Whatever industry you’re in, your website is the online home of your business. It is an additional (and critically important) location where you can promote services and make yourself heard. It is a wonderful thing, and as with any wonderful thing, there is more than one way to mess it up.
In this post, we will share some important tips and good practices on how to improve a law firm’s website. As expected, it all starts with impeccable user experience and functionality. Let’s check:
A Simple And Clutter-free Home Page
You don’t want to confuse visitors, so make their first encounter as pleasant as possible. The homepage should convey a simple, yet effective message, and offer the little possibility to click away.
People won’t read right away but scan instead. Scale information down to their attention span, and break content down into ‘manageable’ chunks. All design aspects should be inviting and reassuring, as expected from a law firm.
Here are some tactics to try out:
- The most important information should always be above the fold.
- There should be plenty of white space between elements and content sections.
- Media content should come in the highest quality possible, particularly videos.
- There should be a CAT (call-to-action) button for every desired reaction.
Visual Hierarchy
Hierarchy plays a paramount role in every business website, law firms in particular. Try to incorporate it in your design, so that visitors can browse quickly and effectively.
Their attention should be naturally drawn toward the priority elements and information. You can achieve this by scaling and highlighting elements and placing them in the right order.
Take size or weight, for instance. On all good sites, top assents are bigger and more prominent. Great examples are the name and logo of the company, which take priority over the menu icon, for instance.
The bigger items are displaced first and located where they are easily seen. For example, the most important CTA buttons such as ‘learn more’ are always placed in the middle of the screen.
You can also achieve a visual hierarchy with spacing, contrast, and colors. These may as well be the most important attention-catchers on your website. What most law firms do is introduce a grid or a strip layout to pinpoint the order of their visuals.
Contact Page
This comes without saying, but you need to make sure clients know how to reach you. The contact information should be clear and updated. Moreover, visitors should be guided to it from every page on your website.
Many firms make the mistake of not updating contact information on all pages. While it is a good idea to embed it in the footer section, remember to go back there and update the details when necessary. Not every visitor will go through the trouble of locating and opening your Contact Us page. As expected, varying and outdated information won’t do your reputation any favors.
And an important thing to mention, try using a scheduling service software or a booking plugin to avoid back and forth friction and set an appointment directly.
Last but not least, keep the information consistent on all online channels. This includes, for instance, directory listings and social media accounts.
Intuitive Navigation
Navigation is not only the basis of good user experience but also an indicator to search engines that you are doing a good job. For instance, law firms often use the logo design as a link to their home page. They also position menus in the upper right corner, where they are expected to be.
Also, it is not a common practice to scroll a lot on law firm websites. Instead, information is neatly divided into several pages. Headers and footers are also impeccably designed and contain all important links as well as contact information.
A Practice Page Or A Service Page
As a law firm, you need a dedicated practice page where visitors can obtain details on the services you offer. Ideally, you should have a page for each service related to the main dropdown menu where visitors choose what they need. If there aren’t all that many services available, you can add the links to their pages in the header area.
Legal services require more information, so make sure their pages are concise and valuable. Don’t refrain from small details and encourage visitors to ask any question they want or even take action right away.
Other than that, you can consider adding the menu of main services directly on the home page. In such a case, remember to introduce a CTA button that leads the visitors straight to the desired area.
A Mobile-friendly Website
Your main task is to ensure that your website is usable by any visitor out there. A significant portion of online traffic nowadays comes from handheld devices, so make sure you take this into account.
Your main visitors will try to reach you on their mobile devices. If they fail to do so, they might bounce and reach out to a competitor instead.
Even more importantly, mobile optimization delivers positive signals to search engines. In such a way, it supports your reputation and your professionalism. While it is important to run a modern and appealing website, law firms benefit the most from a clean and clutter-free web experience.
This is even more important for the mobile versions of their websites, which are even simpler than the desktop ones. The mobile site, for instance, should give visitors the possibility to minimize assets or to scale them back, as with menus.
The best option of all is to ensure that the design is responsive and thus adjusts automatically to whatever device is being used by the visitor. This is not the most cost-efficient design feature, but it is in any case the most important one.
Conclusion
Now that you are familiar with the best practices for creating (and running) a law firm website, go online and get inspired. Learn from the best websites out there and research the current design trends in your area.
Keep in mind that a well-designed and responsive website is an irreplaceable marketing asset, so give it the attention it deserves. Last but not least, none of the discussed practices is a one-time thing.
You will need to update your website regularly and follow trends. Only in such a way, you will be able to generate leads constantly and keep the current customers intrigued.