Basics of Website Design
A well-designed website is the face of your brand. The better your website is, the more likely people will stick around and check out your services. A bad website that results in nothing but errors and broken links, and features an outdated design will drive people away.
Your website needs to be built around the core aspects of basic website design but catered to your specialization. All websites should have a modern and clean design that attracts customers and is responsive. Your site should also be built with search engine optimization practices in mind, meaning it’s ready to start outranking the competition from the get-go.
While every business needs to follow these basics, creating a law firm website will require more specialization. There should be more focus on the following categories while keeping in mind basic website design practices.
Website Design for Law Firms
When it comes to website design for law firms, there’s more that you need to keep in mind. If someone is searching for a law firm, they likely are looking to hire an attorney. For this reason, law firms should focus more on the following categories to help ensure that the users that show up on their website turn into clients.
Call to Action
The call to action on your homepage, and other pages, is an important staple on your website. This is the section in which you ask site visitors to choose you as their attorney. The call to action should be easy to find from any site page. In your call to action, you should state why you are the best choice for their attorney, as well as what services you offer. Your call to action is also a good place to mention past client reviews or high settlements you’ve gotten for other cases in the past.
The call to action shows your audience why you’re a trustworthy law firm and how they can contact you for a first meeting or free case evaluation. It should be well written and easy to find no matter where your clients are on the website.
High-quality Images
There’s nothing that will make a potential client click away faster than an outdated, blurry, or irrelevant picture. When choosing images for your website, make sure they are high quality. High-quality images are professional, and plant the suggestion in your audience’s head that you know what you’re doing.
Ensure the images you’re using are relevant to the topics at hand. You should also include pictures of your office and partners. Use pictures of your team working together or working with clients. Real pictures of your firm will help build reliability and trustworthiness, putting a face to the name.
Firm Differentiation
Your website should showcase your firm as a whole. What you do, where you operate, and how your process works. But there are thousands of firms out there, so how do you ensure that yours is the one that people click on? For this, you need to think about what makes your firm different and why someone would choose you over other firms. It could be because of your outstanding track record or stellar client reviews. Whatever it is, showcase it.
Think about your brand’s identity and how you can tie it into your website. No matter your brand identity, it should be clear throughout your website. You don’t want to state something on one page and then contradict it on another.
Streamlined Menu
When potential clients visit your website, they don’t want to spend too much time clicking around looking for what they need. Users tend to spend 15 seconds on a website before leaving if they haven’t found what they’re looking for. That gives you 15 seconds to capture their interest. If the information they’re looking for takes more than 15 seconds to find, they likely won’t stick around to keep looking.
Your menu should include links to your attorneys, practice areas, locations, and your blog. You should also have an easily accessible link where interested parties can contact you for more information, either by phone or by chat box/contact form. Your menu should be responsive, clean, and easy to navigate.
Blog Page
Easy navigation goes further than your main menu. Your website should also have a structure of internal links set up to help people navigate around your site without having to go through menus. For example, you may mention various practice areas on your main page. You would then link those practice areas to that page, allowing interested readers to read more and more in-depth as they progress through your site.
Your blog is a great place to implement and improve your internal link structure. Your blog page should be easy to navigate, allowing people to filter through different categories to find the information they’re looking for. Blogs should have relevant titles, pictures, and a brief description of the content.
[Also check out:
SEO for Law Firms: What Attorneys Need to Know About Boosting Their Website Ranking]
Why hire a law firm website design company?
As an attorney, website design may not be your strong suit, and that’s okay! At Site Social SEO, we’re ready to take on the task of helping you design your perfect website. When you let a law firm design company handle your website design, it gives you more time to focus on what’s really important—working with your clients.
Site Social SEO also offers content management, social media implementation, website maintenance and upkeep, and more. For more information and to discuss a package that best fits your needs, contact us online or at 407-712-0494.
