If you have had a website for a while but you've not been habitually improving it you may want to give it an honest look. A simple website just won't cut it anymore. Websites aren't an exciting new technology any more. The assumptions of your website guests are much more worldly than they were even a few tax seasons ago. If you actually want prospects to check out your website in the current market you need to give them a effective REASON.

The best way to do this is by using a marketing gimmick called a tag line.

The chief rule of website marketing is very easy: From From today forward when you mention your website include a "tagline" that offers a real advantage to prospects and clients inclined to visit your site.

A tagline is like a newspaper headline. A newspaper headline is composed to get somebody to check out an article. A "tag line" performs more or less the exact same role and therefore is designed using the exact same guidelines:

1. Grab the attention of your visitor on an emotional level, not an intellectual one. Most buyers make material decisions emotionally, so invoke things they are honestly looking for or afraid of. Your marketing will be much more effectual if you submit benefits that appeal to a visitor's , basic motivators (pride, greed and fear) than it'll be appealing to the reader's common sense.

2. Learn the words that people like to read. Use them. Of course, the word "free" is now and always will be the king of the hill, but words like YOU, YOUR, HOW, NEW, WHO, MONEY, NOW, PEOPLE, WANT, and WHY catch peoples eye and appeal to them on a very personal level. Use these words.

3. Know what benefit to offer. Moms are wrong. We're not really special or different. We all want basically the same things from life, and that list is very short. Appeal to one of these things.

Different people value these things to different degrees. Some people are naturally more fearful than prideful and vice versa, but more often than not the prospects attitude is more influenced by their situation than their personality. For example, if your reader is a home builder in the current environment he's likely to be fearful, but if the reader is a home buyer pride is a much more likely motivater.

Here's the actual list. These are the five consumer motivators professionals advertise to:

• Safety: People want to feel secure.
• Acceptance: People like to feel like they belong.
• Empowerment: People like to feel like they have control over their own destiny.
• Status: People like to be perceived as powerful and important.
• Fun: This one's pretty self-explanatory. People just plain like to have fun.

I know what you're thinking. "What about money?". Everything else, even money, is a secondary motivater. Money is really just a means to an end. With money you are more able to achieve these five primary motivators.

4. Target your tagline to your audience. For example, if you are selling your services to new residents you might use a tagline like, "Special offer to New Homeowners! Free initial consultation and 15% off your first tax preparation". If you're targeting a larger more generic group use something more universal like "Free to New Tax Preparation Customers".

5. Mention your offer right away in your tagline. The whole point is that the tagline is an ad for your web site. In numerous ways the tag line is more valuable than the web address itself. After all… a a terrific tagline is much more able to get a reader to give offer you their precious time than a good web address is!

Here's a few examples of good taglines for marketing your accounting website:

• Learn 7 tax Secrets You Need to Know...
• The IRS is targeting Your Business...
• 10 things the IRS doesn't want you to know about your taxes...

TIP

Add a Tagline to your Email Signature! Unlike traditional stationary you can swiftly and effortlessly change signatures regularly on your email without having to reissue your stationary each time. Don't be lazy about it. From time to time modify your message. It's powerful, it's easy, and it's free!

Brian O'Connell is the President and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country's biggest website design companies oriented exclusively to websites for accountants. His firm at present provides websites for more than 4000 CPA, accounting, and tax preparation firms.