Why Design Matters for Your Firm

Hey, we're here again to talk about marketing for accounting firms. And today we're going to talk about design, which is something that I am really interested in. I have a background in fine arts actually. And so I've always had, I don't know if it's a soft spot, but it's always been important to me to have really good design in everything that I've done. And with me today is Sarah Hackman, who is a great designer and has worked with lots of different types of businesses. And we're gonna have a discussion about design. So let's just start here. Sarah. Design, it's kind of a broad category, but I will say we're basically talking about how things look and feel for a brand. Why is that important for something like an accounting firm? Is it important? And we'll probably, maybe we'll go with the next question. Is like, how much do you need to invest in that? Like is it expensive? So, but let's start with, you know, why is design important?

Well, we'll start with is it important?

Yeah, that's a good idea.

I'll reply with a resounding yes, it is so important. And it's important because it is the visual expression of what people can expect when they buy your services, whenever they're investing in you as an accountant to handle their finances, to look at their books, to be that intimately close with, with your business or their personal life if it's an individual's finances. So yes, design is super important. It adds credibility to what you do. And again, especially in an industry where money is a very intimate thing, if your design, whether that's on your websites, on your flyers, any type of print collateral, social media posts or ads, if those don't look some level of polished, it's going to ping a red flag in folks mind. You know, there's, there's a lot about visual design that is subconscious. I don't think folks are actually going and looking at is that aligned. Do those colors complement each other? Most people don't consciously think of that, but when they see a website and something feels a little off, they get that little itchy feeling. And that's. That itchy feeling is what they associate with your business.

Yeah, I've sometimes compared it to like if you're in sales and you show up to, to a meeting with like a really ill fitting baggy suit. Like it doesn't really, it doesn't really say how well you can do the job, but it does communicate something about the person and it does affect the Credibility and the way that they interact with you. And so with design, the other thing about design is most people who are not designers, they know good design when they see it, but they don't know why. Right. They actually also don't see when it's bad design. And so we have a tendency, like you said, you have that feeling of something doesn't quite feel right here. If you want your interactions with potential customers to be that they feel like there's something not quite right here and they can't tell why, then you should just not invest in design. But if you want that feeling of, it's almost like there's no distraction. They just feel good about the company and they're not sure why they feel so good about you. I think design has a lot to do with that. Weirdly, as. As front and center design is like, it's the thing you see. It's often really in the background of what people are experiencing. They're not actually noticing. That's been my experience. They're not actually noticing good design, just experiencing it.

And I think that's why design usually is put on the back burner or not considered. Because you read the words on a website, you're landing on it. The tech needs to work, but design just in the background. But it's actually very much a part of the experience that folks have when they're interacting with your company.

Well. Okay, here's a. Here's like a huge loaded question. But like, what is good design?

That is a very big question. Good design is. You were going to say something.

I was just going to say, I mean, we'll keep it kind of in the context of businesses. So business to business, accounting firms, CPAs, you know, what is, what is good design? Kind of in that context, Good design.

Engages your target audience first and foremost. If it's broad enough that it doesn't capture or connect with your target audience, then it's not working. So first and foremost, it has to connect with your target audience. It has to have a purpose. If you are just using some funky, cool texture on your website just because it looks funky cool, but there's not really a reason why it doesn't connect with your audience, then that probably leans over to bad design or not good design.

Yeah.

So connect with your target audience, have a purpose, and even connect to your business purpose as well. Design isn't just to look pretty. It's also to guide your ideal customer to work with you through their customer journey. So whether that's on a website, in a social media post or a social media ad, a flyer out in the world, your business card, all those things work together to guide them along in that journey.

Yeah, I like that framing, you know, it's to, it's to guide people. It helps with like, the user experience. It's not. It's not to impress them. Right. I think design is more of a strategic choice a lot of times, like in, in what you're doing. And I'm a big believer that, you know, less is more. So we're not just talking about, like adding more colors and textures and fonts and things like that. It's actually a lot of times with design, it's about like stripping away the things that are not needed so that you're left with something that's really easy to engage with.

Right. And so when you think about going to a website for a business that you're trying to buy a product from or sign up for a service, if you can't find where to actually do that or the information that you need, even the way the information is organized or where that call to action button is placed, that's part of the design. So those choices, those strategic choices are part of good design.

