Coming to us from sunny California, USA, the marketing manager of this family-owned accountancy firm knew that their website needed a change.

“Our website was pretty much completed when I joined the firm 4 years ago,” said Jill in one of her first emails to us. “If I had the choice, I would have gone with a WordPress site but this is a WYSIWYG that I can’t edit myself. I also don’t think the quality and look and feel of the site accurately conveys our firm or the level of client we work with. We’re not convinced that we can get quality clients ($40,000+/yearly fees) from the website, but I think we need to be working in this space where it makes sense. We have a few pieces of relevant content (whitepapers) but we need more to put out consistently and don’t have the bandwidth in house to do it. We need an overall content strategy plan, and I also need to convince the partners it makes sense to invest in this area of marketing.”

As we discussed their issues, and their strong expertise in working with other family-owned businesses, Whittaker came to see that a more impressive website was the foundational element to all their future content marketing.

The website process

Here’s what we did together:

• Online “customer journey” sessions: Together with Dan and Shelley (the business owners, and also husband and wife) and Jill (the marketing manager), we met via Gotomeeting and discussed their audience, the issues they face, and the Whittaker journey from prospect to client

• Logo refresh: The existing Whittaker logo was a little tired. We agreed that the icon was fresh, and fit the brand, but the font used on the logo was pretty old-school. So we freshened up the logo so that it would fit with their shiny new website.

• Custom WordPress site build: Using what we learned from the customer journey sessions, we custom-built the site on WordPress, so that each page truly reflected the messages that would appeal to their target audience.

• Custom photography: Whittaker hired a local photographer to take photographs of the offices, team, and partners so that the site would reflect their personality and style, and help visitors to feel they already were getting to know the team before they even got in touch.

• Infusionsoft integration: Whittaker was using Infusionsoft for their CRM and marketing, but were barely scratching the surface of its capabilities. Integrating Infusionsoft forms into their new website gave them the ability to use this powerful system, with styling that matched their brand and colours.

• Website training: Once the site launched, they wanted their marketing manager to be able to access and edit the site for small changes and updates, blog posting, and other daily marketing activities. They integrated this training with a website maintenance package so that new landing pages and other integrations can be taken care of to save them time.

What Whittaker says

The resulting site definitely shows off Whittaker’s experience and story. Even at draft stage, the Whittaker team were really impressed. Here’s what Jill said to us in an email that day:

“Daniel, our senior CPA, asked me yesterday if he could see the site. I showed it to him with the disclaimer that it’s not ready for prime time yet, and he said, “Wow! This isn’t even like night and day with the old site. It’s like night and day and then another night and then another night and then day!” He said it really captures who we are and will definitely weed out the commodity price sensitive shoppers. Whoohoo!”

From a tired accounting website template to a fresh custom site: