A strong online presence can do wonders for your law firm, and your website is at the core of it. Web Development for your Law Firm should be a top priority if you want to excel with marketing. Most clients come to us and ask for a ‘website’ when they are actually looking for an online business generation platform – a great website. We at Lawyer’s Growth Partners, build a website for your law firm that performs.
Let’s enhance your Law Firm online presence.
It is a history when clients used to explore yellow pages to get the details of the reputed law firm. Currently, they just open their laptops or smartphones and search law firms online to visit their website and go through the services they offer. Thus, it has become very significant for law firms or solo practitioners to have a well-designed website that showcases every vital piece of information the client is looking for.
A perfectly engaging and user-friendly website is the virtual office of law firms.
Is your website offering clients an impressive and lasting impression?
If not, then you are losing potential leads that are visiting your website. Though this industry is a world of straight faces, still to market the legal services, using creativity is an ideal choice. If you find that your website design is not aesthetically pleasing, then think of redesigning it.
It is fact that clients are moving online whether you recognise it or not.
As per the research, almost 69% of people search for law firms online and believe in getting connected with them through their website first. This clearly indicates that it’s time to rethink marketing strategy and generate business online using the website.
Many clients are confused about what constitutes a good website and how they can get help in building one, so we will explain everything simply and clearly. First of all, let’s clear the common confusion: are web design and web development the same thing or not?
Both these processes are essential for the process of creating a winning website. In website design, the aesthetic side of the website is focused upon. Web Designers create all the visual elements such as the layout and animations for your law firm website. The process of web development involves the creation of a fully functioning website based on website design. Web Developers utilise programming languages like JavaScript, HTML, PHP, Bootstrap and CSS to breathe life into the design files.
A law firm website must have a strong foundation because your site will be the face of your firm. Therefore, there are a few elements that must be considered when designing the website.
Your website might be beautiful and engaging on a laptop, but if the visitor needs to Zoom the screen on a tablet or smartphone to view the website, you can lose that visitor. This is a big problem for any law firm because this somehow affects the reputation of the firm, and potential clients may not find the law firm considerate. And, a responsive website attracts more leads for sure; how?
Law firms or solo practitioners evaluate CMS platforms depending on the requirements. There are many firms that choose the advanced CMS platform but fail to take advantage of all the features and plugins available there.
WordPress is a very popular CMS for small law firms. It offers simple editing and comes with as many plugins and features that can be used easily.
Irrespective of your existing or long-term objectives, there are five elements that every lawyer should utilise to choose a CMS platform.
On-site SEO is also popularly known as on-page SEO. It is the process that makes the website search engine friendly. When you implement on-site SEO, you aim to optimise elements that can help your website rank higher in search results and drive traffic to your website.
The bottom line is that if you ignore on-site SEO, search engines will fail to crawl your content efficiently, and it will be challenging to come on the first page of the search engine. Here are some on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics and it’s benefits.
Thus, it becomes essential not to ignore on-page SEO because this will help the website shine bright on search engines and increase the visitor count.
Yes! It’s a fact that businesses lose their prospective clients because of page loading time. Loading time plays a significant role for law firm websites because it affects the visitors’ experience when they have to wait for the page to load. Unfortunately, most of the time, we forget about this and add heavy graphics, meaningless website content and new functionality that can increase the load time and let the visitor abandon the website.
Imagine someone is in need to hire an attorney and goes online to search for the best one. In Spite, he found your law firm on the front page but unfortunately had to drop the idea to buy your services because your website took too much time to load. So now you have lost a prospective client and wasted time, money, and energy you invested in bringing your web page to the top position in search engine results. Website speed is more crucial when you advertise your law firm services through Google Ads – PPC campaigns because if they click on your ads and they had to wait long while the webpage is loading, they will leave the page.
The website’s speed is more important than the other factors because prospective clients might not be able to experience the website until and unless the load time is less. Moreover, page loading time is becoming a very significant factor when it comes to the search engine optimisation of your law firm.
Therefore, it is imperative to keep an eagle eye on the load time of your website if you don’t want to lose prospective clients.
