21 Top Law Firm Web Design Tips

The second metric in Core Web Vitals is known as First Input Delay (FID). FID measures how long a user must wait before the website becomes interactive (buttons become clickable, etc.). This is also important for a user’s first impression of your website; is your site usable, or not? Google considers an FID of less than 100 milliseconds to be good and an FID of more than 300 milliseconds to be poor.

The last metric in Core Web Vitals is known as Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). CLS is a measure of a website’s visual stability. You’ve likely had a website experience before where you tried to click on something but were unable to do so because the website “shifted” at the last second. Perhaps this was from an image or large font loading on the page and pushing the content below it down. In any case, it can be very frustrating for your users—and difficult to address. According to Google, a good CLS score is less than 0.1, and a CLS greater than 0.25 is poor.

By the way, Google will combine Core Web Vitals with their existing page experience metrics, which include mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security, and non-intrusive interstitials.

There’s a lot more detail to these Core Web Vitals, of course, and you’ll likely need to work with your web developer to make sure that you’re taken care of. To get started on these important Core Web Vitals metrics, you’ll need to be able to measure them. Aside from the page speed tools mentioned above, you can also see Core Web Vitals information inside your Google Search Console and in your Chrome browser’s inspector under the Performance tab.

Google has stated that “while all of the components of page experience are important, we will prioritize pages with the best information overall.” So, even if your development team can’t make it perfect, it likely isn’t the end of the world; just make sure you have great content. Remember, though—in the highly competitive geographies, every last effort counts. It would be a shame to let a competitor beat you in rankings just because of your poor loading times and Core Web Vitals.

Director of Marketing Jamie Kelly discusses the importance of website speed further in the webinar below:

 

Calls to Action

Remember how we discussed the goal of your website in Tip Zero? Calls to action on your website are key to driving people toward that goal.

A call to action is simply a directive—you tell your visitor outright what you’d like them to do. There’s no shame in doing it. Remember, they found their way to your website for a reason—be it word of mouth or SEO or PPC. Now, it’s the job of your website to convert them. Sell them on why they should hire you, and then tell them what action they should take.

Don’t be afraid to make your call to action and call-to-action links noticeable. If you bury them in text, they will likely not be interacted with as much as you’d like. At the same time, you don’t want to jump into a call to action too early and over pressure the visitor or give them a bad impression.

Also, think twice about the most effective words you can use in your call to action buttons. Too many forms across the world wide web have a button that says “Submit.” How about “Get Started” or “Find Out More” instead? If you’re having people sign up for a webinar, try “Reserve Your Spot.” If you’re offering an e-book, use something like “Get My Free E-book.” You might also try “Request a Free Consultation.” The last thing you want to do is confuse people by using ambiguous language right at the moment when they’re about to convert into a lead.

So, where should your calls to action appear? On every single page. That’s right—everywhere. A natural closing to nearly all of your blogs, articles, and FAQs should be a call to action about hiring you, unless you’re trying to push a download, webinar, or something else. You should even include a call to action on your “thank you” page—the page you show after someone completes a form. In fact, the thank you page is often criminally underutilized—more on that soon.

Download the 21 Tips PDF Report Here

Don't Forget Internal Linking

The last thing you want is for people to struggle to find what they’re looking for on your website. So, don’t just link for the search engines—link for human beings that may be interested in other parts of your website.

But don’t just haphazardly link for the sake of linking. Ideally, you link where it makes sense contextually to do so. However, what you definitely don’t want to do is link away from your page using the same keyword that the current page is about—unless, of course, you can provide a page link that offers better information about that keyword. 

For example, if you have a practice area page about criminal defense, it is likely a good idea to link your criminal defense blog posts to it so that people can learn more about your offerings. It also shows Google the hierarchy of your site—there’s no page more about “criminal defense” than your practice area page.

If you have 12 FAQs, 12 blogs, and 12 articles all about criminal defense, it might be confusing for Google to determine which one to try and rank for “criminal defense attorney.” Furthermore, it might be confusing to human beings trying to figure out how they can learn more about the general topic that brought them into your website. Each one of your individual pages, of course, has the opportunity to rank for a long-tail keyword (a more specific search term), but how will Google know what page on your site is the ‘authority’ for a keyword? Sure, Google will make a determination, but it’s best to ‘nudge’ the Googlebot in the right direction with a link structure that makes sense.

