Sterling & Co. · Financial Services

A firm with no name on its own website

Sterling & Co.'s site literally said ‘ACCOUNTANT’ across the top — a placeholder label nobody had gone back to replace. For a firm whose entire business is precision, that oversight was doing more damage than any single client ever would.

Role: Brand identity, website redesign, build
Year: 2025
Deliverables: Identity mark, responsive site, service pages, call scheduling, FAQ

The Sterling & Co. homepage shown on a laptop and a phone, a photograph of three colleagues reviewing documents with the headline Empowering Your Finances. — The nav bar had read ACCOUNTANT in place of the firm's actual name since the site was first built — apparently unnoticed for years.

The problem

Sterling & Co. handles audit support and financial statements for businesses that answer to boards and lenders — clients for whom attention to detail is the entire value proposition. Their own website had been running with a literal placeholder word, ‘ACCOUNTANT,’ where the firm's name should have been, since a template was first installed years earlier.

It's the kind of error that's easy to stop seeing once you work there every day, and exactly the kind a prospective client, evaluating a firm on rigor, would notice immediately.

Past that, the site offered no way to request a call for a specific reason — tax planning, audit support, financial statements all funnelled into one generic inbox — and no answers to the plain-language questions a business owner has before engaging a CPA firm for the first time.

The approach

Three moves, in order.

Put the actual name back on the site

A proper wordmark and rounded-square mark replaced the placeholder label, closing the gap between how careful the firm is with client work and how it presented itself.

Let a call request state its purpose

The scheduling form asks whether the call is about tax planning, audit or financial statements, so the right partner is looped in before the first conversation happens.

Answer the plain-language questions first

An FAQ covering what an audit engagement actually involves and how fees work gives a first-time client a way to understand the process before committing to it.

The work

What we built.

The new homepage

The new Sterling & Co. homepage on desktop and mobile: colleagues reviewing documents in teal duotone under a headline reading Precision, by default. — The homepage, with the firm's actual name on it. A hero that argues for the one quality clients are hiring them for.

The services page: a three-card grid for Tax Planning, Audit Support and Financial Statements, each with a line icon and short description. — Three services under the firm's actual name — a small fix that mattered more than it should have.

The schedule a call page: a form with name, company, email and a dropdown for reason for call, including tax planning, audit and financial statements. — A call request that arrives with the reason attached, so the right person picks it up.

The frequently asked questions page: a vertical accordion of expandable questions, one open to show a plain-language answer. — Straightforward answers to the questions a first-time client actually has, before their first invoice.

Also delivered

A full proofreading pass across every page, section by section, plus a short internal checklist so a placeholder like the old logo label never ships unnoticed again.

Results

First two quarters on the new site.

+48%

Call requests booked with reason attached

31%

Of new engagements citing the FAQ as helpful

Placeholder text left anywhere on the site

Firm finally named correctly on its own homepage

“We found out our own website had said ‘Accountant’ instead of our name for who knows how long. It's mortifying in hindsight, and it's exactly the kind of detail our clients hire us to catch for them.”

Warren SterlingManaging Partner, Sterling & Co.

Figures are illustrative of the outcomes this engagement was designed to produce and are shown here for portfolio purposes.

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