Website Design For Law Firm: 5 Features For Quality Websites

Why is website design for law firms such an important topic? It’s because your website is the foundation for your online marketing success. 

How your physical and online office looks matters a great deal. Most prospects won’t contact a brand or law firm with a poorly designed website. 

Unfortunately, when a prospect lands on your website, you won’t be there to convince them to choose your law firm instead of your competitors. They will make up their minds after navigating your website, evaluating your content, testimonials, achievements and others. 

If potential clients like what they see, they will proceed to the next stage, which is to contact you and hire you. 

Here, we’ll discuss how a bad website can impact your business, as well as website design best practices. Read on! 

Why Is Quality Website Design For Law Firm Important? 

You can ask this question in diverse ways. For instance, you can say, “Why does a law firm need a website? Or, how does a quality website impact a law firm positively? These are all the same questions, as you can see.

Asking why a law firm needs a quality website is like asking why a law firm needs a physical office with quality designs. Your physical office’s design doesn’t need to look extremely catchy to appeal to potential clients. Clients expect your office to look professional. 

However, we’re talking about website design. So, here are reasons your law firm requires a quality website. 

1. Helps your law firm create a good first impression:

Visitors will always rate your website. It will happen whether they know you from somewhere or not. 

It takes as little as 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for visitors to form an opinion about your website. So, you can see why having a quality website and creating a good first impression matters. 

The quality of your law firm’s website will determine whether visitors will stick around or leave. It will determine if visitors will contact you or go for your competitors. It will also determine whether prospects will be confident enough to patronize or recommend you to others. 

So, build a website that will create a good first impression for your law firm. It should be hard for visitors to leave your site whenever they get in. 

2. Convince prospects that you’re a professional:

As the legal market is highly competitive, so are prospects choosy. People want the best lawyers on their case, so every law firm should expect some level of scrutiny from prospects. 

Prospects will judge how professional you are via the quality of your website. They will judge your website before even consuming your content. 

If your website looks tidy and simple to navigate, you’ll likely get a positive review from prospects. Even if they don’t say it to you, the fact that they have established contact is an indication that they are convinced. 

Think of your website as your physical office. There are files littered everywhere, and the seats are wrongly arranged. In short, the office is upside down, with dirt and chairs improperly arranged. 

How will visitors feel when they enter such an office? Will they want to stay? Will they take you seriously? Will the visitors see you as a professional? We all know what the answer is. 

So put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. View your website through the lenses of your visitors. If you don’t like your website or a section of your website, expect your visitors to react in the same manner.

Build a professional-looking website for your law firm. Make it clean and well-organized. Your website should be a breeze to navigate, too. 

3. Help boost search engine ranking:

Every law firm’s major goal is to see its websites at the top of the search engines. Ranking high in search engines for target keywords can improve a law firm’s organic traffic and revenue generation potential. 

How will a high-quality website help your law firm rank high in search engines? Firstly, Google doesn’t consider how much you invested in your website when deciding search ranking. Instead, it will consider the user experience (UX). 

Users will always come first when Google is rating your website. So, when building and optimizing your website, pay attention to the UX. Is the website a breeze for visitors to navigate? Are the font sizes ideal, or do visitors have to strain their eyes to read the texts on your web pages?

Choose the ideal fonts for your website. Visitors should read your texts without straining their eyes. Your fonts don’t have to be extremely large. You can discuss with your website designer about choosing the best fonts and font sizes for your website. Alternatively, you can check your competitors’ websites. 

It would make sense to analyze your competitors before creating your website or even creating content. Check out what your competitors are doing so you can create something superior and gain a competitive edge. 

You don’t have to copy your competitors. Instead, take their ideas and create something unique. That’s a great way to stand out from the crowd. 

When you stand out from the crowd, you’re letting prospects know that you’re different. And because you’re different, your results would be different. 

Potential clients with a terrible experience with several law firms may feel more comfortable hiring you for their cases. Why? You have shown that you’re different, and your results would be superior.

So, let’s go back to how having a high-quality website can help you rank high in search engines. 

Earlier, we explained that a website that offers a better user experience would rank high in search engines. Google prioritizes websites that make life easy for their visitors. 

Google is a business and will always prioritize its users. The search engine giant wants to keep its place as the biggest search engine in the world, controlling 96% of the total search engine market share. 

Website speed is another crucial factor in search engine ranking. A website that loads fast offers a better user experience than the reverse. 

