In today\u2019s digital age, a beautiful and effective law firm website is crucial for presenting your practice in its most favourable light. So how can you best assess if your firm\u2019s website is attractive and truly user-friendly?<\/p>\n
Luckily, you don\u2019t need to be a web developer to end up with an impressive law firm website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whether you\u2019re building an absolutely new law firm website or altering your existing one, answering the following questions will help you take your law firm\u2019s web marketing<\/a> to the next level.<\/p>\n There are few things more frustrating than having to search a website for contact information. And if you need legal help, you might already be in a poor emotional state. Making it easy for a prospective client to find what they need at a difficult time could mean the difference between winning their business and losing them to a competitor.<\/p>\n Make your contact information prominent (and accurate), and give visitors multiple ways to reach you\u2014such as an email address, phone number, and social media profiles (be sure to check that your law firm\u2019s online reputation<\/a> is positive)\u2014to eliminate any barriers.<\/p>\n The easiest mistake to make in web design is to build a website that does not serve your users.<\/p>\n Think critically about who you want to attract to your website, and ultimately, your practice. If you have an existing website, look through your site analytics to find out who is using your website and how\u2014making data-driven decisions is the best way to improve your website\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n Note: If you have no idea what we\u2019re talking about when we say \u201csite analytics,\u201d use this handy guide<\/a> to learn the basics of Google Analytics for your website.<\/em><\/p>\n Ask yourself the following questions:<\/p>\n It\u2019s likely that you already know quite a bit about what your potential clients look like. Consider their backgrounds, where they live, how they found you, and how they prefer to communicate with you. Knowing who these people are, and as much about their circumstances as possible, will help you to communicate with them.<\/p>\n Tech-savvy millennials, for example, are in the habit of accessing information on demand, so it will be particularly important to ensure your website is top-notch in terms of design and usability when accessing on a mobile device to meet their high standards.<\/p>\n There are plenty of sources for information. Let\u2019s take the example of a family law practice that focuses on divorce. According to the Office for National Statistics, the divorce rate in 2015<\/a> among opposite sex couples was highest among both men and women aged 40 to 44. Knowing this information would help frame how you appeal to this audience with your website.<\/p>\n Now you\u2019ve collected plenty of information about your typical clients\u2014but people are more than aggregated statistics. Once you have a good understanding of the demographics of your clientele, you\u2019ll need to put yourself in their shoes\u2014specifically when they\u2019ll be using your website. This will give you a good idea of how their state of mind might affect how they use your site.<\/p>\n If someone feels they have been wrongfully dismissed from their job, for example, they may feel frustrated, hurt, and angry, and they will likely be looking for immediate help. When this person visits their potential lawyer\u2019s website, they will want immediate assurance that you\u2019ve dealt with similar cases before.<\/p>\n Consider a young person who is about to purchase their first home. They are likely excited, but also nervous about correctly handling such a large transaction. They might take more time to compare different property lawyer\u2019s websites. Providing upfront information\u2014such as a checklist for buying a home, for example\u2014could help establish trust. That checklist could ultimately be the reason this young person chooses you to complete their purchase.<\/p>\n For this exercise, it can be helpful to create user personas,\u00a0or fictional representations of your typical clients, complete with names and backstories. It is common to create more than one persona to represent the multiple services you offer, or variations endemic to your area of practice. For example, divorce clients will have different priorities, depending on whether or not they have children.<\/p>\n You website is a powerful marketing tool\u2014but with that great power, it also carries an important responsibility for transparency to the public. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)\u2019s price transparency guidelines<\/a>, which came into effect in December of 2018, oblige law firms to meet specific requirements for publishing prices for legal services (for certain types of law).<\/p>\n While any evaluation or plan for your UK law firm website should include a thorough review of the SRA guidelines<\/a> to understand your firm\u2019s specific obligations, the essentials include:<\/p>\n Headers may make text appear bigger on a page, but they also do much more than that. Using header tags in your HTML<\/a> signals the significance of the information in and below the heading and creates a content hierarchy.<\/p>\n Think of it like the table of contents in a textbook\u2014if you appropriately label the book title, section titles, and the chapter titles, it makes finding the information you want simple. But, if you give equal weight to every title, it becomes a mess.<\/p>\n Aside from categorising information visually, proper headings are critical for two other reasons: 1. They\u2019re good for SEO. 2. They\u2019re key for accessibility.<\/p>\n When you use heading tags appropriately, search engines like Google or Bing use that information to indicate what each page of your website is about, and when to display it in search results. When it comes to accessibility, screen readers\u2014used by people with a variety of disabilities including low vision\u2014rely on header information to navigate between sections of websites.