About MarksNelson
MarksNelson is a top regional accounting and advisory firm based in Kansas City. The firm provides a wide range of services including tax planning, audit and assurance, business advisory, wealth management, and consulting. MarksNelson works with privately held businesses, nonprofits, and high-net-worth individuals, helping organizations navigate financial complexity and make strategic decisions for growth. The firm is known for combining deep technical expertise with a highly personalized, relationship-driven approach to client service.
Website Optimization & CMS Implementation
MarksNelson, one of Kansas City’s largest privately held CPA firms, was experiencing severe website performance issues that were impacting search rankings and user conversions. Their Sitefinity CMS implementation had previously been outsourced to a third party and resulted in poor performance, fragile architecture, and difficult maintenance.
The project focused on rebuilding the site’s front-end and CMS structure while preserving the existing visual design. The site was effectively rebuilt from the ground up using Sitefinity best practices, resolving usability issues, improving information architecture, and significantly optimizing performance.
The performance improvements were substantial: Google PageSpeed scores increased from 1 → 60 on mobile and 46 → 97 on desktop. Mobile performance remained partially constrained by required third-party form scripts, which introduced heavy render-blocking resources.
In addition to performance optimization, the rebuild introduced semantic HTML structure and improved metadata to strengthen the site’s organic SEO foundation.
Role
Led the technical rebuild and optimization of the site within Sitefinity CMS.
Primary responsibilities included:
• Rebuilding front-end templates and CMS structure using Sitefinity best practices
• Diagnosing and resolving major performance bottlenecks
• Optimizing assets, markup, and page structure to dramatically improve PageSpeed scores
• Improving usability and information architecture
• Implementing semantic HTML, long-tail title tags, and meta descriptions to strengthen organic SEO
The result was a significantly faster website that is far easier to maintain and substantially better optimized for search and performance.
Additional supporting roles
Partnered with sales and marketing to design custom PowerPoint presentations, email templates, and direct mail campaigns supporting business development efforts.