An acceptable website loading time is 3 seconds. Any additional second delay will lead to a reduction in organic traffic and conversion rates. So, ensure your website loads faster. 

According to Google, page speed is a direct ranking factor. That’s why a website that loads faster has a better chance of ranking higher than one that doesn’t. The user experience of websites that load fast is good. 

4: Increase organic traffic to your website:

How can having a quality website improve organic traffic to your law firm’s website? It is simple. Good quality websites load faster and are responsive. Users can access the website from any device.

The number of mobile phone users has multiplied over the years. There are now more mobile phone users than the human population.

Making your website mobile-friendly means you will get all the mobile search traffic. Users with diverse mobile devices can access your website, navigate from one page to another, and find your contact information easily. 

The majority of website traffic comes from mobile searches. Most people prefer conducting online searches via mobile phones. They find it more convenient, quick, and easy. 

A quality and well-built website must be mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendliness is one of the criteria that indicate that a website is high-quality. And making your website mobile-friendly means you’ll get traffic from mobile device users, desktops, and others. It means your website will be open to visitors regardless of the device type they are using. 

5. Quality website makes your law firm trustworthy:

The fact that you are a lawyer and went to one of the best law schools in the country isn’t an indication that prospects will trust you. People won’t pay much attention to the school you attended. The major focus is on whether you can help them get justice or win a case. 

Trust is an important ingredient every business must work hard to build. When prospects trust your business, they will have the confidence to approach you when seeking legal advice. Clients who trust your business won’t hesitate to recommend you to others when the need arises. 

The quality of content you publish on your website helps showcase you as a legal professional with massive experience and knowledge. However, before clients read your blog posts, they first need to analyze your website. 

When visitors land on your website and like what they see, they may proceed to other sections of the website, including consuming your blog post. Visitors won’t spend time on a website that isn’t appealing or looking professional. Such a website can shatter a prospect’s confidence into tiny pieces. 

So, you can build trust by creating a professional website. Build a high-quality website that will convince visitors that you’re a serious legal professional or law firm. Your website doesn’t have to be super flashy and packed with features. Make it simple yet classy. 

6. Your website can convince prospects to recommend others to you:

Let me reiterate this: your website alone isn’t going to make prospects hire or recommend you to others. But it can influence their decision largely. Your content and quality of legal service are the two major things that make most prospects feel comfortable recommending your law firm to others. 

A high-quality website is a breeze to access and navigate. A website won’t be called “high-quality and well-built” if it takes longer to load. A site with poor loading speed will equally have a poor user experience. Any visitor who managed to gain access to a website that took longer to load won’t have the motivation to recommend the law firm to others.  

So, if you have a well-built website and content, clients will be more comfortable when recommending your law firm to others. Many visitors will even share your content on their pages, and before you know it, you’ll start getting organic traffic from different channels. 

The quality of your website can influence many things about your law firm, as we have rightly explained. It can give you a competitive edge and even make visitors like coming to your website and sharing your content. 

Top Features A High-Quality Law Firm Website Should Possess

As a law firm, your website is the first point of contact for prospects, not you or your employees. If your site has a bot, perhaps most visitors may want to initiate a conversion. But that can only happen if the visitor has confidence in your law firm. 

Your website can help you convince prospects to take you seriously. That’s why you need to find a dependable and professional website designer to help you create a top-quality website. Below are features your law firm should have to stand out from the crowd and convince prospects that you’re the real deal. 

1: Your law firm’s website needs a responsive design:

A responsive design is crucial to delivering optimal user experience and ranking high in search engines. It means visitors can navigate your website irrespective of the device they are using. 

A website with a responsive design would display its content seamlessly, irrespective of the screen size. Visitors can read your content and take action. They won’t have to strain their eyes or zoom your texts to see them clearly.

Statistics have shown that over 60% of website traffic comes from mobile searches. Additionally, over 61% of mobile visitors are unlikely to retain a website they had issues accessing (McKinsey and Company).

Mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor. Therefore, Google will prioritize websites that are mobile-friendly over those that aren’t. So, by prioritizing a responsive design, you have automatically improved your law firm’s chance of ranking high on search engine result pages. In addition, your website will get higher website traffic and deliver optimal user experience. 

Actionable Tip: Hire a website designer capable of ensuring your website has a responsive design. That way, your website will operate seamlessly on every device, and your search ranking will improve.    