<\/p>\n In November 2016, mobile and tablet use of the web exceeded desktop use<\/a> for the first time in history. Even if your own website statistics show that you have more users on desktop, Google uses mobile-friendliness as one of the signals for ranking in search results on any platform. So,\u00a0 even if your clients prefer a desktop experience, improving the way your site appears on a mobile device will help everyone find you.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an example of how your law firm website might look on mobile:<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\n Because screen sizes are much smaller for mobile devices, your content will need to follow a logical flow of topics and organisation. You\u2019ll also need to ensure your images scale to a much smaller presentation.<\/p>\n It can be overwhelming when you\u2019re trying to consider all of the elements of web design\u2014including SEO, accessibility, design and web best practices, and voice and tone. However, one essential point should guide you through everything\u2014whenever you are making a decision about your website, ask yourself: Is it making my website more helpful?<\/p>\n Since you\u2019ve laboured to understand who is using your website, apply that lens to your question.<\/p>\n Should you include a link to counselling service in your blog post about surviving divorce? Someone reading that post is likely looking for support, so yes. Should that same link appear as the first option on your contact page? Probably not, because while it may be helpful in a different spot, someone looking at your contact page is trying to accomplish the task of contacting you\u2014anything that distracts from that task is not helpful.<\/p>\n Smartphones are almost ubiquitous, with 95% of households in the UK<\/a> now owning mobile phones\u2014which in many cases also means, by extension, a camera.<\/p>\n However, while smartphone cameras take surprisingly high quality photos, it doesn\u2019t mean you should use them on your website. Be critical about the photos you use\u2014they should be of high quality, and should reflect the brand you\u2019re trying to build. Leave the beach photo from your last vacation for Facebook, and consider getting professional headshots taken for your site.<\/p>\n Also, there\u2019s a lesser known but just as important consideration when it comes to photos: their size. Consider that you\u2019ll want your website to have higher quality photos, which in turn average a higher cost for users loading photos across a mobile network; any images that are unnecessary or that do not add value to your website could be costing your potential clients money by way of increased mobile data usage.<\/p>\n Images are also slowing down your website, which could be costing you clients. According to Google, if a page takes longer than three seconds to load<\/a> on a mobile device, 53% of people will abandon trying to see that website. Here\u2019s the problem: The average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds<\/a> over 3G.<\/p>\n Translation? If you can keep your site loading quickly on mobile, mobile users will see your site. If you don\u2019t, they won\u2019t wait for you.<\/p>\n Keep your images as small as possible without sacrificing quality. There are many image optimisation choices out there, but it\u2019s best to start simple: Upload images that are only as big as they need to be, and downgrade the image quality to the lowest you can get away with without noticing the change. It will take some testing to find the optimal size and quality of images for your site, but many options like TinyPNG<\/a> help you optimise your images.<\/p>\n Accessibility comes in many forms, and having an accessible website is essential for connecting with potential clients. There are technical ways to make your website accessible<\/a> to people with low vision who may be using screen readers, or to people with mobility concerns who may be using alternatives to a mouse. You can also make certain design choices, such as contrast checking<\/a> the colour of your text versus the background of a page, or taking colours into consideration for those who are colour-blind.<\/p>\n There are many tools you can use to evaluate your website for accessibility, but a good place to start is to turn off the styling for your website. This will leave mainly text behind, so you\u2019ll easily see whether or not you\u2019ve ordered the information on your site correctly.<\/p>\n If you are comfortable with the code of your website, you can test this by simply removing the link to your CSS file. If you don\u2019t know what that means, try an extension like disable-html<\/a>, which will let you turn off different parts of your site\u2019s code and refresh to see what\u2019s left behind. Here\u2019s an example:<\/p>\n With Styling:<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\n Without Styling:<\/p>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\n If you try this with your website, check to see if the headings are reasonable, and if any information has disappeared completely. You might have text included in images that doesn\u2019t appear anywhere else\u2014a definite no for accessible websites.<\/p>\n Your website is a reflection of your brand. Broken links are like digital typos, so make sure you test them when you add them to your site. You should also test your links on a regular basis, as pages are deleted or renamed all the time.<\/p>\n While you\u2019re at it, do a traditional spelling and grammar check as well.<\/p>\n What action do you want someone to take when they visit your website? Do you want them to contact you, read about your services, or learn more about a particular subject?<\/p>\n1. Is your contact information prominent?<\/h3>\n
2. Have you considered your users?<\/h3>\n
Who is my typical client?<\/h5>\n
What is their state of mind?<\/h5>\n
3. Is your website SRA compliant?<\/h3>\n
\n
4. Are you using headers appropriately?<\/h3>\n
5. Can you use your website on a mobile device?<\/h3>\n
6. Is your website helpful?<\/h3>\n
7. How useful are your images?<\/h3>\n
8. Is your website accessible?<\/h3>\n
9. Have you tested your links?<\/h3>\n
10. Are your calls to action clear?<\/h3>\n