As an accountancy firm that works exclusively with charities, Gerrard felt that their website didn’t truly showcase their expertise in this niche area.

Their site was fairly fresh and modern looking, but the messages were more of the “we do this” and “we do that” approach which is common to so many accountancy firm sites. Jen knew that in order for charities to have confidence in her and in the firm, they needed to feel that Gerrard understood them. Had the experience that was needed. Were trustworthy.

So, we went through the site slowly, page by page, editing and changing content (and sometimes the design a bit) so that it was more “you” focused than “we focused”.

Some of the marketing principles applied on this project were:

• She started small. She would have loved to kick off with a custom built, customer journey website…but was content to keep it simple and get the message right first. That’s okay.
• The right message is your first priority. Jen knew that you can get new leads for your accountancy firm with an absolutely spot-on message, even if your graphic design or website layout isn’t as modern as you’d like it to be. (Granted, improving that design helps too – but we had to start somewhere.)
• Flexibility and editability of your website is critical. Jen had a SquareSpace site, which looked good and was bright with lots of white space. Unfortunately, every time we came up with a brilliant new idea for a page layout, or wanted to integrate other systems like Mailchimp and Eventbrite, we hit snags and it took hours and hours to get it right. That’s not what she wanted. So, she ended up picking up the whole site and moving it to a WordPress theme (rather like Tyrrell) and that solved that problem.
• Not perfect but done. Sometimes Jen wasn’t entirely sure about this word or that word – but published the page anyway. You can always go back and edit it later. Getting it live is most important.

Jen now has a site that preaches a message her visitors really want to hear. Best of all, we’re continuing to edit every month. Her site is in a continual state of change, which is exactly how a website needs to be. Well done Jen!