Do you control your CPA site using a well paid designer? Don’t endure having a tired website full of faded facts just because you´re afraid of the expense of fixing it!
It´s time to stop casting your money out.
The way CPA websites are made and managed has changed enormously. A decade ago the industry was reliant on the “designer”, a costly and (presumably ) skillful individual who was capable of using code generators like Dreamweaver and was intimate with weird programming languages like HTML and PHP. Well, things change. Nowadays things are sincerely different.
Don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. These capable people are still fundamental elements of the web design industry. There is an awesome new tool, however, called a “CMS”, or “Content Management System that makes them much less important in the construction and maintenance of almost all uncomplicated websites. To become your own webmaster all you require is a casual acquaintance with computers using these approaches. Really just a logical extension of editing programs experts have used for years, the Content Management System is really just “point and click site editor”. It can be used to add and delete pages. All CMS have what’s commonly referred to as a “WYSIWYG” editor, essentially just an exceedingly elementary word processor that enables you to modify pages. Don’t be scared away by the jargon! WYSIWYG simply translates to “What You See is What You Get”. It allows you to arrange your pages, make tables and upload photos and images. By enabling you to make edits to the site’s Navigation Menu you can also set up a site’s complete feel .
All the functions that took a professional coder hours to do just a decade ago can now be immediately and without problems executed by practically any individual with the aid of a Content Management System.
Nearly any serious hosting company of first-class CPA websites has a free or low-cost content management system with hosted sites.
The difference, of course, is expense. Most designers are normally not as motivated as you are to get your jobs done in a timely fashion and most make upwards of $25 per hour. It´s not unusual for turn around on pro web design jobs to be a 30 days or longer.
This does not even include the time lost constructing the website. It can often take 200 hours or more to construct first-class CPA websites from scratch. That translates to months of lost time and thousands of dollars invested. By building websites in advance and presenting menus of “ready-to-use” templates Content Management System providers can get you around this expense.
Of course some website owners already have custom-made websites that they have spent lots of capital on and are pleased with and others waffle at using “templates”, so many Content Management System providers are able to tweak their pre-existing templates to better reflect your brand, if not straight-out copy your current website, quite inexpensively. This may be a recent technology but it’s spreading exceedingly fast.
Unfortunately, while low-cost and straight forward to manage, websites built in this fashion commonly want for substantive content. Before you dart off to a generic hosting service do a Google search for site providers that focus on “CPA websites”. A whole side industry has been created encompassing the demand for CPA specialized content.
CPA Site Solutions is the best of these, and I’m familiar with all of them. They’ve been providing extraordinary CPA websites for CPA firms for more than 10 years.
To see what we are suggesting when we talk about “CPA specific content” look at this streaming video about CPA websites.
Notice the free reports, tax due dates, links to tax forms and publications, a portal for transferring accounting files, interactive financial calculators, email, and a host of similar tools created carefully for website owners in the CPA industry. Possibly a financial adviser or business consultant could use a little of the content on this website,but it would be squandered on a business like a retailer. A website like this is not meant to be useful to a broad variety of concerns. It’s actually only intended for accounting and CPA firms.
For a few big corporate CPA companies it´s worth the time and expense of retaining skilled designers, but for most small and medium sized firms, especially in these testing economic times, it´s past time to reflect on new solutions. Applying a Content Management System that specializes in CPA websites will cut your costs and at the same time increase your mastery over your website.