Streamlining digital processes for modern accountancy firm

Clever integrations for FD Works to serve its community of ambitious businesses

Accountancy firm, FD Works, takes a different approach to finance. Striving to empower businesses, the team at FD Works helps their clients get in control of their numbers to feel confident and secure.

FD Works previously had a static website that they struggled to change or update. The business was growing, offering new services and changing quickly but the website could not keep up, causing frustrations for the team.

They approached Atomic Smash wanted a highly flexible website that could work with their business instead of against it.

What the client wanted

About FD Works

FD Works has quickly grown and carved out a reputation as an accountancy firm that does things differently.

Acting as your whole finance department, the team helps ambitious businesses look at their money and processes more strategically.

The FD Works team works with different businesses in different capacities and can put together tailored accountancy packages to fit with exactly what the client needs. However, the previous website was not hitting the mark anymore and not showcasing their offering.

Meeting the needs of their team and community with integrations and automations

Led by Jonathan Gaunt, an innovator at heart, FD Works wanted a website that would work harder for the business. This involved investigating how the website could streamline internal processes.

Our solution was to build a responsive, flexible site using integrations such as Gravity Forms for building out client-facing forms to capture vital information, then connecting this with Zapier to automate processes.

Clever integrations and automations like this ensured FD Works avoided duplicating effort while delivering clients an easy-to-use interface to submit complex information.

We spent a long time on this project researching integration systems so we could get the most out of the website for the team.

Reflecting how FD Works helps other businesses become more efficient, they were keen to give their own team the tools to become more efficient through clever use of technology.

Unearthing project needs through research and planning

Early in our work together, we looked closely at what makes FD Works so passionate about accountancy and uncover more details about the business and its clients.

This was a chance for us to spend time working together to understand both current clients and also who they want to work with in the future, feeding into our design decisions.

Together we identified three main offerings from FD Works to meet user needs:

1. Clients who just want their basic accounts sorted and compliance boxes ticked
2. Clients who need detailed reporting and better control of their finances
3. Clients who need help with forecasting, commercial advice and a virtual Financial Director

The FD Works team had already developed three excellent offerings that would allow for them to service these different clients.

Our task was to make sure that the website helped to tell these potential clients about all the excellent skills and advice that FD Works provides.

Creating experiences that better serve users

Previously, the blog was not flexible enough to allow FD Works to create the content-rich articles they wanted to share with their community.

In addition, mobile experiences weren’t optimised on the old site, creating friction with a poor user experience for mobile website visitors.

In response, we created a flexible, responsive site that follows best practices to create a strong and seamless user customer experience.

Digital design for a more modern look

FD Works has a great brand to work with, as well as a strong culture that we aimed to bring out through the website.

The refreshed website needed to be more contemporary, taking inspiration from start-ups and tech companies to show that FD Works is not your typical accountancy firm (with no suit or tie to be seen).

We put together a style guide that felt modern and explored different colours to showcase each of FD Works’ offerings, along with some custom illustrations to ensure the firm was visually differentiated from more traditional accountancy firms.

Highlighting insights to support content marketing

It was clear from our planning that the FD Works team had big ambitions for content marketing, so we put extra time and energy into the Insights area of the website.

This section was designed and built so that the end user could quickly skim over the rich content to find the information they were looking for.

We also used design cues to help users read and absorb the articles so they would be able to fully understand the content being served.

Tax and finance can be challenging for some people to get their head around but the FD Works team wanted to make it as easy as possible to understand.

Custom blocks, flexibility and integrations

All websites delivered by Atomic Smash are built as digital platforms that are flexible. This approach empowers our clients to build up their pages creatively in the way that best suits the content.

Developed on our internal framework, the site was designed and built with a WordPress custom theme so that it could be tailored exactly to the requirements of FD Works.

A number of custom blocks were developed for FD Works to use across their blog posts and website pages. This included a new 50/50 block of text and images to help showcase the services offered, as well as a new step-by-step block to help clients understand the processes that the firm runs through.

In the development phase, we styled up all of the different components of Gravity Forms to give the FD Works team freedom to use it to its full potential.

As with all of our projects, we ensured that the user experience was consistent across desktop, tablet and mobile.

Setting up a knowledge bank

We needed to come up with a solution for where FD Works could house their vast knowledge bank.

Exploring options with the FD Works team, we looked into Zendesk and decided that this would be the best solution, rather than adding another piece of bespoke functionality to the WordPress installation.

Lasting relationship with technical support

After the new site went live, we moved into a support and maintenance phase to keep the site secure and performing well.

This ongoing relationship also gives FD Works the opportunity to continue developing the website further. Together, we explore new and better ways of integrating the website to save the company time and streamline processes.