Creating a website is undoubtedly a lengthy process and needs time, effort and creativity. You can hire an experienced web designer, developer and build your customised website if you have a budget, But in case you don’t have a budget, then website builders can be a good option for you.
There are plenty of platforms with in-build design and coding and offer you the option to build your website at a lower price. All you must do is select a theme, drag and drop and personalise the layout, and your website is ready to rock! But this is too good to be true, right? So what’s the catch here? Let’s jump into the pros and cons of website builders:
We agree that a website is essential for attracting prospective clients and generating leads. These days nobody goes through the newspaper or yellow pages to find a lawyer; they search online and write a keyword that will give them the results of what they are looking for.
Here comes the role of content in your law firm website.
Good content helps Search Engine Optimisation for your law firm and educate potential clients about your law firm and its services. In addition, it builds authority and credibility; as a result, there would be a high chance of generating more leads.
Law firms’ websites must look easy to use and have smooth navigation. Visitors should find it simple and receive all the information they require. When you stay focused and take every correct measure in building the website, your website will be easily discoverable in search engines and attract more clients. So make sure you avoid these mistakes when building a website:
Your law firm website is going to become the firm’s face and virtual reception. Without a good website, your law firm online marketing strategy will not work. So, make sure you get the website right in the first place!
It is a misconception that website creation is a one-time investment; updating the website for better engagement and reach is ongoing. It is essential to keep your website updated because your competitors are working on their website already. If your website is outdated and doesn’t have the latest information to offer prospective clients, then there are chances that you will stop generating leads.
If the website is not updated, some repercussions need to beared by the firms:
Hence, it is necessary to regularly update the website for more traffic and a better conversion rate.
With the popularity of online platforms, it becomes almost mandatory for law firms to create a website, but what does a law firm website contain? Apart from the standard requirement, here are few suggestions:
The development of the website depends on the requirements of the client. For example, small website development takes approximately 3-4 weeks; whereas, a more extensive website needs six months.
Strategising, designing, developing, and launching websites are four different phases of creating a website. Designing, development, and launching are manageable, but when it comes to strategising the website, businesses get stuck, leading to a delay. The most common reasons are:
A small-sized law firm website can practically cost approximately £2400 – £3000, whereas a big website for a multidisciplinary law firm can cost £12,000 – £60,000 or more, subject to the resources utilised on the project.
Updating a website is needed regularly; the blogs and content of the website require editing as per the latest search engine norms. For example, you need to update the latest keywords, adding a new section, or updating the call to action details. And when it comes to revamping your website, it can be done when you see a higher bounce rate, some problems with your website design, security issues, very high page load time.
The benefits of revamping or updating the website are:
You need engaging and good quality content for your website. You own the content if you produce the content for your law firm website. However, when someone else creates the content, they own the rights. You can ask to transfer the copyrights when you hire professional content writers for a fee. If you are using third-party images, videos, etc on your website, you must buy the rights before the use to avoid copyright infringement.
It seems very clear that you need high-quality images on your website, but the other fact is that if the size of the images is big, they are eventually going to slow down your website speed.
As per Google, it is important to focus on the website’s speed, but it is also essential to keep your website creative and engaging. So to fulfil all these requirements, it’s crucial to keep the images small in size but without hampering the quality.
This will save your website from the loading time issue and will make it look attractive as well.
Currently, generating leads from the website is a challenging task because today’s visitors can mute everything and, in no time, can switch from one website to another.
Perhaps the most innovative way to generate leads is by offering your visitors something in exchange for engagement. As a law firm, the lead magnets can be a free download of guides, access to recorded webinars and podcasts regarding the services you offer, or free consultations.
Every website must obey current legislation. It is your responsibility that your law firm complies with the requirements. Some of the critical legal requirements are:
Don’t underestimate the power of a blog. It helps in engaging visitors to your website. They read the blogs and relate them to situations where they need an attorney or help from a law firm.
It is even the best way to showcase your rewards and recognitions more extensively so that the visitors can build trust regarding the services you are offering.
Better the quality content on your website, better chances of your website be on the first page of the search engine.