It’s taken years but finally the problem of making an Accountant's web site do something worthwhile has finally been achieved. In this case, this has been done by AcctWeb, a company that does nothing but develop Internet solutions for Accountants and has done so now for over 6 years.

We call this achievement ‘closing the loop’. Why? For many years Accountants have wanted their web site to attract new business and to be a means of talking to their clients. However, it was soon realised that virtually no new business was ever attracted and what was wasn’t what Accountants really wanted. Being able to ‘talk’ to clients also failed, as sites were too hard to edit, needed expertise, and the time simply didn’t exist anyway. The dearth of out-of-date Accountant web sites is testimony to this fact.

A couple of years ago AcctWeb developed SoW, which is by far the simplest way to update a web site and suited the skill and training levels of the profession. However, it turned out that even with SoW Accountants didn’t have the time (as they all originally thought they did) to write or even copy information to their site and were reluctant to have to pay quite an amount of money to have this done for them. Added to this, even if a site was updated clients didn’t visit it.

AcctWeb then took the step that jumped this long-term hurdle, one that has allowed Accountant to move to the point they always wanted to get to. The irony is that to do so we had to remove the Accountant from the equation. This was done by uploading FOC to subscriber sites 2-3 tax-related articles every fortnight. Accompanying this was a strategy to get clients to visit at the same frequency – no point waiting for them, the premise being that if a client is advised to read something by their Accountant then they’re a bit foolish if they don’t.

Articles were a good start, as sites started to tick over but AcctWeb felt more reasons to visit were needed. So we organised 8 financial calculators, where clients can learn a bit more about how investing works, and included these in our Goanna Bundle also.

Then AcctWeb developed a solution to another long running Internet problem that had impacted on Accountants since day 1 – the problem of clients trying to attach large files to an e-mail and then sending it through the Internet. Such action is increasingly bound to fail given ISP mail servers, mail rules, and virus checkers, and solutions such as sending the file on a floppy disk hasn’t always been effective or efficient. Many Accountants simply visit the client in question but this is extremely costly and can’t be done if your client is interstate or overseas. AcctWeb fixed this problem with its Secure FTP service and, at the same time, made it another reason for a client to visit their Accountants web site.

To complete the Goanna Bundle AcctWeb included its unique search engine for Accountants. A search tool that’s better at finding documents on the ATO’s own site than there search system, to say nothing of the rest of the Internet as it applies to Accountants.

Finally, AcctWeb is looking to add even more reasons for clients to come back to an Accountant’s web site. To this end we’ve started AcctWeb’s Affiliates, which are small companies who offer something of value to the profession. The first of these companies is Praemium who provide a Portfolio Management service that more and more Accountants – irrespective of size – are taking up and, via another button on their web site, providing clients another reason to visit.

To test drive Praemium CLICK HERE.