Yeah. I've worked with a lot of accounting firms and I've seen a lot of accounting firm websites. And something that's pretty typical is there are some of these organizations, companies that provide like, templated websites for an industry, and that's really common within the accounting firm industry. And so they'll get a template. And what I found is that those sites tend to be. They're not terrible, but they are templated. So you're kind of. You're pre choosing what you want to communicate based on what the template has as an option, rather than what necessarily would be best served for your business. And so there's. I don't know if this is a strong distinction, but there's like good design and then there's also custom design, which is a little bit different. Right. So you can have something that looks. I think squarespace websites tend to look really good, but you're also a little bit more locked into what is available. You can't fully customize it. What are your thoughts on, like, whether it's important just to have something that looks pretty good or really needs to have the ability to have like, full customization?

I think both have. Have a place in the world. Because if you're just starting out, getting something up and working that looks good is great. But as you're growing or you're scaling or if you're looking at maybe where sales aren't closing, where are the hiccups in the actual customer journey? Then you go and you look at your design and say, hey, is there something about the design of our website that's actually impacting that customer journey? And then that's where you would actually go and invest more in the custom design. So it's not just, oh, it's like any other squarespace on the planet, actually connecting it back to business decisions. Again, design is strategic.

So what are. You've seen a lot of websites, you've seen a lot of design from companies. What are some of the kind of top line common mistakes or indicators that maybe a business needs to revisit design for their marketing materials?

Photography choice. The photo choice on websites is a big one that I see in a place that I think folks would maybe want to consider investing in design or really spending some time thinking about how to improve that.

Are you thinking like bad stock photos or like really kind of grainy, you know, Photoshop from an iPhone that they've decided to put on there? What, what do you mean?

When you talk about imagery, both and the quality of photo, if the photo is not the correct size for. If it's too small of pixels for the final placement on the photo, when it's blown up, it's going to look really grainy. That gives folks that itchy feeling that they associate with your business and they don't want to do business with you. So the quality of the photo, like the actual technical quality of the photo. But then also what's the content of the photo? Is it just a photo of your office space with empty chairs? Is it the exterior of the office that's probably not going to engage people. Now maybe have the photo of your building on the about page or the contact page where you have your address listed and if you're inviting folks to visit your location, give them a visual reference to find it. But going to a website and I see, I see a building, that's not going to make me go, ooh, I want to do business with them. Imagery that has people in it. People like to see people. There's data behind that too that images of people engage people. I'm saying people a lot, but it's kind of a weird sentence. Yeah, people like people. And when they see a person, when they see eyes, those eyes draw them into whatever that thing is. So on your website, have photos of people. You know, there are some like that, the stocky, stockiest of photos where it's here's a close up of a padfolio and a ledger. I don't know that that's going to inspire people to take action. Plus, if someone's on your website for two seconds, if they're assessing your services alongside another accountant, what's going to go through their mind? Is this an accountant that works with businesses like mine or do they just do personal finances? So the imagery that you choose, if you add a little bit more to that and make it less generic, if you add some specificity to your stock photos, then you're going to more likely connect with your target audience. Show, show individual families living their happiest life. If your ideal client is families and focusing on their accounting. If you're working with businesses, show people in the type of business settings that you want to work with because they see themselves in that photo.

Yeah, I see a lot of calculators and you know, like close up calculator shots and you know, paperwork and things like that. And I do see, you know, a lot of that kind of cheesy stock photo. What I generally tell my clients is that, you know, you want to find, you know, natural looking people if you're, if you're in the design field. After a while you start to see the same stock photos over and over again. And it's because there's a few people out there, a few options where it feels really natural. But then it ends up being kind of repetitive where you start to interact with different brands and you see the same stock photos. It's not ideal, but that tends to be better than a picture of a calculator. If you can do it. Hire a professional photographer to take some photos of you interacting with a client or could be in your office space. But ideally with those images you're trying to help the visitor connect themselves with your company. So it's not just pictures of your office and your people, but also like what is your customer avatar? Will they see themselves in your website? That's an important piece of that photo choice, I think. What else? What are some other like things that people should be thinking about design wise or be looking for as design problems?

Maybe the layout of the information is a big one too. We talked a little bit that before about making sure that folks can find what they're looking for. Whether that's the call to action and the information, but having a good hierarchy of things. Do you need the detailed list of your products and services in that hero image, that first landing spot of your website? Probably not, but you do need that on there. You need to hook folks with the information and then give that more detailed information when they're doing their due diligence. So clearly having hierarchy on your site is going to be very important. And even some subtle things like giving. And this is where you get into the nuance and the art of design. Giving things breathing room. If something feels uncomfortable, maybe the text has very little padding and it's right up against the edge of the browser window. Or maybe it looks good on a desktop or a laptop, but then when you open it up in mobile, that padding is really tight and you can barely see the edges of those letters. Again, that's going to give folks that itchy feeling that then they associate with your business.

