🌶️ Spicing up an accountant’s website

Client

An accountant, a comedian, and a voice actor walk into a bar … his name is Hani El-Rafei. I met Hani at our co-working space Framework. He’s a funny, outrageous nerd who rides a scooter (like an scooter scooter), and runs an accounting business called Crunchlab. He’s a great voice-over actor, joke yeller, and all-round good guy.

In February, just before COVID hit, Hani decided to redo this website to better reflect his services and personality. See, Hani is more than an accountant. He’s kind of a mad accountant scientist who loves the internet. He’s a strategist at heart and formulates systems of automation so your business starts to run itself (hopefully your auto-business will never gain sentience and overthrow you but there’s no guarantees in this life).

Team

To pull off the Crunchlab overhaul, Hani assembled an Ocean’s 11-style team of guns.

• Strategy agency Light Creative on brand consultancy: Francis and Nick as Danny Ocean and Rusty.

• Design agency Alyoop on design: Adrian and Diaz are definitely the Malloy brothers.

• Freelance developer Matthew Blode: A Linus if ever I saw one (and a talented developer)

• Dale Brander of Stacked on video testimonials: a charismatic Frank Catton type

• And me, a copywriter and language gal, who is the Ocean’s 11 equivalent of the old man who has a heart attack to get attention.

Proposal

Hani wanted the website to be funny, like him, and to better align with his business goals. He also needed some help naming and explaining his services because Hani does things differently than your average accountant.

Tone

First draft of some client testimonial copy

There are two sides of Hani. One side is outrageous, loud, funny, and irreverent. The other side is an accountant and acutely aware of risks, rewards, and balance. Part of the process of finding the right tone of voice for Crunchlab was me taking it too far in one direction and Hani pulling me back a little until we were both happy.

In the end, we carved out a tone that managed to be cheeky, self-effacing, confident, and not at all accountant-y.

Renaming

Crunchlab’s accounting services aren’t standard issue. Hani offers the usual accountant stuff - like tax returns, BAS statements, balancing your books - but he does them Hani-style. And his most valuable service is getting your business online, automating it, and helping you stay across developing technologies. In a perfect world, Hani’s services would have unique names that help them stand out as unique in the industry (ala the Big Mac). But at the same time, we had to consider SEO. What would people be Googling to find a service? Another key consideration - trust. Would people trust a young accountant who did things differently and was slinging mysterious Big Macs when everyone else was slinging hamburgers?

We compromised and found ways to explain what Hani does by amending phrases that people expect to see on an accounting website.

Outcome

This project took longer than your average website rebuild. The team were working in phases from February to August while in various stages of lockdown and pandemic anxiety but, despite it all, we got there in the end. And the final result is pretty damn slick. Cue Clare De Lune and watching the Bellagio Fountains.

Visit Crunchlab here: https://crunchlab.com.au/