On-Page Optimization

Your content plays a big part in bringing in website visitors, but optimization, which is all about how you present your content to search engines, can also make a huge difference. To many people, it can seem like monotonous minutia, but optimizing your content can be the difference between landing at the top of page 2 and the top of page 1 of search results.

And no, you don’t need an “SEO” to do a lot of this work, so long as you have the time, and especially if your website Content Management System (CMS) allows you to edit some key parts of your pages. All it takes is a little effort and setting some good content habits, and you can likely do most of what an SEO would do—on your website, at least.

The most important on-page optimization elements are your URL (what you type in to visit that direct page), your Meta Title (what appears in Google search results and on your browser tab), and your H1 (the main headline of the page). Make sure you get your keyword into all of those, if possible. Don’t overdo it, though. We’ve seen evidence that the longer the URL, the less each word in it is ‘weighed.’ Also, Google only displays the first 60 characters or so of your Meta Title, depending on the device, so try your best to keep it under that.  And nobody wants to read a giant H1 header that is 30 words long. Remember—don’t try to make a page about more than one keyword. Keeping the length of your key elements low shouldn’t be an issue if you’re only talking about one thing (and perhaps, in one location).

In addition to those key elements, it’s also a good idea to position your keyword high on the page—or “above the fold” as they say (so it’s seen before the reader needs to scroll). If you can get it in the first sentence, great! You may also want to bold a keyword, consider including it in a list (either ordered or unordered), and incorporate as many related images as you can (as we discussed earlier). 

It’s also a good idea to include your keyword in the meta description of the page. The meta description is text that Google may decide to display with your search result. It appears just under the page title and influences whether a potential client clicks through to your website. So don’t just shove keywords into it—give people looking for an attorney a reason to click in to your site.

There’s definitely such a thing as going overboard here. In fact, Google has dedicated multiple algorithm changes to penalizing sites that “over-optimize.” Don’t try to include so many iterations of your keyword that your page is unreadable or sounds unnatural. Use partial match keywords, related terms, latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords, and synonyms. Knowing the right amount of on-page indexing is something that an experienced SEO professional can help you with. But you can always experiment on your own, and look at what your competition is doing!

Video

Many people would rather watch than read, especially when they’re in a hurry. Having video on a page can engage those “watchers” and provide a richer experience for all of your site visitors. In many cases, video even allows potential clients to see you and decide for themselves if they think you’re trustworthy and likable (more on that later).

And we’re not just worried about what the humans think. We’ve seen it time and time again; Google prefers sites with a lot of great multimedia over sites that are just text. Video can significantly improve a user’s experience on your website, so when it comes to search results, Google will favor websites that contain videos relevant to their users’ queries. If you can somehow get a video on every page—do it!

In the podcast below, Tom Foster talks with Jim Folliard, Owner of Gearshift Studios, about why video makes an impact:

 

If you’re not a big fan of making videos, you’re not alone—but you are missing out. At the very least, we suggest that you should record basic videos to cover your practice areas. That way, at least your main practice area pages have a chance to rank competitively. If you aren’t opposed to creating more videos, another great place to start (once you’re done with practice area videos) is your FAQs—record a video for each one! 

While sites can support a variety of video sources, like Vimeo or Facebook, we typically recommend using YouTube. Google has a tendency to be narcissistic and favors Youtube because, well…they own it. Also, don’t try to upload videos to your own server and host them from there. Doing so will quickly eat through your bandwidth, which is typically limited by your hosting provider. It’s best to host your video elsewhere and then “embed” it on your website with a simple code that can be retrieved from the “Share” section of your YouTube channel. In some cases, your website’s “backend” (the area you log into, to make edits) may contain built-in video uploading and embedding, which is great because it saves you some trouble.

"...Google will favor websites that contain videos relevant to their users’ queries."

Google also looks at a number of on-site user behaviors to determine how good your user experience is. Among them is a metric called ‘average session duration,’ which is exactly what it sounds like. Generally speaking, the longer people spend on your website, the better. And what better way to get them to stick around awhile than informative and entertaining video?

