The importance of a website for legal firms cannot be overstated; as a virtual “shop window”, a website has a crucial role to play in ensuring your company receives the business it needs in order to flourish and thrive.
However, the mere existence of a website does not necessarily mean that said website is capable of really helping your business to stand out for all the right reasons, distinguishing your company from its competitors, and drawing the eye of prospective clients. To achieve these crucial goals, a website has to be the recipient of a huge amount of dedicated focus to make sure it can function as a marketing tool and information portal all wrapped up in one. This evaluation process should be ongoing, a steady drip of constant checks and tweaks; but at times, a thorough transformational revamp may also be called for so you can push your site forward and embrace the next level.
If it has been awhile since your company’s site last went through a radical overhaul, here are five areas you may want to focus on as you seek to implement beneficial changes.
#1 – Informative Articles and Blog Posts
While there’s no denying that a legal firm’s website needs to provide a raft of details and information about the business, people generally expect modern websites to go far beyond these basics. What’s more, including content on your site can be a promotional activity that helps to draw users to your website and – potentially – convert into clients.
The best way to start your content revamp is to first look through any existing content you have on your website, be it guides, blog posts, or articles – anything that is not strictly related to the business itself. Check to see if the information is still up-to-date and, if not, make changes so that the piece will still be relevant for anyone landing on the site in the present day.
After checking old content, or if you did not have a significant amount of content in the past, you can look to creating fresh new pieces. Staying within your niche is likely the best choice here. Think of topics that your clients are most likely to search for and then seek to address these questions in depth; the likes of the article Is Probate Required if There is a Will provide a helpful demonstration of a piece that provides valuable information that would benefit any user seeking that kind of information. This type of article is both informative and helps to position your firm as an expert resource, which is inherently valuable to the business’s reputation.
#2 – Contact Details
Without a doubt the most important element of any legal firm’s website is its contact details. First and foremost, you must make sure that your contact page is accurate. It’s also beneficial to check that all contact elements are fully functional; so, for example, if you have a contact form where users can send their queries, or a button that opens Skype or a similar service, verify that these actually work as you would expect.
As a second aspect you may also want to consider branching beyond the standard phone and email information too: apps such as Signal and WhatsApp are popular choices, and allowing prospective clients to contact you in the manner that suits their preferences exactly is always a sound choice when it comes to customer relations. Generally speaking, the greater volume of choice you are able to offer to a user who wants to contact your company, the better; this is definitely an area in which it is preferable to be inclusive rather than exclusive.
Finally, to cover all the preferences a user could have when landing on your site, look to improve the speed at which users can access contact details when landing on your website. For users who prefer a more esoteric contact method, using a conventional “Contact Us” page is more than sufficient; however, many users will be less concerned with options, and more focused on speed. Not every user will want to be diverted to a contact page; they would prefer to have everything front and center. It’s therefore advisable to put basic information – email, social media handles, telephone numbers – right at the top of your site and, if space permits, in the footer and sidebars of every page too.
#3 – Design and Images
When it comes to designing a website, functionality and usability will always be of paramount importance. Speed, too, is a crucial factor; if you need to increase page speed, then our article 10 Tips That Will Improve Your Website Speed should be helpful.
Nevertheless, functionality is not all a website should be able to offer. Humans are, after all very visual, and the design and images used are often what is noticed first about a site. You could, for example, provide a highly usable site, but the site is not aesthetically pleasing or does “look the part” of a successful, reputable law firm, then clients could still pass by regardless of how well the core of the site actually works. Given the difficulty that is the process of attracting users to your website is in the first instance, users choosing to leave the site without browsing further is definitely something you will want to avoid
If it’s been awhile since your graphics were improved, then this should be a major component of your revamp. Study the latest design trends and try to incorporate these across your site, so that any user who is landing on the page will instantly be able to tell that your site is modern, up-to-date, and relevant – which means that, by extension, so is your law firm. It’s also worth checking that the images used all still load correctly too; if there are any gaps, then work to replace the images with freshly-taken photographs or suitable stock images.
In Conclusion
Focusing on the above areas should mean that your law firm is able to enjoy the benefits of a fresh, newly-revamped website that is a true asset to your company.
