subject: The 7 Critical Components of Your Law Firm Website [print this page] The 7 Critical Components of Your Law Firm Website
Your website is your law firm's 24/7 storefront, information portal, and marketing machine. The days of plain postcard sites are long gone. If your website doesn't make a powerful first impression, engage visitors, build rapport, and convert traffic into qualified leads, it is time for change. Alone, a great website will not guarantee your success; a poor website however will almost certainly guarantee disappointment and lost revenue.
It is said that 65% of those looking for legal advice look for it online. Is your website turning those people away or turning them into paying clients? Are flaws in your website hurting your reputation, costing you clients, and undermining your competiveness? Review the following 7 critical elements of your law firm website to learn what you may be doing wrong.
1. Design is the first thing people see when they open your site they react emotionally to colors, layout, graphics and images. A negative first impression is usually all it takes for visitors to dismiss your firm and leave your site. As a virtual extension of your office, your website should look every bit as clean and professional as you would in person. Online, you have less than 4 seconds to prove yourself and establish your authority. As the first thing visitors see, design is critical to surviving the first 4 seconds. On your website you'll rarely have a second chance if you fail to make a great first impression.
2. As soon as they arrive at your site, potential clients want to know "What will you do for me?" and "What is so special about your firm?" In short, your website must have a well-positioned value proposition that succinctly describes what your firm does, who it serves, and what makes it better than your competitors. Your value proposition should be concise, catchy and placed strategically to drive visitors to act. In terms of converting traffic, a well-crafted value proposition is extremely powerful.
3. A new visitor's commitment to your website is very low. If they can't find what they're looking for quickly and easily, they are likely to leave. Instead of organizing your site around what you want to say, organize it around your visitor's needs and goals. Structure and navigation should be easy to understand, easy to see, and speak to the questions and anxieties your potential clients will have when they come to your site.
4. So, your potential client has spent a couple minutes on your site and is getting a warm fuzzy feeling about your ability to help them. What's next? Many law firm websites don't provide a clear next step. What do you want them to do? Call you? Email you? What is your best closing tool? A phone conversation? A free consultation? Without a clear call to action, visitors will be confused and confused people don't act. Tell the visitor exactly what you want them to do, such as "Call us now!" or "Sign up here for a free consultation."
5. Visitors to your website are usually apprehensive. The anxiety of their legal issues is combined with the fear of not being able to find the right law firm to solve their problems. If you don't alleviate this apprehension, there is little likelihood they will contact you. The job of your website is to reduce fear and elicit trust. Build enough trust and it will be easy for them to contact you and become your client.
Credibility builders are the key to establishing trust and can include such things as success stories, professional affiliations, attorney profiles, professional awards and testimonials. Use credibility builders throughout your site to support your value proposition, content and call to action.
6. While your website's primary mission is to provide a quality experience for your visitors and convert them into qualified leads, don't forget your website also needs to be found by the right people. Setting up your website so it is search engine friendly is critical to having success with the major search engines such as Google and Bing. These search engines send out spiders (automated programs that analyze web pages) to crawl your website and add it to their search index. These spiders analyze your page titles, keywords, meta tags, content, site map, links, navigation, page names and HTML code to determine how you will appear and rank in search results. Don't underestimate the importance of setting up your site correctly from a search engine optimization standpoint.
7. It is often said that content is king. On your website, content fulfills the following critical roles:
a) Content engages and keeps visitors on your site by educating them and expressing complicated legal matters in an easy to understand and straightforward fashion.
b) Content builds trust and rapport, reduces anxiety, and compels potential clients to contact your firm.
c) Content helps your site rank higher in search engines by including critical keywords placed strategically in the content of each page.
Writing great content for your website is an art that combines style, legal expertise, SEO and skill.
While designing your website, keep these 7 components in mind and you're sure to attract quality prospects and turn them into clients.