2. Use a secure client portal to improve clients’ confidence in your law firm:

A secured client portal is another important feature your law firm website should have. Why? With it, you can improve clients’ confidence in your law firm. 

If clients are confident in your law firm, they’ll trust you. Having a secured client portal will allow clients to share sensitive information without worrying about getting into the hands of a third party. 

Trust is the foundation of any successful business. When clients trust you, they can recommend your law firm to others without a single doubt. 

Make your website secure. Build clients’ confidence and trust in your law firm. Find a website designer who can help you install a client portal that’s seamless, user-friendly, and prioritizes data encryption. 

Having a secured portal will make your clients feel confident when sharing sensitive documents with you, interacting with your lawyers, and making payments. It will erase any doubt they may have regarding your genuineness.

3. Your law firm website should have intuitive navigation:

Visitors have a short attention span, so make the most of the view seconds you have to impress them. Not only improve but get visitors to take action. 

An intuitive navigation will make life easier for visitors to your website. It will make it easier for visitors to find your content and contact information. 

Ensuring your website has intuitive navigation means your visitors will feel safe and clear when they land on your site. Instead, it’s the other way around. 

How can a website designer ensure your website has intuitive navigation? Here are the simple steps.

The first is to ensure your menus have clear and concise labels. This will enable visitors to know the content of each section of your website at a glance. 

Secondly, your website should have a search function. This makes it easier for visitors to search for other content. All they need to do is enter the keyword in the search bar to kick-start their search.

Make your contact information a breeze for prospects to find. Make it bold and clear. Ensure your contact information is accurate, too. 

Another thing that can make your website navigation intuitive is how you arrange your content. Arrange it hierarchically to make it easier for prospects to find the information they seek. 

4. Populate your law firm website with quality content to showcase your expertise:

Content is king. A professional-looking website without content is like a garage without a car. Your website will look and feel empty without content. Additionally, visitors will classify a law firm as unserious if there is no content on the website. 

Now, here is something you must understand. Populating a website with content isn’t all that matters. The quality of content on your website matters a great deal. 

Visitors will trust your law firm more, share your posts, and even recommend you to others if your content is compelling enough. They will classify you as an authority in your practice area if your content solves their problems or answers a crucial legal question they have been seeking answers to. 

Having compelling and high-quality content will help you acquire quality backlinks and brand mentions. Research by HubSpot shows companies that blogs acquire 97% more links. 

Backlinks are a major Google ranking factor. Having multiple high-quality backlinks from other relevant blogs can help improve your law firm website’s chance of ranking high in search engines. Ranking high means prospects looking for the legal services you render will be able to find and hire you. 

Actionable Tips: Keep your website active with high-quality and information-packed content. Produce content that solves the concerns of visitors, who are your potential clients.  

Allowing your website to stay idle for long can make your law firm look unserious and unprofessional to prospects. So, keep posting high-quality content. If you can’t post content consistently, hire a legal SEO writer to create your content. 

You can create a content writing plan and schedule to post content on your website. Alternatively, you can ask the legal writer handling your writing project to develop a content plan for your website. 

    

5. Showcase your legal team’s expertise and personality:

Consider putting a face to your law firm. When you do, you make it easier for potential clients to trust and build a rapport with your legal team. 

Attorney profiles are crucial, as they help prospects learn about your attorneys before meeting them in person. Having the profiles of your legal team incorporated on your website can help humanize your practice. 

Here is what your attorney profiles should contain. 

• Post headshots of your legal team. A professional photographer should take the headshots. Additionally, ensure the headshots are well-edited. 
• Provide the biography of each lawyer. Make it concise, captivating, and informative. Potential clients should feel like they know everything about a legal practitioner in your law firm after reading the profile. 
• State the practice area each lawyer specializes in, including the person’s educational credentials. The credentials are important because prospects want to know how qualified their lawyers are. It helps boost their confidence.
• Include notable achievements of each lawyer. In addition to cases, you can include other notable achievements each lawyer has. If there are none, focus on notable cases alone. 

Conclusion

Website design for a law firm plays a vital role in a law firm’s online marketing success. With a good quality website, your law firm’s chances of ranking high increase. 

Your website can influence how far you’ll rank on the search engine result page. Google gives websites that are responsive and mobile-friendly priority when deciding on search ranking. 

A well-designed website will deliver an optimal user experience. Such a website is a breeze to navigate and find information. 

So, hire a website designer who can help you ensure your site has all the features to help you achieve your online marketing goal.