Website Best Practices For Professional Service Companies
If your business is in the professional services industry (legal, financial, accounting, consulting, etc), your online presence needs to showcase your team’s expertise and demonstrate that the brand has its metaphorical finger on the pulse when it comes to the challenges your clients commonly face. There are two digital platforms that you truly own — your website and your email list, so we highly recommend investing the time, effort, and money these strategies require to be effective.
At Armada Digital, we work with service-based businesses every day to make sure their websites are doing the heavy lifting they should be. In this blog, we’ll outline website best practices for professional service companies to follow that will position your firm as the obvious solution.
Your Product Is The Knowledge Of Your People
An e-commerce website features best-selling products right up front. If a particular product category is gaining traction online, then the brand would likely place its version front and center. This concept translates to professional service companies — if your team has noticed increased interest in the market for a particular service your firm offers, find ways to center it on your website. Whether that’s writing a long-form blog on the topic, expanding your FAQs section, or simply switching the order of services seen on the homepage. Give users a sense of who they’ll be working with by incorporating high-quality team photos and encouraging them to contribute both ideas and content.
Ps. If any of the above suggestions feels out of reach for your team, you may need to hire a new website support company.
Attention To Detail Is Vital
Your website is a visual reflection of how you do business. If there are visual inconsistencies in the design or spelling errors in the content, it communicates to users that your company practice is to let things fly without deep review. Now, this may not be the case in reality for those who outsource their website development to a third party. Or perhaps, the website isn’t managed at all and hasn’t been updated in years. Regardless, users are left with a poor impression in both scenarios.
We recommend having your team conduct an internal review of your website on a quarterly basis, crawling it for buttons that don’t work, fuzzy images, or content that no longer reflects current-day operations. Try to view through the lens of a prospective client and prioritize updates that are likely to have the most impact.
Set Your Prospective Clients Up For Success
What do you want a prospective client to know about your firm or the industry going into an exploratory conversation? Could these things be distilled into an introductory blog post that is sent over ahead of the meeting? Are there FAQs you could put right up front that would help users identify whether your firm is a good fit for their needs? People generally appreciate working with those who take the time to educate them in a way that is respectful and comprehensive.
At Armada Digital, we don’t expect our clients to be marketing experts. However, we do provide a starting education so that we can engage on a deeper level, rather than talk “at” people. The same should be true for all professional service companies.
Include Calls To Action That Continue The Conversation
In our world, professional service websites can often be treated as simple “brochures.” While there may not be complex functionalities built in, it doesn’t mean the site can’t be interactive. By requiring email subscription to access assessments, downloads, or webinar recordings, you invite the user into your ecosystem where you can continue to build trust. And when they do feel ready to reach out via your contact form, the conversation will go that much smoother because of the work you put in upfront.
Are you looking for a new website partner? Reach out to start a conversation.
Not quite ready? Here is some more reading material on the topic:
