The Dreaded Blink Test and 6 More Ways to Tell if Your Firm’s Website Needs Help

Professional Service Firm Websites Need to be a Centerpiece of Marketing, Not an Afterthought

Let’s start with a straight up, fundamental question: are you happy with your firm’s website?

If I were a betting man, I would wager that there are parts of your site that you like, other parts that aren’t so hot, and that when it comes to helping your CPA, consulting or A/E/C firm grow their top line, it’s not as effective as it could be.

So the next questions are how, where and what can you do as a partner, owner or marketer to help your site? The starting point is to do a diagnostic to uncover site problems:

Take Your Firm’s Website Apart

Here are 7 questions that will help you get to the root of making your website a more effective new business tool for your firm:

(1)    Can the site pass the dreaded blink test?

"The Blink Test," refers to the 3-5 seconds during which a visitor lands on your website, judges it, and decides if they want to stay there and do something, or abandon ship. Factors ranging from lack of informative headlines to placing critical information below the fold will cause your firm to fail this test. For more on this, read HubSpot’s  “How to Make Sure Your Website Passes the Dreaded Blink Test” here.

(2)    Have you optimized every page on the site for search?

If your site traffic isn’t where it should be, then you’re probably not showing up in search engine rankings. That means it’s time to do search engine optimization, and to re-engineer your website site’s pages – in particular, it’s URL, page title and headline for purposes of consistency and execution of a keyword strategy.

(3)    Is the focus of the site on your prospects and their issues or needs or upon the firm?

One of the most painful things a site visitor can experience when coming to your website is to see another online brochure that talks about the firm instead of speaking to the visitor’s issues, pains and needs. There’s too much “me” and not enough “you” in virtually every CPA, consulting and A/E/C website we see.

(4)    Are you blogging?

If you’re not blogging, then you’re missing a huge opportunity to build personal brands, traffic to your site, strong competitive differentiations, and opportunities to convert site visitors to leads. To learn more about the value of blogging and for some guidance on how to get started, check out The Partner’s Guide to Blogging Made Easy” here.

(5)    Are you continually putting fresh content up on the site?

Search engines love fresh content like articles, videos, blogs and podcasts because it demonstrates the firm’s commitment to giving site visitors the best possible user experience. Visitors love fresh content because it provides new insights and perspectives on relevant hot issues or topics. You can find a more expanded discussion of content marketing here.

(6)    Do you use call to action buttons and landing pages to convert site visitors to leads?

The single biggest mistake we seen on professional services firm websites is the lack of lead conversion mechanisms other than the ineffective “contact us”. Firms should be designing their websites to get visitors to fill out a form for valuable content, which starts the process of lead capture, nurturing and news sales. If you want to get more guidance on how to do online lead generation, start here.

(7)    Do you have social sharing features on the site?

Today, it is incredibly easy to get more utility out of your website by giving visitors the opportunity to share their experience with their fans and followers. If you haven’t already, get involved in social media and give your victors the opportunity to share the valuable content on your site.

Starting Over

If you’re thinking about a new or redesigned website, you know that you’re in for a long and arduous challenge, right?  One key piece of guidance: start the design process by defining the strategy and goal for the website first, and focus on the results: more visitors, leads and new clients …. not the graphics or on page layout.

Today’s professional services firm websites need to support firm strategy, always be in a state of adding new content, and laser focused on converting site visitors to leads.

These are the elements of a website built on best inbound marketing practices. If you are considering a new site, check out “The Best Kept Secrets to Successful Websites” here.