What does an accountancy firm's website actually have to do?
Three things, in order: prove you're legally allowed to charge for tax work, show you work inside the software the business already runs, and answer the money question before anyone has to ask it. A builder's website sells with photographs of finished work. Yours has none, so it sells with registration, software and a straight answer on price.
Everything else on the page is downstream of those three. Service lists, team bios, a blog about the Budget: fine, none of them decisive. A prospect who can't confirm you're registered, can't tell whether you work in their software, and can't get within range of a fee doesn't ring you. They ring the next firm on the page.
The practical version is a hierarchy, not a longer site: registration and software above the fold, fee structure within one scroll, the handover process on its own page linked from the enquiry form, then the depth of service lines, sector experience and people.
Specialisation beats breadth here the same way it does everywhere else. A firm that clearly does trades and construction outranks and outsells a firm listing twenty services shallowly. Pick the two or three sectors you actually want and build depth in those.
Why do accounting firm websites fail to bring in clients?
Because they're written in the firm's vocabulary, not the client's. A business owner searches how much does an accountant cost and do you use Xero. The site answers with TASA compliance, entity structuring and provisional tax reassessment. Both describe the same work. Only one matches what somebody typed, and that mismatch is the most common reason these sites get visits and no enquiries.
Jargon where the search terms should be
Provisional tax, terminal tax, entity structuring: correct words, wrong page. Put them in the detail, not in the heading somebody has to find you by.
No visible proof
No testimonial, no client count, no named sector experience. In a trust-bought service, an unproven claim gets deleted by the reader before it's believed.
No clear next step
Three links to the same contact page, none saying what happens when you click. Say what the first conversation is and what it costs.
Google Business Profile left incomplete
It's the largest single local ranking factor and it sits entirely outside what a website build covers. Claim it, keep the details identical to your site, and treat it as its own job, not a line item inside this one.
Desktop-only design assumed to work on mobile
It doesn't. A prospect comparing three firms is doing it on a phone, usually at night, usually before telling their current accountant anything.
Membership displayed as if it were registration
The most expensive mistake on this list, and one only this profession can make. Covered in full in the next section.
Is membership the same as being registered to do tax work?
No, and showing them as though they were the same is a credibility problem in a profession that sells precision. In New Zealand, a Certificate of Public Practice from CA ANZ is what lets a chartered accountant offer services to the public. In Australia, registration with the Tax Practitioners Board is what lets you charge for tax work. CPA, CA or IPA membership alone is neither.
| What it is | New Zealand | Australia | What goes on the site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional body membership | CA ANZ membership | CPA Australia, CA ANZ or IPA membership | Body name and logo, described as membership, never as a licence |
| Authority to practise or charge for tax work | Certificate of Public Practice issued by CA ANZ | Registration with the Tax Practitioners Board | Stated in words, with the registration number where one exists |
| Something a prospect can check independently | Confirm the certificate with the body | The TPB public register | A link, not a claim. If it can't be verified, we don't imply it can. |
How do I answer the pricing question without publishing a price list?
Publish the structure, not the number. Say whether you work on a fixed annual fee, a monthly retainer or an hourly rate, say what sits inside each one, and say what the first meeting costs, even if the answer is nothing. That answers what the prospect actually wants to know: whether they're about to be surprised.
| Structure | What it suits | What the page must say | What it prevents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed annual fee | Compliance-led work with a known scope | Exactly what's in and what's out, and when it's reviewed | The scope argument in month nine |
| Monthly retainer | Advisory relationships and regular management reporting | The minimum term, the notice period, and what happens in a heavy month | The prospect assuming they're being locked in |
| Hourly | Ad hoc work, disputes, one-off structuring | A rate band and a written estimate before work starts | The open-ended meter fear, which is the main reason hourly loses |
| Project or one-off | Entity set-up, a single return, a catch-up job | A from price and what pushes it up | Being compared on hourly rate against work that isn't hourly |
What happens to my records if I switch accountants?
This is the question stopping the enquiry, and almost no accountancy site answers it. Show your handover as a numbered process: sign an authority, we write to your current accountant, they release your records, we load them into your software, we name your next deadline. Five steps turn an unknown into an administrative task.
- 1
A conversation, not an onboarding
Fifteen minutes, no documents, no financials. The only thing being established is whether you're the right fit. Nobody has told their current accountant anything yet.
