Your Guide To
Website Design for Law Firms
Question:
What makes a great law firm website?
Answer:
It's fast and looks great on all devices, while attracting and engaging visitors, turning them into enquiries.
Works on Mobile
Tonnes of Free Traffic
More Enquiries
Some of the legal websites we made
Accident & injury law website design
Complete design refresh, we gave NH-law.co.uk a redesign, changing the structure of the site and creating better landing pages that rank in Google and convert visitors into enquiries.
See a law firm SEO case study
Multi-service legal website design
Faster loading, higher converting and better looking. We took back control of this website from another developer, gave full ownership to the client and continued to work with them on a marketing strategy that saw traffic increases year on year of over 50% and enquiries increase by over 123%.
Website design for commercial lawyer
By moving this website to the Wordpress content management system and creating a faster experience for visitors, complete with new branding, we helped Crest Legal increase website traffic by over 460% year on year.
See crestlegal.com
Employment law and HR consultant website design
We moved this one from a DIY website builder to a more professional design and branding experience on Wordpress. It loads quickly, is a rich media experience with lots of video and has a resource centre for users to sign in and access HR guides and templates.
Employment law firm website design
We created a variety of different web page templates to attract and engage businesses to this employment law firm website. The client has full access to make changes via a content management system and we've added tracking to prove that it works!
See RaynerJones.uk
Some of our existing clients
It's been amazing. Might have to employ a first response admin staff to take instructions at this rate!
We’ve worked with Jonny on out legal marketing for over 8 years, during which time he’s been on hand to give technical and strategic advice when needed, as well as helping to drive measurable results across a range of digital channels.
We have been working with Inbound for 3 years now. Jonny is a pleasure to work with. He responds quickly to any requests and engages with us with the same enthusiasm 3 years later as he did in the beginning, which is really refreshing. I highly recommend Inbound Things.
What you get
Some website designers for law firms create website templates that look good. That's where it stops.
When we design websites for law firms, we design sales machines that generate enquiries month after month, for the long haul.
What you'll get with your website project
Start your law firm website design
Whether you need a refresh or a complete overhaul, we can start with an audit or a completely blank slate and put your website on the path to generating loads more enquiries.
Get in touch. You can tell us what you're looking for and what problems you're having. We're confident we can make things better.
We'll arrange a FREE consultation call to run through everything - finalise your requirements and show you what we can expect from working together.
We'll agree costs with no hidden fees or long contracts.
Our 9 laws for law firm website design
1. Ask "Who is it for?"
Before you get started you need to think about who your website is for.
The reason for doing this to make a great first impression by providing immediate value to the people who visit your website. The more value you provide, the more likely they are to go on and make an enquiry.
2. Make it mobile
Making sure you have a mobile version of your website is no longer optional.
Over 60% of visitors to all of our legal clients’ websites are from mobile devices. Google also puts a big emphasis on mobile usability and in 2021, switched to mobile first indexing. This means that it takes very little notice of how your site behaves on desktop and it's all about how well it performs on mobile. Here are some top tips.
- Design for fat fingers.
- Make sure pages load quickly.
- Have clear signpost so users can find content and get back to where they came from.
- Start with your most important content first hint this is usually that that's most valuable to the website visitor.
3. Make it fast
If your website takes an age to load then users will not only be put off and go somewhere else, but Google will also be less likely to rank your website in search engine results pages.
Images with large file sizes and videos can slow your website down dramatically you should make sure that they are optimised.
The addition of lots of scripts can also affect how quickly your website loads. These maybe style Script so they maybe Marketing Code and scripts but you can do a test using the Google page insights speed tool.
4. Make it useful
What do you want to say to people when they first land on your website and interact with your content?
What you shouldn't do is start talking about yourself, because the reality is that every law firm locally, is also local, experienced and helpful. They're all telling customers that they do things differently.
What does any of this mean in reality?
How about providing clear, expert advice and solutions to your website visitors' legal issues?
The sooner you let them know that they're in the right place and demonstrate that you can add value, the more likely they are to make an enquiry.
5. Make it trustworthy
The internet is full of businesses whose websites just tell people what they do and how they do it.
They very rarely focus on the “why?".
Why you provide leading legal advice is an important point and can be addressed in a number of ways. The most effective of which is case studies.
This isn't just anonymous sentences saying “great job guys”, it's a series of stories that tell people who visit your website how you helped people like them. Identify the problem and then demonstrates the steps you took through to the positive outcome.
