This week's guest blog is brought to you by Rich Dibbins, Head of Sales and Digital Strategy of Conscious Solutions UK, design and marketing for law firms.
A question I am often asked, “Rich I want a website but I am not techy.” And why should you be? You’re a legal professional looking after your clients, going to networking events, learning about changes in the law, not to mention keeping up with compliance.
So how do you know what website you want? Below I will talk you through four very simple steps that will save you time, help you understand what you need, and more importantly…it’s all non-techy.
Step 1 – What type of law firm are you?
Let’s start with the basics, you need to ask yourself what type of law firm you are. This may sound easy, but some law firms are expensive, some are less so and some, well frankly, have no idea which they are. Establishing what type of law firm you are will help you be sure of the kind of clients you want to attract to your new website.
If you’re a conveyancing firm that deals in fixed fee conveyancing, then you will likely deal with a high volume of transactions, meaning you will require various forms that need to be filled in by clients. In this case, high volume, low margin work, you should ensure your site is what we call “lead converting”. If you deal with the higher end of the conveyancing spectrum, non-fixed fee work, then your site will be more informative, but you will still want to have enquiry forms on your service pages. But they will be subtle and blend in with the overall design of the website.
Step 2 – Keep it simple
Law firm websites historically follow this type of navigation:
- Home
- About Us
- Staff Profiles
- Services
- News
Today’s client purchasing legal services will move around your website, they might be in a hurry or be viewing your website from a mobile device. We cannot assume a client will always go to the right place. How many times have you gone food shopping and known exactly where they keep the ketchup? You need to help the client to find what they need in a fast and efficient manner. If you deal in commercial and private client services, you will probably have various call to actions or icons for clients to click on. This might be a “first-time buyers” or “fixed fee conveyancing” box or icon on the home page.
Don’t clutter your home page with various features such as testimonials, lengthy video or large images, this can actually slow down a website. Instead spread the content throughout the site. You can do this by having clean and clear navigation on the home page, this way your clients will be able to understand where to go.
Step 3 – Track EVERYTHING
The vast majority of law firms I speak with want to increase the number of web enquiries or be on page one of Google. However, when I ask them how many enquiries they have at the moment, the answer normally is “I don’t know Rich”. Unless you know how your site performs today how do you know how to improve it moving forward? A simple way of doing this is to have your enquiry forms going through to a group email address such as enquiries@yourdomain.com. This has two benefits.
- No enquiries get lost as the email will get picked up by multiple people
- You can collate emails to that particular address and count/record the number of enquiries.
Most Content Management Systems (CMS) have some form of enquiry form tracking built into them. If they don’t’ then request this as part of the project. Once you are able to track your enquiries on a monthly basis, you will have a better understanding of the return on investment that your website is generating.
The other part of tracking everything would be to get Google Analytics installed on your website. Google Analytics is free and helps you understand where visitors go on your website. There are parts of Google Analytics that will allow you to track where your clients go on your website. Here is a little hint, besides your home page, most of them go to your profile pages, contact pages and careers pages.
Step 4 – Staff Profiles
“Do I need staff profile pages Rich?” Yes, you do! With digital marketing becoming more competitive than ever and always changing. A great way of increasing confidence with your clients, is by having a great not a good profile page. This needs to have a professional photo of yourself, a brief bio of you as a professional and your accreditation. It does not need to go into detail that you can trace the routes of the firm back to “1873”. Clients have a need and they want you to fulfill that need now. Your bio needs to tell a story of how great you are but more importantly how you can help them with their problem. Remember people buy people and that no-one wants a law firm (sorry to remind you of that) but they need a law firm.
A great profile will have the following:
- Professional photo
- Linked to LinkedIn (your professional referral network)
- Brief bio of you as a person
- A call to action (a form for the client to fill in to contact you)
The above are just the basics to a website project, there are other areas to include such as great content, imagery and the technology the website will use. But the above will help you form a base for creating a good website brief. When you speak to your provider, be as clear as you can in your brief. If you are going to use words like “quirky, modern or functional”. Give the agency or designer examples of this. One person’s “quirky” could be totally different to what you might be thinking.
