Law firms and attorneys need a website designed for their legal practices that will enable them to communicate their value propositions to prospective and current clients. Law firms, as services businesses, now have to promote their brands online and set their firms apart from other attorneys that seemingly offer similar legal services.
The content of your website often addresses two different audiences. The first and more obvious audience is the current or prospective client. Yet, the second audience is often a referral source like another attorney who is visiting your site to learn more about your firm so he or she can make a good referral. Therefore, your communication strategy should ensure that you connect with both intended audiences.
Designing a site for an attorney that likely specializes in an area of law presents a different set of challenges than simply designing a standard eStore for an online retailer or a B2B manufacturer’s site.
Here are examples of law firm and other professional services firm web sites.
National Reach
Here are some of the value choices and questions we review with lawyers when designing and/or building their websites.
- Make it easy for other websites to link to content on its own site
- Private label presence for partners on lawyer’s website
- Enable attorneys inside the firm to add their own content and branding messages
- Create area on the site to communicate directly to the end-user client
- Clear and compelling opt-in forms to generate leads and drive sales
- Provide an Office Locator search function with a GoogleMap display
- Optimize website so content is indexed and ranked in the search engines
- User friendly interface which is easily navigable by visitors to the site.
- Fonts, colors and other design elements match the law firm’s “branding brochures”
- Request information area to segment leads as they come in
What are the main features I should look for in a Law Firm Website Solution to help me ensure my practice receives a quality website and/or extranet that will be easy to manage and operate?
- Content Management System (CMS) to self-publish to my site
- Professionally designed website that adheres to industry standards
- Custom graphics and banners for different sections of our site
- Professional copywriter to help create web page content
- Search Engine Optimization for Google, Yahoo and Bing rankings
- Website traffic monitoring software to provide daily reports of visitors
- Product catalog with categories and subcategory capability
- Upsales and cross-sales management capability
- Client Extranet
- Employee Intranet
- Subscription signup to enable you to send out a newsletter via email
- Social media to connect your site to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Customer support to answer your questions about how to use the website
- Training es and videos to guide you through managing your website
Sales, Marketing and Web Traffic
No website is complete without clients. Building a website is not a Field of Dreams fantasy where if you build it they will come. It requires a serious push effort to not only drive people to the site but then reach out to them with a continuous marketing strategy that builds brand confidence and trust. Our design and integration team works closely with your sales and marketing staff to help you drive visitors to your site and convert the web traffic into new leads and finally into customers.
Your site includes this list of features to enable you to maximize your opportunity and ability to reach new customers:
- Search engine friendly web pages with keyword rich URLs
- News section to quickly post company and industry news
- Sales rep and dealer locator as described above
- Request a quote form with options like drop down choices and radio buttons
- Signup for newsletter to be sent via email
- Photo galleries of products that can be picked up by search engines
- Video galleries to upload your own product demonstration videos
- User registration for private access to knowledge base and other privileges
- Download registered user data to a CRM system like SalesForce
- Social media links section
- Personalized contact us page with a Google Maps feature