When making a website, you want to make sure that you have a unique enough identity that you do not run together. However, it cannot be denied that there are certain structures, layouts, and designs that are common and that the reason for this is that they simply work out pretty well. So while you want to make sure your identity shines, there is a certain checklist for your law firm website that you should follow in order to help make your website as competitive as it possibly can be.
The things that every law firm needs on their website
A great first thing to have to give your law firm air of reputability is to feature various key employees on the website, complete with photos where possible, their accomplishments, a description of their education and experience in their career, and perhaps even a bit to give an idea of the kind of person they are beyond said career. By doing this, potential clients may feel more comfortable with your law firm, as the presence of lawyers on your team with these profiles and photos can help to humanize your law firm and allow these people to relate to you more easily. Having people that can be looked upon on the Internet is also good for their peace of mind, as they can see how good the lawyers truly are based on examples that are documented on the Internet. You should also have a profile on the law firm itself, talking about the area as well as the history of your law firm.
Another valuable webpage for your site is a page containing testimonials. It is helpful to try to talk up your own law firm to an extent, but in the grand scheme of things, people are going to expect a lawyer to talk up their business. What is going to help the most is to collect information from satisfied clients, who can speak to their experience. The more detailed, the better, and you should also make sure that each testimonial feels unique. Sure, they can all talk about how good your law firm is, but perhaps one could speak of how personable your law firm’s lawyers were, while another could speak to how efficient and effective your law firm was in getting their issues sorted. And of course, make sure you have a comprehensive Contact Us page, as if you do not have a way for them to reach you, that may create a problem for getting business.
Next, having pages that provide useful information that may be relevant to the readers is a good way to attract people who may have some need in the services of a law firm to discover you through a search relating to that. For example, if yours is a personal injury law firm, a blog post about how to secure your property from potential slip and fall hazards may attract people who have an interest both in those preventative measures and the services of a personal injury law firm.
Images are an important thing for a website, and you should try to focus on both legibility and a professional veneer. If the people and locations you are going to have photos of do not already have quality photos available for them, consider hiring an agency to take photographs. Another angle that you need to consider, however, is that you also do not want to go too far with the number of images available. No matter how fast your Internet connection may be, not everyone is going to have the best of connections, and you need to account for that possibility.
Slow loading times on a website are one of the most frustrating things a visitor to that website will have to deal with, and more impatient visitors are going to view the load times as too great a barrier to clear in order to procure your services. It is even worse for mobile viewers, so make sure that you use appealing images, but do so in moderation, particularly for those mobile viewers in mind. It is a nice balance between too few that it makes your website seem too clinical, and too many that it creates distracting obstacles for them to clear. Speaking of mobile, make sure that your website has a mobile version, as if it does not, mobile viewers will be even less likely to click through to other pages on your website.
For all the specific features that a website should have, one thing is truly important: having a custom design tailored to a law firm’s needs. There needs to be more than just the barest of templates to your website, as no one is going to find it very interesting to see the same website design that they have seen in so many other websites that they have passed up already. By having a custom design created especially for your law firm’s needs by a quality website design, you will not only be able to create a unique identity to help it stand out more, but you will be able to tweak the design more easily in such a way to fit your needs and desires.