- 2
Authority to act
One signature. Say what it authorises, say what it doesn't, and say that nothing moves until it's signed. This is where an e-signature step belongs, and where you name the tool you use.
- 3
We request your records
The firm writes to the outgoing accountant for professional clearance and the file. The client doesn't have to make the phone call they've been avoiding. Say that explicitly; it's the single most relieving sentence on the page.
- 4
Records loaded into your software
Into the Xero or MYOB file that already exists, not into a new one. Name what gets checked on the way in: opening balances, GST position, prior year returns, fixed asset register.
- 5
Your next deadline, named and diarised
End on a date. Provisional tax instalment, GST return, year-end. A named date proves the relationship has started and turns a decision into a diary entry.
Do you work in Xero or MYOB?
Put the answer in the first screen, with the partner badge at the tier you've actually earned. Most New Zealand and Australian small businesses already run Xero or MYOB, and almost none will change platform to change accountant. If your site doesn't say which you work in, the prospect has to ask, and asking is the step most of them skip.
Your Xero partner tier, stated accurately
Published and checkable. A silver firm claiming gold is a trust problem in a sector whose entire product is accuracy.
MYOB partner status, separately
They're different programmes. Firms working in both should say both, in the order their target clients actually use.
What happens if the client is on neither
Say whether you'll work in what they have, migrate them, or decline. All three are legitimate answers. Silence isn't.
The rest of the stack, named
Receipt capture, payroll, practice management. Naming real tools answers a question the prospect hadn't got to yet.
Where the client portal lives
If document exchange happens in a portal, link it from the site and say what it is. If it happens by email, say that too, and say how it's secured.
Want to know what this looks like for your business? Fifteen minutes is usually enough to tell you.
When should the website change during the year?
On known dates, not whenever somebody remembers. Your busy season is published years ahead, so your website can be too. A New Zealand practice on a 31 March balance date runs to provisional tax instalments on 28 August, 15 January and 7 May. An Australian practice runs to the BAS quarters. Every one of those dates is a reason for the homepage to say something different.
| Date | What it is | What changes on the site |
|---|---|---|
| 31 March | Balance date, year-end | Homepage switches to what we need from you and when; new enquiries now are for next year, so the CTA changes accordingly |
| 7 May | Third provisional tax instalment (31 March balance date) | High-intent search from businesses who've just been surprised by a number |
| 28 August | First provisional tax instalment of the new year | Best window to publish anything about cashflow planning, because it's the month people feel it |
| 15 January | Second provisional tax instalment | Lands mid-summer break; a page that answers it without a phone call is worth building once and reusing every year |
| Australian BAS quarters | confirm current ATO lodgement dates | Quarterly lodgement drives the same cycle across the Tasman; confirm dates with the ATO before publishing them |
Figure 1
The year your clients live in
What goes in the hero when you have no photos to show?
Scale and rating. For a service chosen on trust rather than on how it looks, the number of businesses you look after and your review score do the job a portfolio does everywhere else. Put both in the first screen, not on an about page, and only ever numbers you can defend on the day somebody asks.
Years in practice
The cheapest credibility you own and the hardest for a new competitor to copy.
Businesses looked after
Substitutes directly for a builder's project count. Round it down, never up.
Review rating and where it comes from
Name the platform. An unattributed rating is worth less than no rating.
Response time to a new enquiry
Often named as a differentiator in this profession and rarely stated on a website. response time commitment.
Registration, in the strip itself
Not the footer. It belongs with the other facts a prospect is using to decide whether to keep reading.
What should the enquiry form actually ask?
A name, a business, and one line about what they need. Nothing else. The instinct is an intake form collecting entity type, turnover, IRD number and current accountant, so the first meeting runs efficiently. That form is the reason the first meeting never happens. Ask for a conversation, not a financial disclosure, and collect the rest afterwards.
The version of this argument that applies here is sharper than the general web-design case: the fields an accountancy intake form wants are precisely the fields a prospect is least willing to type into a stranger's site, while still employing the accountant they're about to leave.
So the first form is three fields and a sentence saying what happens next. The intake form still exists; it arrives after the fifteen minutes, from a firm the person has now met.
We get all our work by referral. Why would we need a website?
Because referral has a ceiling and most established practices have already reached it. Clients, lawyers, mortgage brokers and bankers refer you, and the number of people who can is fixed. Search isn't fixed. The website isn't there to replace referral, it's there to convert the referral who googles you before ringing, and to reach the businesses nobody will ever introduce you to. If you're not sure whether you've hit the ceiling, that's a fifteen-minute conversation, not a project. Book it and we'll work through it with you.
| Referral | Search | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it reaches | People connected to someone who already knows you | Businesses with the problem, right now, who have never heard of you |
| How it scales | With the size of your network, which grows slowly | With the depth of the site and the profile, which you control |
| What it costs | Time, relationships, reciprocity with lawyers and brokers | A build, then a refresh cycle tied to dates you already have |
| What the website does | Confirms the referral; answers software, fee and handover before the call | Wins the query, gets cited in AI answers, fills the gap referral can't reach |
| What it can't do | Grow past the number of people who can refer you | Replace a personal introduction from a trusted lawyer |
Which build does an accountancy practice actually need?
Start from the job, not the build. A landing page carries one date and one offer. A full site carries service lines, a team and the handover page. A custom build is for multi-office practices and anything that has to talk to software you already run. A full site ships in 7 days and a landing page in 5. Tell us on a fifteen-minute call which deadline you're aiming at, and we'll say which build your job lands in and what it comes to.
| Build | Ships in | What it suits in an accountancy practice |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page | 5 days | One deadline, one offer. A page built for year-end or a provisional tax instalment, published before the date and reused next year. |
| Full site | 7 days | A practice with service lines, a team, sector pages and a handover page. The default for a firm replacing a template site. |
| Custom | delivery timeframe | Multi-office, portal integration, or a client-facing tool that has to talk to something you already run. |
| Ongoing site care | Ongoing | Updates, monitoring, backups, and a refresh cycle pinned to your compliance dates. Arranged separately once the site is live. |
Have you built one of these before?
Yes: a chartered accountancy and business advisory practice in Newmarket, Auckland. We built the site and we run it. It leads on growth rather than compliance, puts scale and rating in the first screen, settles the pricing question in an FAQ before the call, and asks for a conversation instead of a financial disclosure. [[PERMISSION: client name]]
Positioning on growth rather than compliance is the decision worth copying. Every accountant files returns; what separates an advisory relationship from a commodity one is what the client gets afterwards.
We don't have enquiry numbers to show you, before or after, for this client or any other. No baseline was taken, and we're not going to invent one. If another agency shows you a conversion lift for a site like this, ask where the figure came from and who measured it.
The client name is withheld here until they've given written permission to use it: [[PERMISSION: client name]].
Where the rules actually come from
The claims on this page rest on named regulators and platforms, not on Dreamy's own say-so. Verify any of them independently rather than taking our word for it.
- Inland Revenue: provisional tax payment datesNew ZealandFetched and confirmed 2026-09-19: states 28 August, 15 January and 7 May as instalment dates for a 31 March balance date. Source for the compliance calendar section.
- Chartered Accountants ANZ: Certificate of Public Practice guidanceNew ZealandExplains the Certificate of Public Practice as distinct from membership. Returns 403 to automated fetchers but has previously loaded normally in a browser (checked 2026-09-19); verify manually before publishing the link, and re-check if a link checker flags it.
- CPA AustraliaAustraliaOne of the three recognised Australian professional accounting bodies named in the membership comparison. Confirmed live 2026-09-19.
- Institute of Public AccountantsAustraliaThird recognised Australian body named alongside CPA Australia and CA ANZ. Confirmed live 2026-09-19.
- Xero: the Xero partner program explainedNew Zealand and AustraliaXero's own explanation of partner status levels (partner, bronze, silver, gold, platinum), backing the instruction to display the tier actually earned. Confirmed to be a genuine, indexed Xero Central article 2026-09-19; the page renders via JavaScript, so a direct automated fetch returns an empty shell. Verify by browser before publishing.
- External Reporting Board (XRB)New ZealandNew Zealand's accounting, audit and climate-reporting standard-setting Crown entity, named once for entity density. Confirmed live 2026-09-19.
Draft quote. Nobody said this. Replace before publishing.
July is still July, but the site answers the same eleven questions we used to answer on the phone, one at a time, for six weeks.
Questions, answered.
Start with the fifteen minutes fifteen minutes
No documents, no financials, no commitment. We'll talk about what your site needs to say before the enquiry stalls on registration, software or price.
Book a 15-minute demoNo commitment. No pitch deck. Just 15 minutes.