Make it Easy to Contact You

We’ve seen loads of sites that almost seem to be trying to hide their contact information. In those cases, many frustrated people bounce from the website and turn to Google to search for things like “Johnson Law Firm Phone Number.” Not good! Website contacts generally boil down to forms, chats and phone numbers.

And we’re not just talking about prospects and leads here. Being easy to contact can turn what might have ended up as a bad Google review into a Facebook chat where your team can make things right. Wouldn’t you rather have a chance to set things right over a chat or phone call than being stuck with a 1-star review?

You may have heard that shorter forms generally equate to more leads. People may be happy to give you their names and email addresses, but not so quick to give away their phone numbers and street addresses. While reasoning varies from person to person, it’s usually a split between the perceived workload to complete a longer form and concerns about privacy. But while a shorter form will probably bring you more leads, a longer form will probably bring you better leads. There’s really no right answer here. The right amount of information to request depends on your client, the nature of the form, what the user is getting in return, and perhaps even the type of law you practice. Request what you consider to be just enough to qualify your leads without wading into the information that would be nice to have, but isn’t necessary.

If you’re on the fence about what information to collect, consider working with your web team to run some A/B testing with something like Google Optimize. A/B testing can be valuable for determining if you’re overstepping your bounds on a contact form. With all that said, we’re not necessarily the biggest fans of A/B testing; it shouldn’t be done purely for the sake of doing so. If you’re already working with an experienced web marketing team, they should already know (from experience) what option is likely best. Sure, you could display a red call-to-action button 50% of the time just for fun, but we’re pretty certain that the green call-to-action button will bring you more leads. So why experiment at all?

"Wouldn’t you rather have a chance to set things right over a chat or phone call than being stuck with a 1-star review?"

Generally speaking, people are more likely to finish something they’ve started than they are to start something they haven’t started yet. With that in mind, if you absolutely insist on collecting additional personal information like addresses and phone numbers, do it lower in the form. If a person takes the time to fill out their name and email, they’ll be a little more likely to complete the fields below just because they’ve already started and don’t want to waste their efforts. 

Downloadable Offers

A downloadable “offer,” sometimes known as a “lead magnet” or just a download, allows you to reserve some of your most valuable content as a giveaway in exchange for people’s contact information. We firmly believe that no website should go live without one. They are commonly used as a method to collect leads and prospects your website might not otherwise have captured. The most common example is an e-book, but an offer could also be a checklist, guide, resource kit, workbook, exclusive video, webinar, cheat sheet, access to a tool, or anything else your potential clients would value. Just keep in mind that what you decide to give away will have a large impact on conversion rate. For example, you may see more download volume giving away ‘checklists’ or ‘e-books’ instead of ‘guides’ or ‘reports’ because of the perceived time needed to digest the content based on the name. On the other hand, you might see more qualified leads with ‘guides’ and ‘reports’ since the people downloading them are more willing to commit to a long read.

Not everyone who visits your website is ready to contact you, but they may be ready to download something of value to continue their research. So, with downloadable offers, you’re going after people at an earlier stage of the buying or decision-making process instead of just going after people who are ready to commit. A great marketing strategy goes after people no matter where they are in the process.

Downloadable offers have a number of benefits in addition to just collecting more leads. For one, they have a tendency to lower your website’s bounce rate. Remember earlier how we talked about people’s intents? People could be coming to your website for any number of reasons, from reading one of your attorney bios to just looking for your phone number. By offering all of those people a valuable download, you greatly increase the chances that they’ll engage regardless of their original intent. Offers are a great “interrupter” in that respect.

Thanks to the principle of reciprocity, the people who download your offers will be more likely to hire you later because you gave them something valuable for free. They’re also more likely to hire you in the future because your downloadable offer has proved that you are an authority. We always suggest that you apply your branding (logo, colors, etc.) to your offers to remind people of who gave them the free valuable content.

The benefit of a downloadable offer can be expanded further if it kicks off a drip email campaign (more on this later). Since you know that many of the people who download your offer are early in their decision-making process, you’re likely to benefit greatly from keeping in touch with them automatically over a period of weeks or months. The predefined schedule for your automated emails is highly dependent on your practice areas; criminal defense, for example, is more urgent, whereas estate planning is more carefully considered.

