Practicing What You Preach
As an online storefront, your website serves the rest of the globe. Consider the search engine to be a high street. Your website must do everything possible to entice and encourage pedestrians to enter.
Knowing your audience and what they are seeking is key to the most attractive website. Being able to identify your target audience and talk to them so that they will understand and engage with it is essential for a legal website.
A law firm’s website should swiftly display the areas of law in which it specializes to any potential clients. This prevents your site from wasting a user’s time and having high bounce rates.
If you don’t respond to visitors’ needs fast, they’ll continue their search online and end up on your competitor’s site.
The first step in determining the potential client entailed conducting extensive research and inquiry into the law firm’s market. The perfect place to start is with User Personas.
It’s imperative to consider who you’re aiming for when you’re building a website. “If you don’t meet their wants promptly, they’ll continue their search online and end up on your competitor’s website.” Here are the seven steps to make your website a client magnet curated by the best legal marketing company – Legal Soft Solution.
#1. Make Sure Your Calls To Action Are Clear
Doesn’t your legal firm’s website have a prominent call to action?
A call to action is just what it sounds like: a request to take action. Visitors to a legal company’s website are usually looking to hire or learn more about the firm, so your call to action should make it clear how they can hire you and get information about you and the firm.
Phone numbers or links to contact forms and appointment schedulers should be your initial call to action for most businesses. It should be visible on all of your website’s pages. Use a “hero” layout on homepages to give visitors the most explicit path to their (and your) desired action.
With a distinctive accent color that you don’t use anywhere else on your website, you can direct the visitor’s eye to your call to action button. You may even animate the button so that it pulses or wiggles as the page loads, grabbing your visitor’s attention just enough.
Don’t go overboard. A minor highlight or movement can make a big difference. Colors that are too bright, flashy animations, and pop-ups covering the entire page are more annoying than helpful.
#2. Make Your Law Firm’s Website Mobile-Friendly
How responsive is your website, from large desktop monitors to outdated smartphones?
Between one-third and two-thirds of visitors to most websites will be using a phone or tablet. Your legal firm’s website should be built to perform well regardless of the size or shape of the device used to access it.
When creating your website, use the “rule of thumbs,” especially when designing interactive features like forms. To put it another way, make sure everything works just as well on a phone or tablet screen with thumbs as it does with a keyboard and mouse.
However, testing your website on several devices to evaluate how well it works on each is still a good idea. Switch from a large to a small browser window to verify the responsiveness of your website. You may even ask pals to visit your site using different gadgets while you keep an eye on them.
#3. Accelerate It
Is it possible for your website to load in under two seconds? What’s a second?
The experience of using a website that takes a long time to load is unpleasant. Sluggishness dissuades visitors from staying for long periods. This is especially true for mobile visitors, who are more likely to return to TikTok if your website takes too long to load.
How fast can you go? Latency of fewer than 100 milliseconds is considered instantaneous. If there is a delay of less than one second, it still feels engaging. Users begin to lose interest after that. A 2-second response time is a decent benchmark to aim towards.
Humans, on the other hand, can recognize images in as little as 13 milliseconds.
In a nutshell, the sooner, the better. A website is not expected to load as quickly as Overwatch or Call of Duty. Still, a 2-second target seems a little lofty for today’s users’ expectations. If possible, try to keep loading times under two seconds. It’s unrealistic to anticipate your website to load in less than 500 milliseconds regularly. However, it is conceivable to get under one second.
GTmetrix will help you determine what’s slowing down your website’s loading speed. Because how fast your site appears to Google affects your SEO ranking, you should also evaluate it with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
#4. Make it Easy to Use
Is your website accessible to those who have impairments or face other obstacles?
A disability affects more than a quarter of the population in the United States. A screen reader, braille display, or a high-contrast color scheme may be required for people who are blind or have difficulties seeing. Closed captions and transcripts of your podcasts are necessary for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. People with cognitive impairment may require content that is simplified or aid in understanding it.
Others may face other difficulties in seeing your websites, such as sluggish internet connections or outdated gear.
A set of guidelines called WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is a specification for developing websites that are accessible.
To test your website’s accessibility, use tools like WebAIM WAVE. The WAVE tool does not evaluate everything—it does not perform a readability analysis. It is, however, a good starting point.
#5. Enhance Your Branding
The next step in upgrading your law firm’s website is to include a distinct value proposition. This must reflect who you are, whether you’re a founder or a senior partner, or the values that have shaped your career as a lawyer. This helps others understand and recognize who you are and what your legal brand represents.
Ensure that your advertising is consistent. Remember to be yourself because you’ll eventually have to demonstrate to your clients who you are.
#6. Curate Unique Content
The best way to optimize your website and implement digital marketing techniques is unique content that sets you apart from the competition. Furthermore, according to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, websites should include content primarily meant for people rather than search engines. This means you’ll have to generate unique material that is solely targeted at potential clients of your law firm’s services.
You should be aware that Google tends to bury less valuable information near the bottom of search results, which is why creating unique content tailored to a specific web user audience can help you rank higher.
There are numerous ways to distinguish your content but bear in mind that it should be as complete and helpful as possible.
#7. Use High-Resolution Images
Is there a lot of fantastic photography on your website, especially if you and your team?
A website’s photographs can make a significant difference in its appeal. After all, one of the main reasons people visit your website is to “meet” you, and images are the most exemplary method.
Hire a professional photographer for a picture shoot every five years or so to acquire beautiful photos. Take pictures that reflect your personality. (It’s pointless for people to see a snapshot of someone who looks nothing like the person they’ll meet later.) Also, don’t feel obligated to take headshots in front of a neutral background.
You can also include a video. Suppose you can be natural on camera and have good production value. In that case, video can be a very effective way to introduce yourself to potential clients.
Request a variety of poses and crops from your photographers, such as headshots and full-body images, both posed and unposed, as well as square, portrait, and landscape crops. Also, take a group photo of your entire team!
Your web designer will have more possibilities to work with when establishing page layouts due to this.
Design A Website For Your Firm That Stands Out From The Rest
Does it reflect your firm’s image?
Even if you do all of the above, your website will be ordinary. With vibrant colors and a professional design, a great website that’s likely to make the top 10 should also make you seem reasonable and help you stand out from the crowd. Although appearances are subjective, hiring expert help pays off.
The majority of web designers have a reasonably constant design aesthetic. Examining a designer’s previous work is the most incredible way to determine whether or not you will be satisfied with their work. Your website will look revolutionary if you follow the above advice and will work as a client magnet for your website.