Websites for accountants, lawyers and consultants

You are being checked, not shopped

Most people arriving at an accountant's or a lawyer's website were referred. They already have your name. They are verifying that you exist, that you handle their specific problem, and that you look like someone who will still be here next year.

This changes what the site needs. Persuasion matters less than legitimacy: a real address, real credentials, real names and faces, and a scope of practice specific enough that the visitor can tell whether they are in the right place.

Say what you do not do

Counterintuitive and highly effective. A firm that says "we handle corporate tax and year-end for owner-managed businesses; we do not do personal bankruptcy" gets fewer enquiries and more clients. Vague scope generates wrong-fit calls that cost you time and convert at nothing.

It also makes you the precise answer to a precise question, which is exactly what search engines and AI assistants are trying to find.

Credentials, stated accurately

Be careful here, and we will be careful with you. Name the designation you actually hold, the body that granted it, and the province you are licensed in. Do not inherit credentials from a firm you used to work at or a client you served — it is the fastest way to turn a marketing page into a complaint.

We apply this to ourselves. Our own case studies carry an explicit "what we do not claim" section for exactly this reason.

Booking, because the phone is the friction

Professional services convert on the consultation. Every step between "this looks right" and a time in the calendar loses people, and phone tag loses the most. A booking page showing real availability, with an intake form that captures the situation before the call, means the first conversation starts with context instead of ten minutes of background.

Confidentiality is a design constraint

If your intake form collects anything sensitive — financial details, a legal matter, health information — it needs to be handled properly: encrypted in transit, stored somewhere appropriate, and retained no longer than it should be. Canadian hosting matters here for PIPEDA and, if you have Quebec clients, Law 25. This is a normal part of the build, not a premium tier.

The about page is the most-read page you have

On most professional services sites the about page outperforms the home page for time on page, and it is usually the page that got the least attention. That inversion makes sense once you accept that the visitor arrived already knowing what you do and is now deciding whether they want to deal with you specifically.

So write it as a person rather than as a firm. Where you trained, how long you have practised, what kind of client you work with most, and a photograph that looks like you rather than a stock boardroom. "Committed to excellence" is not information. "Fourteen years, mostly owner-managed businesses in Atlantic Canada" is.

Answer the fee question before it is asked

Professional services websites are almost uniformly silent on price, and everybody in the sector agrees this is correct. It usually is not. Silence does not read as premium, it reads as a phone call the visitor has not yet decided to make, and the enquiries you lose to it are invisible so you never learn the cost.

You rarely need to publish a rate. You need to remove the uncertainty: whether the first conversation is chargeable, how you bill — hourly, fixed fee, retainer — and a genuine range for your most common piece of work. That is enough for someone to decide they are in the right place, which is the only job the website has.

Write about the problem, not the practice area

Nobody types "commercial litigation" until they already know that is what they have. They type the thing that happened to them: a contractor walked off a job, a partner is taking clients, an assessment arrived they do not understand. Pages organised by practice area are organised for your convenience, not your client's.

The fix is not to rename everything. It is to add a handful of pages written in the language people actually use, each one explaining what that situation typically involves, roughly what happens next and when it is worth getting advice. Those pages are also the ones an AI assistant can quote, because they contain an answer rather than a category.

Response time is part of the offer

Almost every professional services enquiry is time-sensitive to the person sending it, and the firm that replies first frequently wins on that basis alone. Yet most sites say nothing about how long a response takes, which leaves the sender wondering whether the form went anywhere at all.

State it and then honour it. "We reply to enquiries within one business day" is a small commitment that materially changes conversion, and it costs nothing if it is true. Pair it with a confirmation message that names a real person, because a generic "thank you for your submission" is indistinguishable from a form that silently failed.

Referral sources need something to send

A large share of professional services work arrives by referral, and referrals are made by forwarding a link. What the referrer needs is not a persuasive home page. It is one page that makes the introduction for them: who you are, what you handle, where you are, and how to start.

That is a real design requirement, not an afterthought. If your site takes three clicks to establish what you do and whether you are accepting work, every referral loses people on the way. The accountant or colleague sending you business should be able to paste one URL and be confident it does the job.

What it costs

Builds start at $99 one time (20,000 characters of copy, 4 custom images, 2 hours of work) plus $10 CAD per month hosting. Past the allotment: $0.20 per 1,000 characters, $2 per extra image, $40 per hour. If you would rather build it yourself, maple.website is $50 one time.

Tell us what the business does and what it has to accomplish. We will tell you honestly if a cheaper option fits you better.