According to attorney Judd Kessler, CEO of AbacusLaw.com, people looking for lawyers or legal help on the web will become someone’s client. It’s important to make sure your optimize your law firm website to hook online visitors before your competition does. Judd outlines below the “7 sins of legal websites”, as well as how to turn these sins into assets.
1) Do not think it’s all about you: Visitors and potential clients come to your site with legal problems, with anxieties and they need to feel appreciated. Make your visitors feel appreciated, safe and “in control” by giving them relevant, valuable information.
2) You don’t have a clear call to action: Few legal websites give visitors a clear next step. What do you want people to do? Call you? Email you? Without a clear call to action visitors will be confused. Tell the visitor exactly what you want them to do, such as “Call Today!” with your phone number.
3) Having an unprofessional website: The professionalism of your website is critical to its success and its ability to generate prospects. It is important to have a well organized site that revolves around the visitor’s goals and your goal of making that visitor a client of your firm. You should have a site that is simple, uncluttered, uses high-quality graphics and uses colors sparingly.
4) Poor website navigation: A new visitor’s commitment to your website is low. If they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, they are likely to leave. Review your navigation and make sure it is easy to understand, easily visible, relates to the needs of your clients.
5) Not having a Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Your USP describes what your law firm does and for whom, what the firm’s unique value is and what the sets it apart from your competition. Your USP should be short and catchy as well as strategically located on your web site to position your law firm and drive the visitor to act.
6) Your website does not elicit trust: People come to your website with worried and fears. They have a fear of getting overshcarged, a fear of contacting you, fear of selecting the wrong lawyer or law firm etc. The job of your site is to help reduce these fears and elicit trust. If you build enough trust, they’ll be more likely to contact you and become your client.
7) Website not search engine friendly: While your site is about providing a quality experience to potential clients, it’s important to make your website is more likely to be found. First, provide excellent and quality content – search engines love quality content this is written to help people naturally, yet includes the keywords that visitors are likely to use when they are searching in order to find you. Second, make sure your website is “crawlable” by providing a set of links in the footer (bottom of website page) as a site map. Lastly, use proper titles, tags and meta tags descriptions on each page that reflect the contents of each page.
Thanks to Judd Kessler, Esq., CEO of www.abacuslaw.com for these helpful law firm website tips.
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