You can invest in the most qualified talents, the best expertise, use the best tools and offer top-notch services in your law firm. But if you do little to tell people about your firm, you’ll be lucky if you got any clients. That’s why investing in your marketing strategies is essential for the success of your business, and good marketing always starts with a great website.
So how do you create the best law firm website? You’ll simply need to follow this checklist:
- Planning your website
- Website design
- Website copy
- Optimizing your website
Creating a Great Website for Your Law Firm
1. Planning Your Website
Planning your website means creating another checklist for everything you need to say, include, and acquire from your website. You want your readers to know about your services, your field of expertise, your story, your team and how qualified they are, how your previous customers love your work, and any and all certificates, awards, and achievements you have. You also want to get the contact information of everyone visiting your website, and convert as many prospects to leads, and leads to customers.
It’s always a great idea to do a quick research of the other law firm website and study how they promote themselves and how their websites are built, and then take a leaf out of their books. Even better, add in your own customized touch.
2. Your Website Design
The design of your website should be simple and aesthetically pleasing, while providing space for everything you want to showcase. One thing you need to keep in mind at all times, is how to design for optimum user interface and user experience. Here’s how to design your website in simple steps:
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Create a Sitemap
The sitemap is like a navigation tool that allows you to categorize your pages, thus allowing the visitor to click on and jump to what they’re looking for right away. The sitemap is best located right on the top of your homepage, right under (or beside) your logo. It should also be present in all of your pages, so your visitor never gets lost.
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Take Care of Branding and Colors
Marketing experts know the importance of sticking to their branding guidelines in all of their designs. They create a color template of their branding colors and never deviate from abiding by them. Make sure your colors are consistent with your branding. If you’re going to be using more than one color, make sure they contrast well with each other. Speaking of branding, did you create your own logo yet?
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Make It an Easy-on-the-Eyes Design
What do you feel when you open a brochure or a magazine and find it completely filled with words, with barely any space to breathe? The same goes for your website. It’s important to add all of the information you need, but you should keep in mind to make it airy too. For starters, locate your copy in the center of the page, such that the margins have enough white space to be easy on the eyes.
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Use Visual Aids
Finally, try to incorporate more visual aids than mere words. High quality pictures, videos, infographics, and interactive designs can go a very long way in engaging with your visitors.
3. Your Website Copy
Once you’ve specified the position of every element on your website, it’s time to create the copy. Here’s what you should keep in mind about your copy:
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Showcasing Your Unique Value Proposition
As soon as they land on your homepage, your visitors should know what you do, what you’re best at, and why they should trust you. If they need to do intensive research throughout your site to understand what you’re doing, then chances are you’re going to lose all of your visitors.
Your homepage headline should go something like this: “New Jersey’s Top Personal Injury Law Firm At Your Command”. Adding in your location will give you an extra edge too, as most customers are looking for local firms.
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Precise and To-the-Point Copy
No one likes to read the same sentence 5 times to try and guess what exactly it means. Your copy should contain the most information in the least amount of words.
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Standardize Format
Headlines use bigger size and certain fonts, subheading should be of a slighter smaller size, and normal text should be the smallest size. Your font should be easy to read and professional (i.e. stay away from fancy fonts; you can’t trust a law firm with italic cursive fluorescent fonts, can you?). You also need to standardize your fonts and sizes throughout all of your pages.
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Simple Language
You’re the law expert, obviously, but chances are your visitors aren’t at all. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be seeking your help. Try to minimize all of the law-jargon, and instead use simple language your average reader can understand.
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Interactive Language (You, CTA, etc.)
Your copy should be all about giving your visitors the info they need, while compelling them to interact with you. You need to make it about them, not just you. You can do that through using active verb forms following “You, Your, You’re… etc.”.
Your copy should also encourage them to take action, which you can achieve by creating call-to-action buttons with compelling phrases. For instance, you can offer a free consult followed by a “Get Your FREE Consult Now!” button.
4. Optimizing Your Website
Optimizing your website focuses on how to get the most traffic, and then making the most conversions from said traffic.
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Blog & SEO
One of the basics of website optimization is an active blog that serves your SEO. Marketing and SEO experts Monopolists know that, as they explain in their Law Firm Marketing Guide 2019 blog post http://www.lawfirmseo.com/lawyer-marketing/. They talk about SEO and how it helps your website rank better in search engine results, making it much more likely to obtain customers right away as opposed to static websites or poor SEO-websites.
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Lead Capturing
Imagine if there was a way for you to get the information of everyone who visited your website? There actually is a way, and that’s what lead capturing forms are all about. You can create a free information guide for your visitors, and ask for their information in a simple form so they can download it.
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Driving More Traffic
There are other ways to drive traffic into your website, the most famous of which is to use Facebook ads to promote your business. This also helps in increasing your SEO and overall credibility and authority as a website.
Let Your Law Firm Be Known
There’s nothing that can promote your firm, expand your network, and increase your audience like a good marketing strategy that knows how to play the game to win. One of the most essential elements in your marketing strategy is creating a great website. Your website acts like your own portfolio and profile: It tells everyone all about you, where you came from, and you can do. Through making sure your website is well-planned, well-designed, copy-attracting, and best-optimized, you can be confident to compete and excel in the marketing game.
