In this day and age, marketing without a website is like practising law without a law degree; you might get away with it, but you probably won’t, and the consequences are pretty drastic. You need a website - not just any website, either. You need a good website, one that will get clients in your door. There are three components to having a good website that we’re going to look at today: aesthetics, functionality, and search engine optimization. Let’s dive in!

Aesthetics

How your website looks matters. When you go onto a website that’s clean, nicely laid out, and visually appealing, you’ll have more faith in the company that made the website - that’s branding 101. Exactly what your aesthetic is will depend very much on what kind of law you are practising, and the kinds of clients you’re trying to attract.

Here’s an example for you: one practise that personal injury and related firms have is to put how much money they’ve won for clients front and center on their website. When it’s a large number, clients are immediately impressed; it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in business for, or how much you win per individual client, so long as the first number they see is big. The prospective client is seeing dollar signs, and that’s good for you.

Conversely, criminal defense lawyers won’t have any dollar values anywhere on their sight; rather, they’ll have imagery that looks both tough and empathic, so clients know they’ll be respected by the attorney and defended in every way possible.

For examples of some very well done home pages, take a look at this compilation of great websites by attorneys.

Functionality

Clients looking at your website and finding it attractive is all well and good, but that doesn’t mean anything if they don’t pick up the phone and call. Your website’s function is to funnel clients to your firm, so you need a call to action, front and center. This call to action should be a combination of two things: a phone number, and a link for online scheduling. Advertise free consultations, if you offer them; webchat can be good, too. A lot of this can be accomplished through a virtual office if you don’t otherwise have the means of taking on a lot of new callers. Strip away any pages you don’t need: about us, contact us, why us, and a couple of other pages are fine for most firms.

Search Engine Optimization

You’ve got a great website, and it looks amazing, but if no one can find it, it’s doing you no good. Most people looking for an attorney will use Google to try to find you; search engine optimization (SEO) is used to make sure you’re on the front page when they search. This is best handled by an outside SEO firm.

Attorneys on Demand strives to be more than just the resource you use when you need an appearance attorney; we want to provide you with a glut of information for every element of running a great law firm. We hope this post helps!