Some Quick Law Firm Web Design Tips

Gyi Tsakalakis
June 27, 2012

If you don't have the time to click-through 26 slides, here's the tl;dr version:

  • What makes you different from other lawyers?
  • Why should someone choose you over your competition?
  • Don’t market yourself as the person you’d like to be! Market yourself as the person that you are.
  • Who Are They?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • Who are you trying to attract to your website?
  • What Are They Looking For?
  • What emotions are you trying to evoke from your visitors?
  • How do you solve fear?
  • How do you build trust?
  • Good law firm websites identify prospective clients’ fears, communicate how the lawyers are uniquely equipped to help solve these fear issues and inspire trust.
  • Writing is a skill that takes time to develop. Writing for the web is different than writing inother media.
  • No Stock Legal Web Images.
  • What sorts of actions do you want your visitors to take?
  • Choosing a domain for your law firm website should take into account the marketing objectives of your firm.
  • While there are very affordable hosting options available, economy hosting plans can limit your access to certain functions and also your site’s performance with visitors.
  • Consider search early in the design process.
  • Plan the layout for all your pages in advance.

Many lawyers have this "gut instinct" that they need to have a website (or they were told by a website designer that they need one). I'm not going to debate whether or not you "need" to have an online presence here. You can waste someone else's time waxing prophetically about whether this internet thing is a fad and whether it has any practical applications for your firm.

If you have decided to launch a new website, blog or any other online profile, you will be well-served spending some time brainstorming and planning.

From what I've seen, lawyers, or their in-house marketing folks, have a tendency to rush into chucking something against the internet wall to see what sticks.

I know, lawyers don't have time for lunch, let alone, to be intimately involved in the design and development of their firm's online marketing assets. And that is likely, at least in part, the reason that so many websites just don't do what they're supposed to do.

I also think that there are many do-it-yourself legal websites that look, well, like do-it-yourself websites (mine included). And that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on who your audiences are and what messages you're trying to communicate.

Once you accept the premise that people are going to look you up online, and that what they see when they find you matters to some degree as to whether they decide to call you, it's worth spending a little more time actually thinking about what you're going to show them. And perhaps, even making some minimal investments in putting something forward that demonstrates that you might just be a good candidate to handle their legal matter.

Unless you have technical, marketing, design and writing skills, you probably ought to consider getting some assistance.

You simply can't count the number of potential clients that you lose that didn't contact you because of something they found (or didn't find) out about you online.

Gyi Tsakalakis
Co-Founder of AttorneySync
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Let's Discuss Your Growth

Helping law firms grow profitably with digital marketing and can prove it.

Barry Conybeare

We are so impressed with AttorneySync and their digital marketing services. We started with an audit of our digital presence and hired them thereafter. Fixes to the website and other platforms quickly followed and we have seen a substantial increase in online traffic, new client calls, and new client contracts. Strongly recommend AttorneySync!

Let's Talk

How can we help?

More From Our Blog

June 8, 2023
On Local Law Firm SEO Rank Tracking and Reporting

Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]

Read More
June 7, 2023
On Attribution

John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]

Read More
March 22, 2023
I asked ChatGPT to Recommend a Personal Injury Law Firm

I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]

Read More
February 17, 2023
My Take on Google Search's Guidance on AI-Generated Content & Law Firm SEO

If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]

Read More
February 16, 2023
Google Adds New SEO Best Practices for Links

If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]

Read More
February 1, 2023
Authenticity & Engagement

The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]

Read More
January 19, 2023
ChatGPT for Legal Marketing

The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]

Read More
May 26, 2022
SEO Expectations for Law Firms

How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]

Read More
May 6, 2022
Who Should Do Marketing?

And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]

Read More

Let's Discuss

Questions or comments? Let's discuss on social!
envelope
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram