One-off Fee or Monthly Payment?
Most web designers for accountants will charge your practice one of the following:
- A one-off fee for the design of the site and probably a small ongoing fee for the ongoing hosting of the site.
- OR
- A monthly fee for the use of the site.
- OR
- Both a one-off setup fee and a monthly fee.
Traditional web designers, that don't specialize in accountants, typically just charge a one-off fee for the design. This is fine if that's all you want but it usually gives rise to problems for accountants...
- No resources. The site will not contain any information that is likely to need updating. So these sites are usually just brochure sites with no resource type information such as tax rates, budget news, helpsheets, etc.
This will significantly decrease the credibility of the practice in the eyes of most potential new clients as well as existing clients who see other practices providing a lot more useful information.
In addition it won't help educate visitors to a level where they are then encouraged to contact you for more help.
- Expensive to Update. Every time you want to make a change to your site, you will be required to pay an additional fee to your designer. The only alternative to this is to have a more expensive content management solution built into the site when it is designed.
- No Monthly Newsletter. You won't get any other form of useful monthly service such as a tax newsletter you could send to clients and prospects. A regular newsletter is the key to gaining new clients long term as well as keeping existing clients happy.
- Beware Extras. Some may advertise as being a one-off fee but when you start to add other things into your site that you need, add-ons may well create additional substantial monthly fees.
A monthly fee package overcomes these problems. The site can then be packed with many useful resources that are kept up to date by the web designer. This is only really possible with those designers who specialize in accountants, many of them employing accountants and tax writers themselves.
Some designers may try to have it both ways, charging both a set-up fee and a monthly fee. It's hard to see why if two designers are offering similar packages, a practice would want to choose one that also charges a set-up fee unless the monthly fee was very low.
Most accountants will find the best solution is to go for a monthly fee package.
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A comparison table of the different offering from the UK suppliers of websites for accountants.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or enquiries regarding this website. Simply email: info@websitesforaccountants.net.