One of the most important things to remember when brainstorming for an offer idea or writing the offer itself is that it needs to be mostly non-salesy and valuable to someone who may not be ready to hire you yet. So, a bad example of an offer would be “10 Reasons Why You Should Hire Me.” Instead, keep your sales pitches out of the document and call it “10 Things to Look for in an Ideal Attorney.” See how those two ideas are essentially the same thing, but one is ‘pitchy,’ and one isn’t? If you want to pitch, do so later on in the offer once you’ve proven your value.

By no means do these high-value offers need to be gated (that is, made available only behind a form). You may have success simply giving away your free e-book to the masses, and simply offering a download as a courtesy on top of that. Consider experimenting with both to see what works best for you.

Graphics, Typography, and White Space

It can be easy to just throw a few things into the sidebar and paste your content onto the page, but it doesn’t make for a very good visual hierarchy or memorable experience. As we touched on before, you don’t want to fall prey to a website design that looks like WordPress. Breaking up the content on your pages with graphics can help keep the reader’s interest, reduce perceived reading effort and time, and help the visitor scan more quickly to find the information that’s important to them.

"...don’t let the word 'graphics' intimidate you."

At the same time, you don’t want to go overboard with it. It can be easy to get so caught up in “stuff” and the need to be unique that it leaves visitors confused. A confused mind does not buy. Find a good balance between interest and legibility. The use of adequate white space can help with this, allowing elements on the page to “breathe.”

A great place to start is highlighting the things that set you apart from your competition. Do you offer free consultations? Create a graphic to let people know about that. Have you helped recover billions of dollars for your clients? Turn that into a graphic so that people can’t miss it. Do you have a slogan? Create a graphic to strengthen your brand prominence. Do you make a promise to all of your clients? You get the idea.

Graphics can also be used to function as buttons. While it’s a good idea to do interlinking right inside of your text for people reading, it’s also a good idea to use graphical buttons to help move people around your website to your ultimate goal. For example, if you’re a Social Security disability lawyer, you may help people who need to apply, have already applied, and who were denied and need to appeal. So, it would make sense on your Social Security disability practice area page to have three buttons, one for each intent of the visitor. Don’t leave it up to chance that they’ll see your text links or interact with the main navigation; offer as many ways to get around as you can, with attention-getting buttons as one option.

And don’t let the word “graphics” intimidate you. A “graphic” could easily just be a different typeface used in an interesting manner and with attention-grabbing color or layout. Speaking of typography, be sure to not use too many different typefaces and fonts, or you’ll muddy your brand.

Branding and Color

When designing your website, it’s important to stick to the colors of your brand—the ones people already know you for.

Gretchen Upright, Chief Business Development Officer at Foster Web Marketing, discusses the importance of branding and color in your law firm website design in her World of Marketing podcast with Tom Foster:

 

While brand is important, and we’re certainly not advocating that anyone go changing their well-established brand for their website design, the emotions behind color are also important. For example, many law firms involved in matters of family law or estate planning will go with friendly, reassuring, and soft colors like warm greys and light blues. Business litigation law likely goes better with darker blues and varying grays to communicate trustworthiness and accountability. Criminal justice attorneys may go for bolder or more saturated colors like red and orange to appear aggressive and passionate. Environmental law firms commonly go with shades and tints of green and blue. 

Here are some commonly accepted color—emotion connections:

Red: Passion, Fire, Violence, Love, Danger 
Orange: Energy, Movement, Change, Vitality, Welcoming
Black: Power, Mystery, Formality, Elegance, Sophistication
White- Cleanliness, Neutrality, Purity, Goodness
Grey: Balance, Loss, Compromise, Composure, Calmness
Yellow: Happiness, Hunger, Cowardice, Hope, Caution
Green: Earth, Growth, Stability, Abundance, Wealth, Freshness
Blue: Corporate, Sadness, Trustworthiness, Peace, Reliability
Purple: Royalty, Imagination, Luxury, Romance

These, of course, are gross generalizations about color emotion purely based on hue. For example, a light baby blue conveys a different connotation than a rich, royal blue might. 

Everyone reacts to colors differently, and tint, shade, and saturation matter.

