Nearly all accountants already have a decent accounting website design and have plenty of work during tax time.

You want build your business, but how do you achieve this when you're working a six day work week between January and April? Well, the secret is uncomplicated enough: you need to start selling your off-season services.

This brings us right back to your website. There's a number of ways your site can help you market services beyond tax preparation, but there are 3 features in particular that can help.

I'm sure you already have at least an "Our Services" page, or better yet; a whole section where each service has it's own page. Personally I prefer you give each service it's own page, but using a single page is OK as long as you are using bookmark links to make it easy for visitors to find what they're looking for. Almost every accounting website design does this, of course. Unfortunately just having a page isn't good enough. The content on the page has to be good, too. Many websites go to great length to explain what a service is and how it works, but this is really relatively unimportant. What matters is how that service benefits the client! Long drawn out descriptions will bore the visitor, and if you make them too technical you could even make them feel stupid. All the visitor really cares about is how that service can benefit them, so concentrate on that. Don't assume that your prospect is visiting during business hours, and allow for some folks being just plain shy. Add a contact from to the bottom of each page to make it easy for people to contact you.

Next, let's take a look at your email newsletter. If you already have a site I'm sure you already have an online newsletter. It's a staple feature in accounting website design, but not all newsletters are particularly well designed to actually draw off-season conversions. Many accounting newsletters spend far too much time talking about taxes. Make sure each newsletter has one or two strong articles about your off-season services. Use the same principle of accenting benefit over procedure, of course, and don't give away too much information. All you need to do is present the benefit. This will position you as the expert to turn to when it comes time to actually use the information.

The last great cross-selling instrument in your CPA website's tool kit is less obvious, but is arguably the most effective. Your website design should include a "free reports" section. You want this to be a large section, and you want to write these articles using the same marketing principles we've already talked about. These pages won't see as much traffic as your newsletter or your service pages. On the other hand the leads they generate will be very much more dedicated to buying. Just the fact that they are looking at this section of your website shows a much higher than usual degree of initiative. Statistically a higher percentage of these users will be your clients and associates, so you are much more likely to get a contact.

Make sure this section is neatly organized into categories that allow visitors to pursue their interests without having to muddle through a bunch of information that doesn't apply to them. Categories should include topics like "Business Owners", "Individuals", "Life Events", and "Investments". Include a "send this article to a friend" link on each article. You never know when a visitor will unearth some information that applies to one of their associates, and this can become a remarkably powerful referral.

Just having Free Reports pages isn't sufficient. The design of your accounting website should be reinforced by great content. Check out your website. It's an easy enough business to examine your content and copy and make sure that the separate pages live up to the overall design.

Brian O'Connell is the owner and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country's leading website companies oriented solely to accounting website design.