Industry Spotlight: Bendigo Accountant Websites

A great spotlight to start with, seeing as it’s Tax time for a lot of people. The most obvious thing people will search for is ‘Bendigo Accountant’. And the first page of google results lists the following sites:

The Good sites:

MGR Accountants

www.mgr.com.au

What I like:

• Fast clean responsive site
• Loads in a couple of seconds - 1.3M payload, 57 requests
• Great platform (by synergy8)
• Good metatags for social sharing
• Very clean HTML
• Clear menu structure

Could improve:

• There’s no favicon, so bookmarks aren’t as pretty
• A ton of CSS/JScript inline. But that might be to reduce the number of requests

DSG Accounting

www.dsga.com.au

What I like:

• Fast clean responsive site
• Loads in a few seconds - 1.1M payload, 38 requests.
• Very clean HTML - looks well hand-crafted
• Clear menu structure
• Great copy

Could improve:

• Some of the responsiveness breaks/feels clunky at mobile width

AFS Chartered Accountants

www.afsbendigo.com.au

What I like:

• Fast clean responsive site
• Loads in a few seconds - 1.5M payload, 53 requests
• Good metatags for social sharing
• Well set-up Wordpress site using Enfold theme (site developed by bendigocreative.com.au)

Could improve:

• I’m struggling to see any obvious improvements. This is a really well done site.

Allan Accounting & Tax Solutions

www.allantax.com.au

What I like:

• SUPER fast site! 43 requests, but in 1.3 seconds. (OpenResty/Nginx - great caching… Very well set up. Kudos to designexperts.com.au)
• Responsive, great in desktop and mobile.
• Lovely hand-cranked HTML - Built using Bootstrap.

Could improve:

• Again, tough finding much to improve upon here.

RSD Advisors

www.rsdadvisors.com.au

What I like:

• Fast clean responsive site
• Loads in a few seconds - 2.3M payload, 56 requests
• Runs on CCH iFirm, a good platform by Wolters Kluwer (Accounting package written in .Net)

Could improve:

• Slightly fiddly menu system on desktop. I feel it works better when viewed on mobile.

Strategem

www.strategem.com.au

What I like:

• Very fast. Less than 2 seconds, 1.5Meg - 41 requests.
• Runs on CCH iFirm, a good platform by Wolters Kluwer (Accounting package written in .Net)

Could improve:

• Small javascript error in console (Lightbox) - won’t bother most users
• Mobile styling could be improved. Small issue with margins.

Egan Taylor

www.egantaylor.com.au

What I like:

• Another very fast site. 1.5 seconds, only 572K! With 54 requests. Very nice and light payload!
• Subsequent pageloads are ridiculously quick, they’ll be getting a good google-boost from that.
• Looks excellent when viewed from mobile
• Incredibly well set up Wordpress site. It’s easy to do this wrong. (Think totalmarketingaustralia.com.au deserve the credit here)

Could improve:

• Small error on homepage at line 300 where Jquery is called before it’s loaded
• Running on older version of Wordpress (4.4.4) - should be up-to-date

SWR Financial

swrfinancialgroup.com.au

What I like:

• Fastest site in sample. 700msec, 21 requests, 565K. Wins hands-down. (Kudos to plannerweb.com.au)
• Responsive site works well.
• Really clean HTML & CSS code.

Could improve:

• A stock market ticker? Really? ;) (Get rid of it)
• Crazy keywords metatag. I guess they’re trying.
• At mobile resolution, some margins/sizing could be improved (particularly iPhone 5)
• Font choices could be improved.

The Not so good:

EDIT: 22/03/2017 - It’s here! The not-so-good