In addition to sticking to your branding colors, consider introducing another color that is reserved for the actions you want visitors to take on your pages. You can use a tool like Palleton or the Canva color wheel to discover a color that works well with your established color set—or work with an experienced designer. Once you choose the new color, apply it to the graphics that relate directly to your website’s primary goal. Doing so will focus attention on call-to-action buttons, downloads, forms, phone numbers, and anything else you want to highlight. Sure, you could stick to your brand and use a muted brown color on your buttons, but it might have a detrimental effect on your click rates.

Particularly when working with text over images, you’ll also want to make sure that you’re maximizing contrast to also maximize readability.

Download the 21 Tips PDF Report Here

Make Your USP Front and Center

When you ask a business owner what sets them apart from their competitors, what do you think they’ll say? I’ll bet you can guess at least one of their answers, no matter the vertical: Quality, Experience, Customer Service. Your unique selling proposition (USP)—also referred to as unique selling point or unique value proposition (UVP)—is what makes you, your company, and your products and service offerings stand out from the rest. It details why people should hire you as opposed to your competitors and is typically included in your “elevator speech.”

There’s a saying in marketing that “different is better than better.” This is likely derived from studies of our brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS is the part of your brain that connects four of your five senses (hearing, sight, touch, and taste) to your consciousness. It acts as the gatekeeper and is solely responsible for whether a sound, message, image,  sensation, or taste enters your conscious mind. It determines, for example, what you hear and what you don’t hear. Sit in a room with a fan running, and eventually, you won’t register it. Overhear someone mention your name or something you’re interested in, and your ears will perk up. The RAS also affects individual perception, which is why eyewitnesses can be unreliable—their brains construct their own perception of the incident in question.

That boundary between your conscious and unconscious mind—the one that your RAS controls access to—is referred to as the limen threshold. If you’re able to cross it with your sound, message, image, sensation, or taste, the person becomes conscious of it. If you do not exceed the limen threshold, your message is sub-limen (or subliminal). 

The marketing messages that have the best chance of crossing the limen threshold are:

• Those that address something your potential client values
• Things that are unique to your potential client
• Things that your potential client finds threatening 

Combine those three for the most effective marketing message— find what your client values, explain why you are uniquely qualified to deliver it, and remind the client of what could happen if they don’t work with an attorney (or something else slightly threatening). You’ll be sure to stick in the minds of the client much better than if you only talk about your ‘experience.’ Take your USP and display it front and center. Why? Because you only have one chance to make a first impression. Potential customers are searching the web looking for an attorney, and your best shot at sticking out in their minds is to be different, not just ‘better.’

FAQs 

As you are likely aware, people have become increasingly dependent on their smartphones. At any given moment, the world’s information is at your fingertips. So, it’s only natural that in a situation where you need information or assistance, you’ll rely on your smartphone in that moment. If you see a leak under your sink, you might grab your phone and ask Google “how to fix a sink leak.” If you’re hungry and have a craving for Mediterranean food, you might grab your phone and ask Google, “where can I get Mediterranean food near me?” And if you were in a car accident, you might grab your phone and ask Google “what to do if I’ve been in a car accident.” 

"...if you answer a person’s question in that moment, there’s a good chance you’ve gained a new client."

These moments are referred to as micro-moments by Google. In a moment of need, we rely on our smartphones to answer the who, what, where, when, why, and how questions of everyday life. We’re particularly likely to use our smartphones when we’re caught off guard or when something urgent comes up.

Ben Polk of Google joined Foster Web Marketing for a webinar discussing micro-moments in more detail:

 

Furthermore, during these micro-moments, searchers often ask questions using voice search instead of typing text-based searches into their devices. Voice search is just easier sometimes, right? That’s especially true when you’re in the middle of something. In fact, voice search represents about 10 percent of all search volume, and we expect that number to rise. 

So, how can you make the most of this as an attorney? Be the one to answer people’s micro-moment questions. You’ll be missing out on a lot of search volume if you’re just trying to get people who type in “criminal defense lawyer.” Yes, you should target that keyword, of course, but you should also go after questions like, “what are the punishments for DUI,” “what to do about a false rape allegation,” or “who is the best violent crimes attorney near me.” Following our earlier tip about making each page about one keyword, you should create an FAQ page dedicated to each question a potential client might ask. That way, when someone asks Google a question, you have a chance at coming up in the search result—especially if you offer an extensive, high quality answer. And if you answer a person’s question in that moment, there’s a good chance you’ve gained a new client.

