Everyday, many potential clients traverse the internet in search of legal services. If your law firm wants to attract new clients and remain successful, you must have a strong web presence, the foundation of which is your website. It provides a medium for you to show your expertise and authority while driving traffic and inquiries for your firm.
Most customers start the buying process with online research. Potential clients want a better understanding of an attorney before choosing to partner with them. Your website is likely the first place they’ll visit to learn more about you and your services. An attractive and intuitive site is essential to making a good impression and winning clients over, which means a professional web designer is crucial to your success.
Despite this, many attorneys fail to realize how important web design is to their business. A poorly made website leads to a poor first impression and results in you losing potential clients to your competitors who are taking the initiative to optimize their web design.
How A Great Website Helps You Get More Clients
A great website is the foundation of successful marketing and a key component to growing your law practice. Most law firms today rely on their website to bring in new clients. It’s important to understand that even an average-looking site can lose you potential clients. If you want to outperform your competitors, you will need a website that stands out.
View things from the perspective of a potential client. The average consumer will view and compare at least five websites when looking for a lawyer. Many people research more than just five. If your website doesn’t give visitors a reason to call you first, you’ll end up losing out on potential clients right then and there.
A well-planned and executed website can help your firm stand out from other firms. By creating a site that is visually appealing, rich with helpful information, and easy to use, you can convert many more visitors into clients.
What Goes Into A Great Law Firm Website?
A well-designed law firm website shares similar characteristics with other types of high-quality sites around the web today. You may not be selling products directly from your site, however, it’s still critical that your site is fast, easy to navigate, and adapts well on different devices. Here are the main components of a successful website:
1. Functionality
Functionality includes the interactive parts of your website and a client’s ability to navigate the site and find what they’re looking for.
A highly-functional website will include the following features:
- Easy navigation: Navigating your website should be quick to understand and easy to follow. Place your navigation menu with your primary pages in your site’s header. Any sub-pages should be included in dropdown menus connected to the main navigation menu. All page titles should clear so that visitors know exactly where they are going when clicking the link.
- Concise pages: Website visitors don’t want to scroll endlessly to find what they’re looking for. Making them do so will likely cause them to leave your site without submitting an inquiry to learn more about your services. Instead, make your website easy to scan. Be aware of the length of your pages and keep the necessary scrolling to a minimum. If you have additional information you want to include, link to separate pages where you can provide further detail. Think short, digestible bits of information that are easy to reach.
- Contact function: A key objective of your site is to get prospective clients to contact you. Making it easy and obvious how to do so should be clear throughout your site. Your contact function could be as simple as including the email address you’d like clients to use or including a click-to-call link so that clients can call you directly from your website. You can also use live chat, a contact form, or a link to your contact page that includes all the ways a client can reach you in one centralized place.
2. Mobile-Friendly Design
Another crucial component of a great website is how it performs on mobile devices. Data continues to show that mobile web traffic is growing every year. In fact, over half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices and this trend is likely to continue.
The best way to optimize your website for mobile is through responsive web design. This form of web design allows pages to render well on all types of devices. It adapts the layout to the device by using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and different CSS style rules. Responsive web design doesn’t just make your look great on mobile, it helps your site load quickly as well. This quality performance is important to converting your visitors into clients and is essential to your website’s search rankings as Google is shifting to mobile-first indexing.
3. Accessibility
When designing your website, it’s important to remove any barriers that could prevent visitors from having a great experience. This means focusing on accessibility, a practice that ensures that anyone, including those with disabilities, can engage with your website seamlessly. Here are some important elements to make your site easily accessible:
- Add alt text to images: All images should have alt text so that screen readers are able to convey an image’s message to users. Including alt text is also a standard SEO best practice.
- Use headers: Headers help break up content and make your site easy to navigate. They are also used by screen readers for scanning.
- Provide descriptive names for links: In-text links should define exactly what the user can expect to find on the next page after clicking the link.
4. Core Pages Your Law Firm Website Needs
To effectively communicate your unique value proposition along with any other important information about your firm, there are several pages your website must include:
- Home: The homepage is likely the first place your visitors will land. The page should be designed to capture each visitor’s attention and make a great first impression.
- Practice Areas: The Practice Areas page provides detail about all the services you provide and how they benefit your clients.
- About: This page should communicate your values, vision, and mission along with what makes your law firm unique.
- Contact: One of the simplest pages of any website but also one of the most important. The Contact page provides visitors the means to reach out to you for more information.
Consider utilizing a live chat feature to your site as well, where potential clients can submit questions directly. This drastically reduces the time and effort it takes to get inquiries into your hands.
Professional Law Firm Web Design
Working with a professional web designer is an effective way to give your law firm’s website the boost that it needs. At Fletcher Digital, we specialize in helping lawyers and other professionals build websites that draw in clients and make it easy to convert. Our thoughtfully designed websites build credibility, attract clients, and differentiate your firm from the competition.
Contact us today to learn more about our web design and redesign services especially tailored for law firms.