Yeah, and I think that's one of the biggest areas where working with experienced designer can be a huge benefit because that layout and spacing, you know, having white space, having enough breathing room. If you go to high, like high end brands, you'll see, you know, things like, like Apple. Right. There's a lot of white space. There's a lot of space on there. Which is again why good design tends to be about, like taking away clutter and just being able to present the information. You know, if you think about scrolling down a webpage, I like to think in terms of, you know, each screen should, it should be clear what information they're supposed to be getting from each, you know, each screen full. So you've got that hero section with your big headline and then you scroll down, you're going to be able to present one other or like a limited number of pieces of information and then you scroll down further and it's a new chunk of information. But if you squeeze all that stuff together and you try to crowd in too much of it because you want to get, you want to make sure you get all that information out there at the same time. That's what you mean by hierarchy. You have to make choices about what's.

The most important because it's overwhelming when there are three key points you're trying to communicate or eight key points that a business is trying to communicate in that little rectangle of your phone.

And you mentioned mobile devices and desktop devices. It might be helpful to pull up your website and just look at it on a mobile phone and then compare that to some of the other websites that you frequent. Is this intuitive? Do people understand how to find what they're looking for on your website? That's an area that can be. It's an oversight for a lot of.

Companies, I think because a lot of companies, when they're working on their website, they're working on it on a desktop or a laptop because it's during business hours that it's office equipment. But when you think about how people are actually accessing your site, yes, there might be some folks who are accessing your site on the desktop or a laptop for whatever reason, but the majority of people are scrolling on their phone looking up information, whether that's in the carpool line or after, after work hours on Netflix, like, oh, I need to get my tax account lined up. Some folks are going to look at it more on mobile. And so whenever you're designing on a desktop, we tend to think about desktop only.

Yeah, I think most people, when they think about design, they sort of assume it's really like fonts and colors. Does it matter? What are you like for an accounting firm, does it matter what font they use on their website? Does it matter? Like, does the color scheme? Is that important?

Color scheme and font choice are very important. Again, especially for an accountant, because you're looking into people's finances and money. Again, whether that's individuals or businesses. If you use a comic sans, unless your brand is really, if your brand is super fun, like you're like the goofy, fun accountant, then have a playful font and you'll connect with your target audience there. But if you're a very serious B2B accountant, you, you work with big retainers, you know, large, large firms, you're probably not going to want to use a playful font again unless you're like a high end playful. But I think the, the high end probably is going to have less of that playful look and feel.

I don't know if I've met a playful accountant. I mean, there are, I guess there are a few out there, but I don't think that's usually the primary thing that an accounting firm is trying to communicate about.

Right. So you're probably not gonna use goofy font choices or wacky colors. You'd probably want to lean towards something that's more trustworthy. You know, blues, deep color, something that evokes stability. And with your font choices, you know, obviously a web safe font for, for a website, but a sans serif font, the legibility for that. But maybe your logo has a serif font in that. Maybe you could pull from that for some of your headers as well. So the font choice is really reflecting the values and perception that you want your target audience to have. But then also make sure that's consistent with how your brand exists in the world.

One Thing I've noticed with accounting firms specifically this is going to be my own kind of opinion coming through here is that they've got the acronyms or they want the CPA in it. And a lot of times that ends up getting into the logo or they try to put like a tagline in the logo as well. And having a tagline is great. There may be some cases where your logo, your tagline should be together. But one of my just pieces of easy advice is like simplify what your company like brand logo is. It can still legally be or have. You can have the CPA in your name, but you know, just have a, have a simple name for your company in the logo that is really legible because I just think most people are seeing that logo at a very small size, you know, up in the upper left corner of the screen, they can't even read, you know, that little tagline that you've got in there. So it's my own little soapbox about accounting firm logos.

Ditto. Ditto to that point. And one great tip for the logo. If you do have a logo that has a tagline in it, you can have a couple versions of your logo. There can be the full logo lockup that has the name of your business, maybe there's an emblem in there and the logo that is great for when your logo is at a larger size. If on your website you're probably going to use or you'll want to use the version that has the name of your business and the emblem. And even there'll be times where you just need the emblem. So having those variations on your logo, variations by, I mean not different fonts but the full logo name and emblem.

I mentioned it at the beginning. Design has a cost to it. It's usually not something that most firms can do in house. Just a few of them that I've met have someone in house who's a strong enough designer to kind of take the lead in that. You got to probably be 100 people before you have a marketing team that includes a full time designer. And so a lot of firms are wondering, should I spend money on the design or should I spend money on like Google Ads to get more traffic to my website? And so there's this question, you know what, how much should I expect? What do I need to invest to get good design that is going to at least meet my needs? What are your thoughts?