And you can provide this in snippets across various service pages for example:
- How many successful cases have you had in the past year?
- How many families have you helped?
- How many businesses have you worked with?
- How much compensation have you helped clients recover?
Your case studies and testimonials should reflect what you want your brand to be. For example if you provide personal customer service to clients, who are able to talk directly with a solicitor and they should be implied through any reviews that you have.
6. Make sure you own it
You should have full access to your content management system. The number of clients that we've worked with who have a website but have no access to edit every single part of it, is crazy.
Whether it be a simple change to a heading on the homepage or the creation of an entirely new page or blog entry, lots of law firms pay for a website that they don't own.
There are probably a few reasons for this, not least the fact that the web developer wants to charge you every time you need to make a change to your site.
In reality, you should be able to log in at any stage and make changes as required.
You should have full access to your hosting account, as well as your domain registrar, so that if you need to move providers it is all straightforward, rather than having to rely on people to get back to you and make any changes.
7. Be yourself
Show your expertise, authority and personality.
You have to back yourself. After all, you provide a great service, right?
So be authentic and make sure your website reflects who you are as an individual, as a team and as a firm. Perhpaps your partners and your senior members of staff share the same values as you? This should be reflected on the website. It can be manifested through personal videos, individual opinions and comments on various services throughout the site as well as the general tone.
Isn’t there a massive market for a law firm that just uses plain English as opposed to legalese?
The technical lawyer speak can come when you're actually working on a legal case, but remember for now, in 99% of instances, you are communicating with people who have nowhere near the legal expertise that you do and that's why they rely on you for help.
8. Do your research
Your law firm's website should be based on data and audience analysis as opposed to just the fact that you like the colours and the layout.
What is it that visitors to your homepage, service pages and blogs are expecting and how can you provide that in a time-efficient way across multiple devices?
If your website has some history to it, there's a good chance that you are sat on a Goldmine of data.
You can use Google Search console to see which search terms your website is already ranking for and tailor your website content to make it specific for these search terms.
This data can also give you a steer in terms of how to structure your site.
You can use Google Analytics to see how many visitors you get to certain pages on your site. This is a great indication as to which content people are looking for.
If you have a search box, you can review what people are searching for on your website. This could range from key information on certain legal sectors to how do I contact you.
Your research can also extend to to your competitors.
If you don't know who you your competitors are, you can do a quick Google search for local solicitors in your area and see who comes up:
- What do you like about their website?
- How does it look on mobile?
- What key information do they lead with?
- How is their website structured?
- What can you do better than them?
There are also some great tools to look at what their website trying to rank for in Google.
See more of this in SEO for solicitors.
9. Measure
Your website is a marketing channel, so you should be able to measure everything. But, more importantly you should measure what you need to.
The most important thing is understanding how people arrive on your website and what they do when they are there, including how many of them go on to call and enquire as a result of your marketing efforts.
Some key measurements that we encourage law firm websites to use via Google Analytics include:
- Website traffic (number of visits)
- Source of website traffic
- Bounce rates
- Average time on page
- Calls
- Enquiry forms filled in
It's about putting the user at the centre of your website experience. You, your partner and your friends might think your website looks good or bad but the reality is it doesn't matter.
It matters whether people are finding it, engaging with it and making enquiries through it.
A conversion focused website is part of your overall marketing strategy so you need to invest in. You're sending traffic from various digital marketing channels, particularly SEO and once they are there, you want them to make an enquiry.
Your law firm website is your online brochure, but more importantly it can act as your most important sales person.
Without a website you're missing out on trust (people will google you to find information and reviews) as well as potential enquiries from people who have never heard of you but searched for a legal specialist.
Having a website for your law firm allows you to build your brand, get in front of potential clients, engage them and then generate enquiries for your legal services.
When done properly, your website can be the hub of your marketing activity.
We create law firm websites that are part of a marketing strategy. For example it goes beyond just looking nice and saying what you think it should say. A good legal website is one that puts the audience first and is optimised for attracting clients, engaging them and then converting them into enquiries.
Factors that make a great legal website, range from it being mobile optimised and fast, to conversion focused with an SEO content strategy.
A law firm website can be designed and created in a couple of hours.
The big question is how prepared you are to iterate and make changes as you go along. The website does not need to be perfect before “go live”. It needs to start doing its job, which is to generate enquiries.
From there you can use the data that you get about your website visitors to make the best marketing decisions and improve your website every day, week and month.