A client’s first impression of a law firm can make a big difference between hiring you as their lawyer or moving to your competitor. In the digital world, you need a professional, feature-proper website to make a good first impression.
So, to ensure that your law firm is coming out above the rest in the digital world, you need to have an impressive law firm website design. Here are important features your website should have to improve your firm’s online presence.
Table of Contents
1. User-Friendliness
In general, when people search for a law firm, there’s always a sense of urgency. They require your legal assistance for an emergency situation and determine if you’re the right person for the job.
It’s important that your website doesn’t make it difficult for your audience to find the information they’re searching for. So, you want to create obvious and logical navigation with a clear hierarchy. You need to use consistent layouts and visual cues for better functionality and readability across your site.
If there’s a plethora of content, then you need to include a search box in order to make it faster and help your visitors to find more specific pages within your website.
2. Informative Web Contents
There’s a reason people browse websites or use search engines— they’re looking for information. People are always looking for information, and they want it delivered in a reliable and fast way.
Whether to inform or entice, superior content is a must-have in every website, even more so with law firms. For law firm websites, content should include all important information about your business. These include:
3. Attorney Profiles
Fact: Attorney profiles are often the most visited content page on a law firm’s website. Statistics show that 56% of law firm website visitors will look for and visit the attorney profiles page. So, it only makes sense to create a separate page for this kind of content.
You want to make sure that each attorney profile you make has:
- Professional headshot
- Practice areas
- Education and experience
Education and qualifications are most important to a potential client. However, it’s also important that they like you. So, when creating this content, make sure to add a level of personalization in order to build connection and trust.
4. Practice Areas
Potential clients need to know what you can do for them. So, make sure to create a web page with a list of your practice areas, which can link to individual pages for further information or sub-practice areas.
You also want to link to attorney profiles that specialize in each practice area in order to provide more information.
Other than helping visitors find information, a practice area content can provide SEO benefits. Most visitors looking for a law firm website on Google will be searching for the specific practice area. So, having a practice area content can help you get found in search engines.
5. Testimonials
Nothing builds trust more than reviews and testimonials. Knowing you’ve done a great job in the past can entice potential clients to try out your service.
When you include this kind of content, make sure that you ask for your client’s permission before posting their review.
6. Contact Options
The primary purpose of your website is to attract and generate new clients, right? Thus, you want your visitors to contact you and initiate the next steps in building your relationship. Thus, another content you need is your contact options including email addresses or phone numbers. Most law firm website offers consultation forms that require users to fill out necessary contact information and the nature of their contact.
7. Responsive Design
Most people prefer searching on their mobile phones. So, it’s safe to assume that potential clients are searching for your services on a tablet or phone.
This shift in mobile preferences requires you to make your website responsive and mobile-friendly. A website that’s not optimized for the mobile user will be difficult to navigate and see information on the site.
Other than creating a bad user experience, a website that’s not mobile-friendly can hit your SEO and cause your ranking to drop.
8. Chatbots
Chatbots are growing in popularity and for a good reason. They’re like your smart website helper and receptionist available to assist your clients 24/7. Chatbots help website visitors find the information they need, any time of the day.
Having a chatbot on your site allows you to create an even better client-centered experience for potential clients with instant, automated responses.
Conclusion
Your website is the digital face of your law firm. And as you ensure that your physical law firm office looks professional and appealing to potential clients, so is ensuring that your web design gives a good impression to online searchers.
With that said, you want to consider adding and implementing the above-mentioned website features to improve your brand online, attract clients and help your bottom line.