Creating an effective website for an accountant or solicitors’ firm can be challenging.
If you don’t want your website to look like a Salvador Dali painting, then try and imagine what makes navigation easier for you and avoid mistakes that are likely to turn off potential visitors.
Several factors can make it difficult to connect with visitors and quite often simplicity is the key.
Having worked with some of the UK’s leading accountants and solicitors to create an engaging and effective website, here are some of the most common mistakes we come across.
Clutter, confusion and lack of functionality
Designing and creating a website for accountants and solicitors often requires you to pack a lot of functionality and information into your pages.
Although you want to educate and attract the right audience, the more functionality you add, the greater the risk you have of over cluttering the website with content.
This can make a website slow and unresponsive, as well as being visually off-putting to visitors.
Sometimes it is best to apply the KISS principle – Keep it Simple, Stupid.
Expert help is available in our Sutton Coldfield office if you want to maximise your digital marketing opportunities and improve your SEO profile.
Headlines, headlines and more headlines
Yes, that’s right headlines are much underrated. But the click-rate on headlines is a search engine ranking signal that Google uses.
Make sure page heading are eye-catching and encourage your audience to engage with your website and articles.
Don’t forget to also add in subheadings. These can help to break up large bodies of text and help people to scan through your pages to find the information they need.
Try and be clear about what you want to achieve
Going for a minimalistic design may look aesthetically pleasing, but for clients looking for ease of navigation, the last thing they need is to hunt around for tags/menus/categories.
Yes, keep it simple, but make sure the critical information and signposting is visible for those who do not have time to be impressed by artistic skills.
Should I jump straight in and start designing?
No, no, and again no. Before you do that, think about what you want to achieve. A simple schematic pencil drawing, much like a family tree, will allow you to visualise what you are trying to achieve. Is it:
- SEO improvement for accountants?
- SEO improvement for solicitors?
- Digital marketing?
This method will allow you to identify and key areas that have been missed, avoid clutter and allow for better SEO optimisation.
Expert web designers know how to structure your site properly, and can help you ensure that your vision works long before either of you touch a computer.
Make your new website user friendly and accessible
Failure to prepare is preparing for failure, so decide you use text, imagery and sound across your web designs before actually getting started. Keep copy well-spaced and in a legible font.
Allow users to choose to press play for videos rather than leaving them on an auto setting and conduct research into the user experience you want to create.
Think of how the website will appear on your device
When designing a website, it is usually done on a desktop computer, but how it will look on a tablet or a smartphone must be taken into account.
What looks good on a wide screen can look cluttered and confusing. The fact is that mobile phone browsing accounts for the majority of browsing.
Make sure the design works equally as well on mobile devices as it does on desktops. Plenty of testing should ensure your site is optimised for both.
Do not overlook this step, as it can have a big impact on user experience and your SEO ranking.
Let us do it for you
Whether you want a website for accountants or website for solicitors, mistakes in design are very easy to make.
If you are new to the process or want additional advice on web design, our Sutton Coldfield web design team can help you deliver an attractive and easy to navigate site.
