Website content checklist for professional firms

A professional firm's website has one main reader: somebody who was given your name and is checking you before they call. That person wants four things. Who the partners are and what they have actually done. What you do, described in the words the client would use rather than in section numbers. Some indication of how you charge. And evidence that other people like them have been served well. A site that provides those four will out-perform a redesigned one that does not.

How a professional firm is actually chosen

Almost always through a referral, then a check. A business owner is told to speak to a particular chartered accountant about a notice, or to a particular firm about a property dispute. They then look you up on a phone, read for four minutes, and decide whether to call today or ask for another name.

Two other routes matter. A specific problem searched directly, "GST notice reply consultant", "cheque bounce case procedure", which brings people who have no referral and an urgent need. And repeat or expanded work from existing clients, which depends on them knowing what else you do, which most firms never tell them.

The website has to serve all three.

The essential content checklist

• Home page that states in one sentence what the firm does, for whom, and where
• A page for every service, named the way clients describe the problem
• A page for each partner and senior professional, with a photograph
• Registration and qualification details as the profession requires
• Office address with a landmark, a map, and the working days
• One phone number that a person answers during those hours
• A WhatsApp number, because many clients will message before they call
• Something honest about how fees are structured
• Proof: anonymised matter summaries, client types served, sectors, years in practice
• Any professional memberships, bar or institute affiliations
• A short note on confidentiality and how enquiries are handled
• A privacy statement, since you are collecting personal information on a form

The service pages

One page per service, with the client's language in the heading. A page titled "Income tax notices and assessments" is found and read. A page titled "Direct taxation" is neither.

Each should cover what the problem usually looks like, what you do about it, and what the client needs to bring. Add roughly how long it takes, how the fee is structured, and which partner handles it. For example, a chartered accountancy firm in Basavanagudi might say a scrutiny assessment typically runs three to six months and needs three years of returns and bank statements. It might quote a fixed fee per assessment year, in an illustrative band of ₹25,000 to ₹60,000. That figure is an example. Use your own number and label it as a range.

Write the exclusions too. Saying that you do not appear in criminal matters, or do not handle statutory audit, saves you a dozen wrong enquiries a month.

The people pages

This is where professional firms most often under-perform, usually out of modesty.

Include: full name, qualifications, year of enrolment or membership, years in practice, the kinds of matters handled, languages spoken, a real photograph taken in your own office, and a direct line or email if the person is willing. Avoid "vast experience" and "team of experts", which say nothing and are the exact phrases a cautious client discounts.

Naming people is also how a firm becomes citable. When somebody asks an assistant for a tax consultant in south Bengaluru, a firm with named professionals and verifiable credentials can be named. An anonymous firm cannot. We take our own advice here: everyone on our team is named on our site with what each of them does.

Proof without breaching confidentiality

You usually cannot name clients or describe matters in detail. You can still show evidence.

Anonymised matter notes: the situation, the constraint, what was done, the outcome in general terms, with no identifying facts. Sectors and client types served, stated as a list. Volume of a routine service handled in a year, if you are comfortable with it. Speaking engagements, published articles, association positions. And testimonials where the client has given written permission and where your professional rules allow them.

The enquiry route

Most professional firms lose enquiries at this step rather than at the content step.

Give one clear route per service page, a number and a WhatsApp link, and keep the form to four fields: name, phone, the nature of the matter in their words, and preferred time to call. Long forms asking for company turnover and budget suit a software vendor, not a law firm.

Then decide who answers, and in what time. A referred client who messages on Tuesday and hears nothing until Friday has already called the second name they were given.

What to leave out, and what to do next

Stock photographs of glass towers and handshakes. Lists of statutes as service names. Claims about outcomes or success rates, which are usually also against your professional rules. A chat widget nobody watches. Awards nobody has heard of. And anything that reads as soliciting work rather than describing it.

Print your own website's service list and your last thirty enquiries side by side. Mark which enquiries match a page you have, and which arrived for something you do that is nowhere on the site. Then write the missing page with the highest value first, and add fee structure to the three pages that already exist.

Start with the partner pages if you do nothing else this month. They are read more than any other page on a professional firm's site.