Wondering how to find out what questions people are asking? Use tools like Serpstat and AnswerThePublic and start with a practice area keyword—they’ll provide you with popular questions being asked around your practice area. You can also keep track of some of the common questions you get while speaking with your clients and turn some of them into content for your website. 

Attorney and Staff Profiles

While you might not guess it without looking at your Analytics, attorney bio pages are typically the 2nd or 3rd most-visited pages on your website at any given time. With so many great attorney leads coming from word of mouth and referrals, it’s only natural that a recommendation will come along with the name of a specific attorney. “Work with Lisa; she did a great job for me.”

Attorney profiles are your chance to solidify (and potentially exceed) what people have already heard about you and your team. And don’t be shy; list all of your accomplishments on the page. Attorney bios are another great spot to display the badges, accolades, and awards that we discussed earlier. They’re also a great way to assure the people who haven’t already heard of you—and are doing their homework on your website—that you are a trustworthy and experienced attorney.

Don’t hide your paralegals and staff, either. If people hire you, they’ll be working with them, too! If you hide your team, you’re giving up the opportunity to show even more smiling faces to your potential clients. And if the potential client reaches out to you via social media messaging, Google My Business messaging, chat, or phone, they will probably appreciate being able to put a name to a face—knowing they’re talking with a real, friendly human being!

Mobile User Experience

You may not realize it, but more people browse the web on their smartphones than their desktop computers. That means the majority of people who see your website see it on their phone. This can be easy to forget when you only see your website while sitting at work on your desktop or laptop.

Back on April 21, 2015, Google started favoring sites that looked great on mobile devices. Many in the marketing and SEO realms referred to that specific day as “Mobilegeddon.” Can you believe there are still sites out there that don’t even work on a mobile phone, let alone look great? Now, a little over five years later, Google is going to be switching entirely to mobile-first indexing—it starts in September of 2020. So, the time to get your site running perfectly on phones is now.

"Google does not suggest creating a separate mobile website..."

Some CMS software handles all or most of making your site mobile friendly. If you’re one of the unlucky ones that has to do it yourself, it may not be easy to get right. It’s more than just installing a WordPress AMP plugin on your site or making it look ‘decent’ on mobile devices. You need to interact with your site on a variety of phones and devices to make sure it is easily navigated and interacted with. Wouldn’t you hate to lose a lead because of something like your site not looking great on a person’s tablet?

In addition to the Core Web Vitals we discussed above, Google actually has a set of design and user experience principles that your website will ideally adhere to. For instance, there is a minimum size that buttons should be so that people can touch them with their fingertips. If your buttons are smaller than the minimum, people will struggle to press them. 

Also, it’s important to note that Google does not suggest creating a separate mobile website, such as an “m.website.com” subdomain. Doing so can create several issues for the Googlebot as well as confusion for your human website visitors.

Google offers a number of tools to help see how your website stacks up. Try the Pagespeed Insights tool, Think with Google Test My Site tool, or the Google Mobile-Friendly Test to help you (or your web team) get started on sorting out any potential issues.  

Use Structured Data Markup

Web designers and developers can use something called Schema—structured data markup or machine-readable data—to help Google better understand the content of their website. 

Structured data is data intended for bots, search engines, and machines, while unstructured data is data intended for humans. If Google arrives at your website and doesn’t see any structured data, it will do its best to turn your unstructured data into structured data. But what if it gets something wrong? It’s best not to take chances—and also to make the Googlebot’s job a little easier.

For attorneys, you’d want to (at a minimum) employ this structured data markup to tell Google that you’re a law firm and that the people featured on your website are attorneys. There’s also a question and answer Schema that can be wrapped around brief FAQs, a how-to Schema that can be wrapped around a step-by-step how-to process, and several other Schemas you may be able to take advantage of for your firm.

