is inefficient. Provided that you have conceded to point one in the previous paragraph, in addition consider choosing a firm who spends all of their time creating websites only for accountants. They provide necessary elements to realize the goal of why you would even want to put your firm online in the first place: Having a site that compliments your existing practice, and keeping your clients interested enough to stay.

I hope you enjoyed it,

Justin S. Curzi
Chief Operations Officer
Emochila, Inc.