Well, if I were presented with that question, I would turn back and ask, well, what is your goal? And the response would probably be something like Well, I want more clients. I want to grow my business. Okay, well, let's look at your website, because all of those Google Ads are going to point to your website. And if there's something that's not quite working with your website, and I don't mean like the text not working, I mean something about the design keeps people from contacting you or signing up for your services, then you'd actually be setting yourself up for failure. If you just invest in the Google Ads versus looking at the design. First fix the website. Get the design tuned up and polished so that it's creating that customer experience and feeling that you want people to have. Then turn on your Google Ads.

Yeah, you know, words and design really, like, flow together and interact. And I like to think, the way I like to say it is that good design can really amplify strong messaging. You can't get away with just having good design without having good messaging on your site. But if you have good messaging and your site or your marketing materials are kind of a mess, it can really undercut whatever work you've done to try to get that messaging right. I often think of it in terms of, like, thresholds, right? Like there, you know, there are some brands that are investing, you know, millions and millions of dollars on their design team and on their brand to get it right. Most firms, that is never going to make sense to be putting that much time into. So you have to hit a design and professionalism threshold to be taken seriously, you know, when it comes to that. We talked about credibility earlier, and that is something that I think that is really worth investing in. I've talked to companies who have spent anywhere from $500 for a logo design package up to $50,000. And if I was talking to a typical accounting firm, I'd probably say you probably want to work with someone a little more sophisticated than the $500 designer. But you probably don't need the $50,000 brand package for your company at this point. Unless you are, you know, really trying to move into that, you know, exponential growth phase. You know, maybe. Maybe at some point it would make sense for rebrand. Does that, does that make sense to you? What are you. What are your thoughts on, like, where. Where you should put time and money?

Yeah, it's definitely relative to where your business is and where you're wanting to go. For sure. As you were outlining that, I was thinking about, like, little dials where you're just trying to, like, even it out and tune it to just right. Because if you are. If you're listening to this and you're thinking like, oh wow, like we need to up level our design. Let's spend $50,000 on a logo. Maybe that's not the right business decision.

We often, you know, I think, I like to think about it in terms of using a project as a way to improve your overall design for your business. So if you know you're in in need of a website redesign, that can be a great opportunity to explore what should be the branding of our firm in general. Or if you're, you know, preparing for a big trade show and you need to create some materials and a booth and all that, that's another opportunity to say let's, let's take the design a little bit more seriously this time. Let's rethink it and use that as an opportunity. So you're exploring some of those, the design options while also getting something pretty tangible that you can use right away.

That's a great point because sometimes when websites are spun up for businesses or you're switching a template because you want to make it look nicer, there's sometimes businesses don't think about the consistency across collateral because there's no style guide. They just make the design decisions to get the thing done. So whenever you're taking a step back on that particular project, you can actually look, okay, do we have a style guide? It's actually document. These are the fonts that we use, these are the colors that we use. We use our full logo in this potential placement. We use our logo with the emblem on our website and have all that documented so that any collateral that comes after is consistent because you spent the time to document those decisions. And so that anything that anyone creates, whether it's an outside team member or an internal team member, it has that visual consistency.

You know, a lot of business owners are not designers. They don't think of themselves, especially in the accounting space. They don't think of themselves as creative people. They know creative people probably. I'm going to say this carefully. I think that there are a certain number of folks out there and if we're self aware, we realize that we don't necessarily know what good design is and what bad design is. It's not something that that comes intuitively. What's the best way for an accounting firm owner to do kind of a self audit of the design? Like how would they find out if this is something that I, that they need to look at again? Is there other ways, other ways to do that that you would advise.

Taking a look at your Website is a great place to start. However, like you've probably seen your website enough that maybe you're unaware of some of those potential problem areas. But after listening to this conversation, you have some guidance from designers and a new perspective to look through and maybe you'll see some new things. You could also maybe you walk into a coffee shop one day and ask a couple random people like, hey, I'll buy you a cup of Starbucks. Take a look at my website, let me know if you can find what you're looking for or something like that. But of course, like we mentioned earlier, looking at your website on mobile, especially if you haven't looked at it on a mobile device much, if you're primarily looking at it on a laptop or even pulling it up side by side, even if you have seen it a lot, looking at that comparison, you can see what folks might be experiencing on those different devices and that can give you a good indication of things.