There are also some Schemas that make your website a little more SEO friendly; well-written Schemas can positively modify your search engine result by making it larger and more prominent. For example, take the FAQ Schema mentioned above. If Google finds questions and answers on your page related to a person’s query, they’ll display them mixed right in with your search result—which makes it very prominent!

You’ll likely need to work with your developer to install this sort of thing, but it’s worth it to give you the extra edge next year.

Don’t Ignore Typically Ignored Pages

Too often, businesses will forget about certain pages of their site, choosing instead to concentrate mainly on the important pages like the homepage and practice area pages. Remember how earlier we discussed the idea that people can enter your site just about anywhere? They can even enter your site on a page that doesn’t exist at all! And in that example, your site displays what is called a 404 page. Go ahead and try it—go to one of your pages, then misspell the URL at the top intentionally. That’s your 404 page, and you may be surprised to learn how many people see it. Why not turn it into something handy, like a sitemap that will help people find what they’re looking for?

"Why would you just let that person leave? Show them what else you have to offer."

Perhaps the worst page to ignore is your “thank you” page. When someone fills out a form on your website, they should be taken to this page (if you don’t have it set up this way already, we highly recommend you add a thank you page). Think about it—the thank you page is the strongest possible signal you can get from a website visitor that they are interested in your brand or services. Why would you just let that person leave? Show them what else you have to offer. If they downloaded an e-book, use the thank you page to pitch them on hiring you to help with their legal challenges. If they completed a general contact form, show them success stories or case studies on the thank you page, so they feel even better about their decision to contact you. If they signed up for your newsletter, show them some examples of things they missed out on.

Another page we commonly see ignored (but it’s one of the most important) is the contact page. Many people think that if a website visitor makes it to the contact page, they are probably going to fill it out or otherwise contact the firm. Nothing could be further from the truth. If someone has decided to go to your contact page, that’s a great sign—but it’s not a guarantee. This is why your contact page should be absolutely teeming with reassuring content such as badges, images, testimonials, and reviews to help people take that final step of reaching out to you.

Connect a CRM

A customer relationship management (CRM) system allows you to have a safe place to store all of your contacts for later communications. If you go live with a new website and don’t have a CRM connected to it, then where are your leads going to go when they fill out your forms? Nowhere. Sure, you’ll likely get an email notification, but why risk leads ‘falling through the cracks’ or ‘getting lost in the mix.’ 

A CRM that’s built into your website would be best; that way, you aren’t switching between different websites and software, and you can contact a single company if you need assistance. Connecting a CRM to a separate website (using APIs, etc.) can get very sticky and very expensive. Any time one company makes a change to their system, your API connection might break—and it takes money to get it fixed. Some people choose not to connect their systems, and instead, manually input leads from the website into their CRM. But issues with contact delays aside—wouldn’t your time be better spent elsewhere?

Also, it turns out that in the digital world, where we can’t see each other or shake hands, one of the primary determinations of trust comes from response time. Prior to the online age, people who did business with each other could shake hands, speak, make eye contact, and gauge emotional expressions, voice inflections, facial clues, dress style, and body language—a level of trust could be determined based purely on that. Most of this trust derives from our primitive “lizard brain” or limbic system, which is responsible for fight, flight, feeding, fear, and mating. As humans, we can determine pretty quickly whether we want to fight something, run from something, eat something, or mate with something. 

So now that many business dealings are done online, potentially 100% through Zoom or another online conferencing service, how do we know if a person or business can be trusted, or if we should run away? Many people, including Dr. Judy Olson at the University of California, believe that the speed at which you receive a reply is a key trust factor. For this reason, prompt followup—autoresponder emails sent from your CRM, staying on top of your leads, and calling an interested party—are more important than ever. Think about it. When you fill out an online form, when do you expect to receive an email? Immediately. Many people, if they don’t hear back quickly, will simply find another provider.

Some CRMs even provide the capability to set up drip campaigns and other marketing automation tasks. A drip campaign will continue to reach out to your prospects for days, weeks, or months after they contact you in an effort to nurture them and keep them engaged with your brand. Marketing automation takes that a step further by including additional features, like tasking your team with calling prospects, reminders, scheduling, tagging, and more.

Liked those tips, and want more?

Download a free copy of these 21Top Law Firm Web Design Tips, and get 5 additional bonus tips!