The Hiring an Attorney report had some interesting findings. Of the 6300 respondents surveyed, 43% use referrals, 43% use Google search, and 46.5% use other online resources such as lawyers.com, Yelp, etc., to research potential lawyers.
These results were furthered by the Clio Legal Trends Report, which found that 57% of potential clients looked for a lawyer on their own, mostly using websites and online search engines. The other 43% used referrals.
So, more than half of potential clients will land on your website to check your services, get your contact details, or read testimonials: what will they see?
You have no second chance for the first impression your landing page and website as a whole make on the potential client. So, you have to customize it for your target audience while dealing with challenges such as short attention spans. You have very few seconds to make them trust you are the solution to their problem.
How do you go about it? Here are eight top tips and best practices for creating a family lawyer website:
1. Use professional colors and themes
Your visitors expect you to be professional and absolute. So, when they land on your website and are met with flashy colors, they won’t take you seriously or professionally.
Instead, use neutral and approachable colors, such as black, white, dark reds and blues, and even grays for your family website. The colors you use should be in line with your brand colors to be easily recognizable.
2. Display branding details
Branding details are your name and logo. You want the visitor to immediately recognize you when they land on your page or when they hear about you.
So, the branding details should be unique, and complement your color scheme. The branding details should be prominently displayed without taking too much of the page.
3. Make the website fast and easy to use
A whopping 53% of mobile website visits are abandoned if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, and a two-second delay can lead to abandonment rates of up to 87%. You can do everything in SEO for your website to show up in the top search engine ranks, but unless your family lawyer website loads faster, you will lose almost all your traffic.
Additionally, your website should be easy to use so your visitors won’t struggle to move around or find information. An easy way of testing usability is having someone try to accomplish something on your site.
4. Use professional images
We are highly visual characters, and our attention is drawn by images more than text. So, put images on your landing pages to grab the attention of the visitor. But they have to be the right images.
The right images for a family lawyer website are varied. The most common options are images of the offices or people-focused images to humanize your firm. Whatever image you use, it should be law-themed.
If you don’t have images and it’s expensive to higher professional photographers, there are sites where you can find images either for free or at a low price.
5. Display contact information
Some potential clients, such as those from referrals, may come to your site to look for your contact information. If they don’t find it immediately, they might exit as they likely have other potential attorneys.
Your contact information should be prominently displayed. The best place is at the right top corner, as it’ll be hard to miss.
6. Use clear call-to-actions
A landing page without a CTA is a dead end. What would you like the potential client to do? Most potential clients will gladly do something if you ask them to. A CTA guides your visitors to where you want them to go, with the ultimate goal of conversion.
The CTA should be prominently displayed to draw attention, use a color contrasting with the background, and place it in a convenient location for it to be impossible to miss. If possible, use multiple CTAs so they can take the action wherever they are on the page.
7. When in doubt, less is more
The most common mistake that websites make is trying to pass as much information as possible by crowding their web pages, according to 84.6% of web designers.
So, if after adding some of the elements covered in this guide you find yourself wondering whether adding a piece of content or an image to your family website will crowd it, it would be best if you didn’t. A crowded website will confuse potential clients, and cause them to exit immediately.
Include only the most important content and images on your landing page, then guide them to the other deeper information they may need.
8. Make data-driven decisions
Most people don’t hit on the first try. So, after making your family lawyer website while taking the above tips into account, analyze the performance of your website. Who is coming to your website? How long are they staying? What are they doing and how are they using your website?
Making improvement decisions based on site analytics will help you improve your targeting, attract more families, and convert them.
Get help designing an effective website for your law firm
The easiest mistake to make when designing or redesigning your family lawyer website is failing to serve those visiting it. You are trying to attract families to your website and guide them towards conversion, so you should make them trust you when they land on your website. The above tips should help you improve the performance of your family lawyer website. Also, be sure to check out the ultimate website redesign checklist to learn what you need to do prior to getting started.
If you’re looking to improve digital marketing effectiveness by designing an effective website, Kore Media can work as an extension of your team. We are a team of digital marketing experts that design and build outstanding websites. We can help you create a family lawyer website that attracts traffic and converts.
Let’s talk about how we can help you get an effective web design for your law firm.
