Case Study : Landmark CPA
Landmark’s website was generating more spam submissions than client leads. They turned to Starling to create a website that would target prospective clients and new hires — not bots.
Scope of work
The Client + The Problem
Landmark is a CPA firm that provides tax, audit, and business consulting services to clients nationwide from their 6 offices across Arkansas and Arizona.
Landmark isn’t just a numbers business, it’s a people business. The firm’s focus on client care is one of the reasons they are consistently rated as one of the top CPA firms in Arkansas and the Southeast region.
But Landmark’s website wasn’t doing a great job converting visitors into leads: in fact, from 2018 to 2021, 95% of all form submissions were spam.
The Wins
One year post-launch data shows:
“I was updating my analytics spreadsheet and our January and February analytics this year are more than DOUBLE on sessions and users and the bounce rate is EXTREMELY low! Excited to see how it continues to play out.”
Rachael McGrew
Business Development Director at Landmark CPAs
THE SOLUTION
Through our initial website audit, we identified some key problems with Landmark’s current website.
Before we create a strategy, we want to know WHY a website is failing to meet its goals. We began with a comprehensive audit — including data and heuristic analyses — to understand how users were engaging with Landmark’s current site.
From the insights we gathered during the audit, we developed a Project Roadmap, outlining UX strategy and project next steps. From here, we moved into the implementation phase: writing copy, designing mockups, and developing the site on WordPress.
Take a look at some of the key problems below.
Key Problem
Between 2018 and 2022, 95% of “Work With Us” form submissions were spam
There were two main reasons for this. The form plug-in on the site did not have a strong enough spam-filter. Secondly, the website itself wasn’t built with conversion in mind: the user journey was messy. The website copy wasn’t conversion focused. The design was inconsistent across the site.
For the new website, we integrated Hubspot forms, which has a more sophisticated security protocol for spam. And from our audit findings and customer research, we updated the site structure, design, and copy to focus on the needs of the target user — all with the goal of increasing new client leads.
We achieved a 356% increase in prospective client form submissions and 88.5% decrease in spam form submissions.
Key Problem
The Careers page was not optimized to attract new talent
With a goal to attract — and keep — great employees, the old Careers page did little to support this. For the new website, we created a Careers page that showcased the benefits of working at Landmark, including a video featuring Landmark team members. We provided script writing services for this video, as well as the other two videos featured on the website.
The Careers page had a 6.34% conversion rate for application submissions in 2023, resulting in multiple new hires and saving the firm approximately $240,000 in headhunter costs.
Key Problem
An SEO strategy needed to be incorporated into the new website
We partnered with an SEO expert to incorporate his keyword strategies into the website copy we were writing. Additionally, we provided blog post writing services for Landmark as part of their SEO efforts.
Data shows that 39% of prospective client form submissions noted that they found Landmark through Google. We also saw a 106% increase in organic Google visitors compared to 2022.