June 18, 2026 · 5 min · Accountant SEO Company editorial team

What Prospective Clients Check on a CPA Firm Website Before They Call

A page-by-page checklist for a CPA firm website: credentials, services by client type, fee approach, who you don't serve, booking and response time.

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A row of black ring binders with blank spine labels on a white shelf

A careful prospect wants four answers before they call a firm: are you qualified, do you do their kind of work, roughly how do you charge, and how quickly will someone get back to them. If the site answers all four in a few clicks, the call is easy. If it answers two, the prospect goes back to the search results and opens the next firm.

The checklist below follows the order a visitor tends to move through a firm site: home page, a service page, the about page, fees, then contact. Work through it with your own site open in another tab. Each item is a yes or a no.

Home page

The home page has one job: tell the visitor, on the first screen of a phone, that they're in the right place.

The first line says what you do, for whom and where. "Tax preparation and monthly bookkeeping for small businesses in [town] and nearby" does more than a slogan about trust.
The credential is named clearly: a CPA firm, licensed in which state, or an enrolled agent practice, described correctly (more on that below).
There is one clear next step, such as "Book a call" or "Request a quote", with the same wording on every page.
If there's work you don't take, it's said here or one click away.
The photos are of your office and your people. A stock image of strangers shaking hands tells a prospect nothing about you.

Service pages

Prospects tend to search for the thing they need, in their own words, and land on whichever page matches. Each service deserves its own page, organized by the type of client it serves.

Separate pages for separate client types: individual returns, small-business returns and bookkeeping, payroll, advisory, clean-up work.
Each page says what's included, what the client provides, and roughly how the work runs through the year.
Each page says who the service suits and who it doesn't. "We work with businesses that have up to about 20 employees" helps a 200-person company and you equally.
Each page links to your fee approach and to the booking step.
No page is a list of every service on one screen with a paragraph each. That page satisfies nobody's search.

About and team page

This is the page where trust gets checked, and where some prospects look you up somewhere else to confirm what you say.

Real names, real photos and real credentials for the people a client will work with. If you're a sole practitioner, say so. Clients who want a sole practitioner exist, and a site that pretends to be a larger team loses them.
Name the state board that licenses the firm and its CPAs. If your board offers a public license lookup, consider linking to it.
Enrolled agents describe the credential within the limits of Circular 230, section 10.30. An enrolled agent may not use the term "certified" or imply an employer or employee relationship with the IRS. The acceptable descriptions include "enrolled to practice before the Internal Revenue Service" and "admitted to practice before the Internal Revenue Service".
If a prospect checks the IRS Directory of Federal Tax Return Preparers with Credentials and Select Qualifications, the names and credentials there should match the ones on your site. The same goes for an Annual Filing Season Program record of completion, if anyone on the team holds one.
Years in practice, associations and areas of focus are fine. Claims that create unjustified expectations of favorable results are another matter: the AICPA's advertising rule treats them as misleading. We explained that rule in what the AICPA advertising rule means for your marketing.

Fees page, or a fee section

Not publishing prices is a reasonable choice. Publishing nothing at all about fees is a different choice, and it leaves the prospect guessing at the one thing they most want to know before calling.

The page explains how you charge: a fixed fee agreed before work starts, a monthly fee for recurring work, a separate quote for clean-up.
It names what moves a fee up: more entities, more states, more accounts to reconcile, months of catch-up.
If you show starting points, they're figures clients really pay, and the page says what raises them.
It says when a prospect gets a quote, and that the quote becomes part of an engagement letter.

Contact, booking and the client portal

This is where an interested visitor either reaches you or gives up.

A booking link with real availability, so a prospect can pick a time without an email exchange.
A short contact form. Name, email, what they need and how they found you is enough for a first contact.
A stated response time you keep, with a busy-season version if it's different. "We reply within one business day, two from February to April" is a promise a prospect can plan around.
A note on the form not to send tax documents or account numbers through it, and a separate, secure way to send them once they're a client.
The client portal login kept apart from new-client intake, so existing clients don't use the contact form and prospects don't land on a login screen.
An address that matches your Google Business Profile. If you meet clients at their premises or work remotely, the service area or the states you serve, stated clearly.
Hours that match the profile, including busy-season hours.

Every page

A few things belong in the footer of every page, and prospects notice when they're missing or stale.

The firm's name, address and email exactly as they appear everywhere else.
A current copyright year and a privacy policy.
The booking button again, for the visitor who read to the bottom.

A two-minute test

Ask someone outside the firm, a friend who has never used you, to open your site on their phone. Give them two minutes to find out whether you're licensed, whether you'd handle their situation, roughly what it would cost and how to book. Watch where they tap and where they stop. Every place they hesitate is an item on the list above.

If the test turns up more than a few gaps, the fix is often structural rather than a matter of rewording. Our page on website design for accounting firms shows how we build firm sites around these questions. Or send us the address through the free firm review, and we'll tell you which of these checks your site fails and what to fix first.