Undoubtedly your website is one of the most essential marketing and business development tools you have. In reality, firms need to focus on providing essential information as quickly as possible, as easily as possible, and in a way that incites engagement with the company more than the website itself.
A great law firm website design rests on three fundamental elements: consistent brand identity, ease of use and compelling content. Independent of the size of your firm, we’re going to show you 5 key website features that are crucial to generating more leads:
Practice Areas
It’s important that prospective clients quickly know what you can do for them. Have a page on your website that lists your top practice areas, which can as well link to individual pages for sub-practice areas or further information. It’s pretty much a good idea to have images and color themes that speak or represent your field of practice and what your brand stand for.
In addition to helping visitors find the information they need, practice area pages can provide an SEO benefit for your website. Many visitors who find your website through a search engine could be searching for practice area + location. For example, one could search “real estate law firm in Harare”. What this does now is giving you an edge over your peers if the website is optimized for that.
Attorney Profiles
These are often the most visited pages on a firm’s website. More than 50% of visitors to a law firm’s website will visit the attorney profiles. To capitalize on this interest, make sure each attorney profile has:
• Practice areas
• Professional head-shot
• Newsworthy, relevant legal issues
• Experience and education
Qualifications and education are important to prospective clients, but it is also important that they like you! Consider adding a level of personalization to build a connection with clients.
Mobile Friendliness
It’s most likely that 6 out of ten potential clients searching for your legal services do so on mobile phones. This shift in mobile preference makes it even more important to ensure your website is mobile-friendly. Google uses “mobile -friendliness” as ranking signal for mobile searches and this ultimately goes beyond just the importance of your website user experience. It’s quite imperative to ensure a mobile responsive website to attain better Google mobile search rankings and if your website is not yet optimized for this you need to take action now.
Testimonials and Reviews
Recommendations from third parties are often more trusted than from the source itself. Build trust and credibility by adding client testimonials, awards, and recognitions to your website. It’s that simple,prospective clients want to engage a law firm that has more than enough cases won, and getting this information from your previous client is the best you can give.
Blog
Setting up a blog on your website is a great way of positioning your firm as a subject matter expert on legal issues. While credibility comes as a plus, blogs give websites SEO benefits when prospective clients do online searches. Most importantly, maintain a blog frequency of six or more blogs per month because blogs that are infrequently updated actually hurt credibility.
If you have a practice area as we mentioned earlier, you should consider adding a blog feed relevant to those pages to further demonstrate your expertise.
However, biggest challenge that most law firms encounter is the inability to come up with fresh content. Yes, there is a lot that you need to put in to come up with a consistent informative blog. If you are about to start a website or considering a remake of your existing website to include all these key features and you are struggling to come up with striking content ideas, we have worked with so many clients in your field in such positions. All you need to do is say hello.
