The price of setting up a custom accounting website design can speedily get out of control, but if you utilize a few basic tricks you can greatly reduce if, not eliminate, your set-up expenses.

Do you honestly need a custom site? There simply are not a whole heap of sound reasons currently to bear the cost of a custom accounting website design, so scrutinize your reasons meticulously.

You may decide that a template is a superior choice for your service. Just about all of the difficulties typically associated with templates, typically search engine optimization (or SEO) and flexibility, have been addressed by the latest generation of tools.

Graphic design really isn’t all that important to the success or failure of a website. Unfortunately a lot of site owners drive up their costs and at the same time get completely bogged down by the graphic design process.

Setting up a website is a pretty big job. Just customizing and creating site content will be a lot of work. It really doesn’t make much sense to obsess on the superficial appearance of the site. All this does is add to your costs and make more work for you. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to get the job done in two or three drafts. Will it be perfect? Maybe not, but perfection doesn’t really matter. A custom accounting website design will cost a lot of money; at least $2000. If you have a good reason to spend that much go for it, just be sure it’s not a vanity expense, because in terms of building your accounting practice there are usually better ways to spend that money. There are a lot of companies that provide excellent accounting and tax website templates. These products are more than adequate for most small to medium sized firms. They also tend to come packed with content, so you’ll be able to get a good site up much faster for a lot less work.

If you decide that having the unique look and feel is worth some extra money you may still be able to avoid the bulk of the expenses accrued by setting up a custom site. Some companies that provide CPA website templates will be able to modify an existing template to suit your needs much more cheaply than the cost of a full blown custom site.

Here’s a few things to consider before making a final decision. One problem I have all the time is when a client with a modest understanding of design comes into the process with a rigid preconception of what he or she wants. These are without doubt some of the ugliest websites I’ve ever done. Let’s do some honest self reflection here. Accountants get paid to pay meticulous attention to detail. We’re often type A personalities that are loath to surrender control to someone else. Well, this can get very expensive when you’re dealing with a web designer, so here’s some pointers for keeping our natural tendencies from doubling or tripling the cost of the site. It’s not really possible to get exactly what you want unless you do it yourself. Try to come in to the design process with an open mind about what your site is going to look like.

Keep in mind that the look of the site really isn’t all that important. If you look at highly successful A-list sites like Google, CraigsList and Reddit you’ll see that aesthetics is really not all that important to designing a successful site.

Your ability to provide accurate and timely tax and financial advice and preparation is far more important than your eye for color and balance, so stick to what you do best and trust your designer to do the same.

Overestimating the importance of graphics is the main cause of cost overruns in the website design process. It’s a lot cheaper to make design changes to a website during the planning phase than it is once the coding starts. Make your design choices up front using mock-ups, and once you finalize it stick to your guns. Once the coding process begins even seemingly minor changes become very expensive. Be aware that every monitor displays colors a little bit differently, so there’s no point in obsessing on colors.

If you really want a custom site your best strategy is to hire a skilled and experienced designer who shares your basic vision and try to trust his or her process. It’s important to keep your focus on what really matters.

Don’t treat your website like a product roll-out, treat it as what it is: a marketing instrument. I’ve had a lot of clients refuse to publish until the website’s “perfect”. It can be very frustrating to see a website sit idle for months or even years because an obsessive owner is trying to perfect it. Every day that goes buy is another day of lost revenues and lost domain authority. Even if they succeed it’s never worth the time and money they spent getting it “just so”. The most ironic part is that while they may have a really nice site, it’s a site designed to appeal to the website owner. This is a tragic, but common, mistake in advertising. Too many advertisers are afraid to confront their clients on this issue and just let them do this. You’re not trying to get you to hire yourself. You’re trying to get your prospects to hire you, so design your site to appeal to them. This brings us back to content. The function of your graphic design is to keep visitors from hitting the back button the first time they see your site, anything beyond that is just gravy. What matters is having useful, diverse content and presenting it in a personable, easy to navigate way.

Closely related to a futile drive for perfection is a need to “finish” the site. This is also a trap. Website design is a lot like building a house. Once the site is up it needs to be maintained and improved. Your website will never be “finished”. If you wait to take your website public until it’s “finished” you’ll never get it up, and if you ever allow yourself to treat your website as “finished” it will quickly slide into obsolescence.

You’ve seen sites like this. The news reports and tax updates are out of date. The links on the site are all broken or mapped to the wrong site. Are you impressed by sites like this? Well… neither are your clients and prospects.

Once you decide to get a website, make your priority to get it up as quickly as possible. Once it’s up it can start to make money for you, your domain name will begin to accumulate domain authority, and you can tweak it to your hearts content. In fact the more tweaking you do the better. The search engines respect sites that continue to grow and change once they open.

Your accounting website design is an investment in your business. Handle it the same way you’d treat a new lobby, a cold-call campaign, or any similar marketing cost. It doesn’t really make any difference if you opt to use a custom site or start with a template driven site. What matters is that you get your feet wet, get the site up quick, and let your customers and prospects observe as you unremittingly mold it to accommodate their needs.