Yeah, just kind of putting yourself into a mind space of a brand new visitor. Like you haven't pretend you've never been to your website before and you've just typed into Google, you know, accountant near me, you click on your website. Another thing that you can do is do that search and go and look at your competitors websites and start to see like what you know. You might find that some of the other folks that are competing with you have much better design than you do. And you have to know that is when people are comparing your services might be better, but if your design and your messaging isn't as strong as your competitors, you're definitely losing business to some of these other ones in the list. So comparison is not a bad spot to start.

Yeah, and you can, and if you get that itchy feeling on a competitor's site that brings that subconscious aspect of design to mind for you and it's helpful in self awareness to then go back and look at yours to see, oh, like is my spacing, is the spacing on my text like that? Is it hard to read my headlines? And so then you can use that comparison, you can leverage that comparison to go back to your site and have that self awareness.

I know a lot of design like web design companies. We're talking a lot about websites and design is definitely not just for websites, but a lot of web design companies will offer free or low cost website audits where they'll take a look at your site. Now obviously if you're reaching out to a web design company, they, they have an incentive to tell you that you need a Redesign, because they're hoping to sell you a redesign. That's kind of what we do. I mean, that's just transparently we want. If I truly think that your website is costing you sales, I'm going to tell you that. And if it's. And if it's a great website, then I'm going to tell you that as well. One thing that I found a lot of folks get frustrated by is they go through what feels like an expensive process for a website redesign, and then it turns out that the result is still not good enough or it's not what they hoped for. Because there are. There are a lot of different ways to build a website. I know that's kind of a frustrating place to be in where you've already invested some money in this, but it's still not good enough. And so, you know, that's a. It's good to get. You want to find someone who's going to tell you the truth, whether or not it hurts your feelings about the design of your website. I think that I know for creatives, the design work that they do tends to be very personal. And I think for business owners as well, especially if you put some money into something, you probably are also emotionally invested in it. But it is really helpful to get that. That really kind of honest feedback.

One thing that I think about whenever I'm designing a project is how would this design connect with my client's target audience? And so as an accountant, as a business owner, maybe that's a great way to look at it. How would this design connect with my target audience? And that can take some of the personal feelings about holding that design, cherishing that design too much and holding that too closely, because maybe there's something about it that's not converting website visitors into clients. When you remove your personal preference of design and ask yourself, does this connect with my target audience? That's going to help you get further down the road to a design that converts those visitors into clients.

Yeah, that's a great spot maybe to end is. I think that when you think about design, there can be a lot of personal preferences that come into that process. You're a business owner, you want the company to reflect well on you. You might like certain colors or themes and things like that. It's important to remember design a good. The good design your website, it's not for you, it's for your customers. And even it's really, the website is primarily for people who are not yet your customers. They're for your ideal customer profile. And so Keep that in mind when you're looking at the design of whatever you're creating. Is this connecting with the people that I want to connect with? Not just do I like it, is this my favorite color or personal preferences? And a good designer can really walk you through that process. They can help you identify who that is, why they're making choices. Ideally, you know, you want to be working with a designer who presents something to you and your reaction is, oh, of course not. You know, I like this or I like that better. You know, you want the designer who's able to help you understand what is the best course of action for your company, not just trying to give you something that you're going to respond to positively because they understand your customer as well and are able to present that. Do you have any closing thoughts or you know, what's the best design advice, kind of in a general sense that you like to give your clients?

Take a step back and look at it. Know that design is important. It really, really is. It subconsciously impacts people's perception about your business. And, and if you don't take the time to look at that or even invest in that, you're probably going to have a perception, your people are going to have a perception of your business that maybe you don't want to have. So it's worth the investment to take a look at the design.

Well, that just makes me think of, you know, when you have good, when you have really good design in your website, you show up like a really, like a high end professional firm. You can charge more money like it's, you don't have to. This is, this is, maybe this is kind of the dark secrets behind marketing and design is, you know, the way you show up in the marketplace has a major impact on the prices that you can charge. If you look like a, like a high end professional firm, you can justify higher prices even if your services are very similar to something that your competitors are, are charging as well. And so design's a great place to invest. Design a brand. If that's a, if you're looking for ways to be able to charge more, let's leave it there. Sarah, where can people find you?

What's the best way to connect me@hackmancreative.com or Ackman Creative on all the socials?

Well, great. This was a great conversation. Thanks for being here today. And if you have design questions for your website, find, find Sarah, or reach out to us at Benchmark Growth and we'd be happy to have a conversation. Thanks for tuning in this podcast, Marketing for Accounting Firms is brought to you by Benchmark Growth Marketing, a marketing agency that helps accounting firms get more calls booked through their website. You can find us@benchmarkgrowthmarketing.com Connect with me Matt Banker on LinkedIn.