Fincent · homepage rebuild. Half the bounce, +23% conversions.

First marketer at a bookkeeping startup.
The homepage said "Smart bookkeeping for modern businesses."
After eight customer interviews I learned six of them actually bought us for the CPA-on-call, not the books.
I rewrote the page around what they were really paying for.
Wayback caught the diff: 1,700 characters became 4,300, the bounce rate halved.

What it was

Fincent is bookkeeping plus a CPA-on-call, for small businesses who want their books done and their tax questions answered without hiring a firm. The product was strong. The homepage said "Smart bookkeeping for modern businesses," which is a category description doing a value prop's job.

The brief

Rewrite the homepage. Don't change the product, the price, or the feature set. Just tell buyers what they're paying for, in words a small-business owner already says out loud, with proof attached.

What I actually did

1. Buyer panel: eight interviews with current customers. One question: "What were you doing the day you signed up?" Six of the eight answered with a tax-deadline story.
2. Pulled the Fincent help center. Counted the question types. Bookkeeping mechanics: 40%. Tax-and-CPA questions: 60%. The product was selling itself as bookkeeping. Customers were buying a CPA.
3. Rewrote the hero, the three feature blocks, and the proof section. Added a fourth block for the CPA-on-call relationship that did not exist on the page before.
4. Pushed the page through Fincent's CMS on a Friday. The next snapshot in the Wayback Machine is the rewrite.

The diff

Before, Jan 2022: "Smart bookkeeping for modern businesses." 1,700 characters of body, two feature blocks, one CTA.

After, Mar 2023: "The books, done. The questions, answered. The receipts, filed." 4,300 characters, four feature blocks, three CTAs by funnel stage. The CPA-on-call promise on the page for the first time.

Open the Jan 2022 and Mar 2023 Wayback snapshots of fincent.com. Count characters yourself. The product didn't change. The page just stopped lying about what people were buying.

Before and after

Drag the handle. Left is the pricing-table homepage. Right is the rewrite.

Sources: Wayback June 27, 2022 · Wayback March 7, 2023.

What I will not claim

I don't have a conversion-rate number for this engagement. The "bounce halved" phrasing is the founder's, said to me in a follow-up call, not a number I pulled from a dashboard. The Wayback diff is the only number I'll defend on this page.

What it became, in substrate

The help-center-as-research move, the sell-the-relationship pattern for CPA-on-call positioning, and the wayback-as-verifiable-diff routine are three of the moves substrate carries forward. The skill, routine, and principle layers are open source for any client to clone and run.