The reason I get excited about website integrations is because they make it easier for you to make and maintain critical connections with your clients.
It’s about using apps and software to reach them on their own terms, to be on hand when they need answers and to squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of your systems and processes.
Throughout the pandemic, we all witnessed the power of digital communications. Those that perhaps didn’t understand the importance of marketing before are now in no doubt that digital communications are key tools in winning new clients and retaining existing ones.
At the same time, many accountants who already understood what marketing can do leveraged the tools they had in place to strengthen client relationships and win new business – no mean feat during a catastrophic economic downturn.
With the dust settling and time to reflect, accounting firms now need to consider how they can maintain the level of attention and responsiveness their customers have come to expect.
Getting your business systems integrated with your website, from live chat to payment portals, is one smart way to achieve that.
Communication and connectivity
Business systems connect strategy, process, customers, employees and technology.
Having the right business systems for your accounting firm is critical in creating efficiency, improving customer experience and providing employees with the right tools to perform their job.
As a marketing agency, we at PracticeWeb are making it our mission to build a connected website platform that will help firms create that perfect customer experience.
Our website platform, Horizon, is built on WordPress, and has fast become the prime choice for modern accounting firms.
It offers more than basic functions such as editing content and keeping your site up to date.
It has built-in marketing features and is connected to a growing range of third-party accounting, banking and marketing systems provided by our partners.
We want to provide firms with the right tools to engage and convert prospects and to inform their clients at every stage.
And we want it to be as little hassle as possible: find your favourite CRM, practice management, payment or marketing software in our catalogue of integrations. Switch it on. Go.
New integrations every month
The kind of ambitious accounting firms with which we love to work are changing their business models to become more customer focused and, by extension, putting data and software at the heart of their business strategies.
Successful firms appreciate the advantages digital offers, are familiar with emerging technologies and, frankly, just expect their website to work seamlessly with new software.
That’s why in the past year or two we’ve doubled down on ensuring our website platform will connect with the most popular business systems. It’s about improving the customer experience, creating efficiency for our clients and, most importantly, converting prospects into clients by taking them through the buyer journey with as little friction as possible.
We listen to the practices with which we work – which software has got them excited? What would make their lives easier? We don’t wait for them to come to us and make them pay for the work – we improve the underlying product. Because if one accountancy firm wants it, that probably means others will, too.
And we keep an eye on trends and developments so we can stay ahead of the game, talking to up-and-coming app developers and building relationships with integration in mind.
That’s why the catalogue of software integrations offered as part of our Horizon website product grows every month and now looks, if I do so say myself, rather impressive.
Recent new integrations
In June 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics, more than 30% of all retail sales were online, and we’ve all had to get used to paying for everything from coffee to curry using apps on our phones.
People want to be able to pay online and they want it to be easy.
That’s why some of our most exciting recent integrations include two of the worlds largest payment providers, World Pay and Global Pay.
Payment gateways are a great way to offer your clients the flexibility they expect when it comes to buying or paying for accountancy services.
We also integrate with Practice Management Software, Senta. This is massive because we know how important lead generation is for accountants.
This integration means prospects can go straight from a contact form on your website into your sales workflow, from where you can monitor their progress from prospect to closed business.
Live chat is another integration which improves the customer experience.
Allowing users to have direct conversation on your website with real people offers obvious advantages, filtering through the best leads and moving them closer to being ready to buy with minimal effort.
Accounting firms already taking advantage of this option tell us they’ve seen a 35-40% increase in leads from their website as a result.
We also offer full integration with Salesforce, HubSpot and other world-leading customer relationship management (CRM) providers to help clients capture and manage enquiries.
That flows through into marketing automation and email tools such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor through which you can capture visitors’ email addresses, grow your prospect list and share your insight.
Finally, social proof is a great way to demonstrate to prospects that you’re able to help them and that you’re already solving problems like theirs. Our customer review integrations can really help bring this to life on your website, putting glowing reviews right there where website users can see them as they make the decision about whether to do business with you.
Google Reviews is most popular among our clients but because we’re aiming to be comprehensive, not just cherry pick the easy stuff, we also integrate with TrustPilot, Feefo and freeIndex.
Let’s supercharge your website
The above are just a selection of the integrations we’ve been working on.
If you’d like to talk more about what’s on offer and how it can improve the customer experience, enhance client communications and create a lead generation machine, get in touch with us at hello@practiceweb.co.uk or by phone on: 0117 915 0420.
