In 2018, the average firm allocated nearly 41% of their marketing budget to their online presence and employing varying advertising and local search engine optimization practices with the goal of being one of the top lawyers who appear when the search engine results are returned. And it was money well spent. 95% of all online traffic click on only the results that appear on the first page of the returned search criteria. And in the competitive attorney landscape, being at the top of the list is the beginning of your firm’s approach to conversion.
The larger question is, once the prospective client is on your website, are they going to see what they want and need to convert them to an actual client?
The proper legal web design and web development can mean the difference between a website visit and actual revenue. Let’s make sure your law firm website and development are delivering the experience your prospective clients want and deserve, so you can reap the rewards of expanding your client base through actual cases.
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What Does Your Law Firm’s Website Design Say To Visitors?
We have talked in the past about how to Optimize Your Law Firm Ranking with Eye-Catching Visual Content, and it is a major part of grabbing and holding the visitor’s attention, especially for existing sites that are being refreshed with new content regularly — which is always recommended.
Start With Your First Impression: The Website’s Design
When someone clicks on the link to your site, the layout is the first thing prospective clients see, which makes your web design an integral part of grabbing their attention and keeping them on the site to find the solutions they need.
A clean, easy to navigate site that responds quickly to their movements is imperative to making a successful first impression. Broken links, hard to find contact forms or information, and poorly designed template-style sites will send anyone back to the search engine results page to click the next attorney on the list.
Your website’s design must convey trust by providing solutions, which requires a professional design, original photography, and an exceptionally easy to use format.
An increasingly important aspect of your website’s user experience relies on it being mobile friendly. Last year, over 52% of all website traffic was generated through the use of mobile devices. If your site is not mobile compatible, you are in jeopardy of losing a significant chunk of your audience before they can even consider your firm.
Build Your Brand Story: Invest In Valuable Content Marketing
Your law firm’s website must begin with a deep understanding of your audience’s needs, and proceed with creating a mental image of what your internal operations look like. Your site should tell the story of how you produce solutions for your target market, so there is no confusion, fear, or unknown aspects to your retainment process.
Studies show that individuals retain 70% of information through stories and only 10% from data and statistics. Attorneys must add a human element to their brand stories and keep it simple and universal, so everyone can connect with their content.
Providing value to your persona is still the best approach to ranking in search engines, and long content ranks better by providing value to your visitors.
- The average first-page result on Google contains 1,890 words
- 45% of all companies say content marketing is ‘highly integrated’ with their SEO strategy
- 50% of search queries are longer than four words, as searchers hone their personal needs and expect results that relate directly to them
Prospective clients are seeking:
- Solutions that relate to their legal needs
- Connected calls to action
- Detailed bios of the lawyers in the firm
- Blog topics that provide in-depth information
Bonus: Updating and republishing old blog posts with new content and images can increase organic traffic by as much as 111%.
Introduce Your Audience To Interactive Content That Provides Solutions
Studies show that incorporating interactive elements encourage prospective clients to spend more time on your website. Audiences enjoy clickable and downloadable content, which can double as valuable information that helps cement your firm’s services and abilities while strengthening trust.
Valuable branded content can include:
- eBooks on specialty representation topics, including medical malpractice or workers’ compensation
- Checklists on what to bring to the initial consultation
- FAQs on what to expect from the attorneys and the process of filing a lawsuit
- Access to past and present law firm newsletters
Encourage Reviews and Testimonials And Monitor Them Accordingly
Reviews and testimonials provide a clear story of your law firm’s reputation and how others view your important services.
- 91% of people who search for services online read online reviews
- 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they do a personal recommendation from their friends
When this valuable information is listed directly on your website, it lends a qualifying component to their decision-making process.
AMN Review Software allows you to influence your law firm’s reputation by boosting your online reviews, so they can work for you — not against you.
Our services include:
- Instant notifications when negative feedback is included in reviews
- Real-time email alerts when the latest reviews appear
- Review monitoring and marketing
- Proactive reviews solicited from positive customers only
- Successful monitoring of the main review sites
- Testimonials automatically displaying on your website
Your firm will control your online reputation with personalized services that deliver:
- Ability to add locations at any time
- Alerts and notices controlled by your preferences
- Customized dashboard
- Full access to manage users, settings, and notifications
- Immediate access from your tablet or smartphone
- Ownership to the feedback you receive
- Tracking capabilities to view your reviews over time
Monitoring your online reputation encourages contact from prospective clients who can read your reviews on your website, before using their preferred contact method. The better your reviews, the more popular your firm becomes to online viewers.
WordPress Development and Plugins for SEO
WordPress development for law firms provides the easy to use a combination of exceptional design, superior development, and secure hosting that delivers a high-performance website through a single platform.
At the Attorney Marketing Network, WordPress development is an instrumental part of our clients’ successes, because the platform is not only user-friendly but customized to allow the client to take over the site. This means changes can be made in minutes, right from your own office and in real-time.
Other WordPress development attributes include:
- Create easy to copy and share links with shortened URLs and landing pages
- Highly responsive mobile templates require less time and effort to fill
- HTML framework that is a mobile, tablet, and desktop friendly
- Kiosk modes that deliver high-tech usability for tablets and iPads
- Open-source content management system (CMS)
- Secure hosting
Our in-house creation of WordPress Plugins is developed with our legal clients’ focuses in mind that adapts our technology to their customized needs, including:
- Analytics
- Backup capabilities
- Chatbots
- Contact forms
- Email list/contact capture
- Image optimization
- Security
- Social media icons and sharing capabilities
- Verification plugins (captcha) to avoid SPAM
- Website speed booster
- Sitemaps
- Schema/rich snippets to develop star ratings in search engine results page
- Checks for broken links, and redirecting links
- Disabled comments
Our attorney marketing objective is to turn your web traffic into phone calls and form submission entries by providing the varying degrees of contact your audience expects while keeping their information safe.
Payment Portals For Lawyers
When law firms accept online payment solutions it effectively increases their cash flow while giving their clients easy access to payment alternatives with the click of a button. Allowing online payments also helps foster goodwill from your clients, who will automatically appreciate how your firm adapts to their needs.
What’s more is that adding a payment portal can boost your marketing efforts by sending clients to your site each time they make a payment, which not only increases your visibility, but allows them to view any updated material you have added including blogs, videos, or successful verdicts you have secured since the last time they were on the site.
Evaluate And Upgrade Your Online Presence With the Attorney Marketing Network
As audiences grow and their needs change, it is important that your website evolves with their expectations. Millennials search for online services much differently than Generation X does and Baby Boomers differently still. Understanding where your website’s strengths and weaknesses are regularly will help you target your audience effectively.
This assessment will differ for each law firm. Like your brand, your website design and content will be dictated by the audience you are pursuing, and depending on your firm’s practice areas, that could change rapidly.
Contact the professionals at the Attorney Marketing Network today for a free website audit to assess your marketing efforts and determine how to reach and convert clients more effectively.
