Legal Website Design Mistakes
If your website is 3 or more years old or has been updated in a long time or worse if you don’t have a website! This is for you.
Being a lawyer it’s crucial for you now to have a law firm website, nowadays referrals or word-of-mouth doesn’t work that much. Especially when there is so much competition and all your competitors are already having a revenue-generating legal website. Website development is essential for any business, profession. Get your website done now!
Coming to those of you who have a website but it’s just a blunder. Various lawyers have websites that are literally of no use, as they don’t get you any conversions. Even sometimes your website makes you lose a client and make competitors gain one. There are various mistakes in your legal website design, because of which your website is not generating any revenue for you. So, I decided to break this into two, Firstly let’s discuss your law firm website design mistakes and then tips that will make your law firm website look perfect.
What are the basic legal website mistakes?
- Outdated Website Design
- Poor Mobile Optimisation
- Slow Website
- Not Secure
- Lack of Trust factors
- Wrong Font Detailing
- Poor SEO
- Stale Content
- Inadequate Information
1.Outdated Website Design
Don’t believe in those who say that they will make you a cheap yet fully customized website. That’s a lie. You can’t create a fully customized website in cheap. They just get you a template based website that is similar to your competitors, with colors and pictures changed. People want something different, similar looking websites makes you look, small and unprofessional. If you want to look like an expert get yourself a web design expert and get a properly customized legal website design. It’s okay to invest sometimes. Your website design should be updated according to the search engine’s algorithms, and you should provide your users with a good experience.
Things to remember in your law firm website design
Don’t ask your website Developer for homepage carousel, don’t embarrass yourself, homepage carousels makes you look confused if you want to do a homepage carousel never keep it a slider. Keep a normal carousel that doesn’t moves.
Landing pages should be professional and clear portray your law firm. No need to go flashy or trending, as your’s is a legal website, it should showcase credibility and make people believe that you can handle their problems and get solutions for it.
2.Poor Mobile Optimization
That includes not just mobiles, your website should be responsive to all the gadgets, as most people these days use websites and search engine on mobiles, on iPads and tablets. So, your website should be available to all on same URL and should even adjust text, graphics etc according to the gadget. This is one of the important on-page SEO ranking factors and worst legal website design mistake.
3.Slow Website
Nobody waits for your website to load, seriously even I don’t. If your website takes more than 2-4 seconds to load, it’s a big possibility that the visitors will leave your website, increasing your bounce rate. This not only decreases your revenue and leads but also affects your SEO rankings. Most importantly, being in the law industry, your website should be prompt, as your visitors are already in a hurry and anxiety mostly, their pressure situations require instant solutions. So, if your attorney website loads slow, you definitely lose your credibility and as a result the client.
Improve your page load time by, optimizing images, optimize content and avoid landing page redirects. Your server might be taking time to load, make sure that’s also optimized. because if your server is slow, that makes your fast website slow too.
4.Not Secure
Being a law firm website your website should be secure, as if your website isn’t secure it sends a wrong message to your cautious visitors. Visitors these days visit only secure sites and for their legal guidance also they need only secure websites, right? The insecure website spoils your SEO rankings, as Google also cares about security.
No big deal, you can rectify this by getting an SSL Certificate for your website.
5.Lack Of Trust Factors
This is the most common legal website design mistake. What do you look for in a lawyer? That he understands your problem, and you can trust him for providing the solution. Nobody is interested in any other things when they are in a problem. So, make sure you post some credibility defining factors in front and center of your attorney website. You need to showcase your awards and recognitions like:
- Testimonials from previous clients
- Case Studies or clients logo’s
- Mention the number of years from which you’re in the industry
Because being a lawyer, your reliability in one of the most important selling point. This is how you increase your conversion rate, by making visitors believe in you. Also, you need to humanize lawyers, what i mean is you need to post some content, in simplified language that clears legal jargon and provides legal advise. which not only shows that you are a caring human, but also shows that you have knowledge of your field and know how to communicate clearly and understand the client’s issues.
6.Wrong Font Detailing
This seems like a very small mistake for a law firm website design, but trust me it’s not. Your content or website should be readable, if one can’t read, he/ she can’t get convinced or even believe you. To persuade a visitor, you need to make his visit error-free, give him an experience that he doesn’t forget, in a good manner obviously.
Reading is very essential, so you need to keep in mind a few small details.
a. Font should be professional and clear, choose 1-2 type of fonts which are related and stick to them, using various fonts conflicts your message and sends a wrong message.
b. Font Size shouldn’t go up and down again and again, but shouldn’t be similar all along too. Change sizes according to headings, subheadings and make your content more and more readable and simplified.
c. Kerning, tracking and leading these refers to space between letters or characters, words or phrases and lines respectively. Try to maintain consistent space, not too loose- not too tight, try and see what makes it more readable.
7.Poor SEO
Search engine optimization is the organic way of bringing traffic to your website, and not doing SEO is the biggest legal website design mistake because it’s the way of telling people about you and bringing in revenue. If you’re not doing SEO, how will people even know about your website, you need to rank in search engine pages for clients to find you.
There are many things to be taken care of in SEO, so hire a professional who deals in Law industry SEO, so you won’t have to go through all the trouble of doing the SEO and then getting it fixed from a professional. SEO involves optimizing your website for On-Page SEO ranking factors and setting up your Off-page SEO ranking factors to get you more backlinks and relevancy according to search engine’s algorithms As its a legal website you need Local SEO too to get more conversion and it will help you get local business more. Local SEO works according to physical locations proximity and geotagging.
Heading tags, keyword research, backlinks, etc-etc are all a part of SEO ranking factors. You will need other things too like social media to promote your business and various small details like SEO tips for lawyers and attorneys.
So much, right? it’s better to get an expert to look after your SEO, Contact us we are expert in your industry, will get it done for you.
8.Stale Content
Long boring content is another law firm website design mistake, lawyers write content that is only understandable by other lawyers. Whereas your target audience isn’t lawyers. So, make sure you put short, simplified content which is easy to understand and helps people understand legal jargon. The content shouldn’t be copied, try providing unique and fresh content, which is updated regularly.
Make your content readable and compelling, that means try to include bolds, italics, etc. Write short paragraphs, if there is any long content try and break it into bullet points or numbered lists. Use charts, graphics, and images to make your content more understandable to regular people and you can always use videos, as videos not only increase engagement, personal effect but also increases your dwell time. which makes your site more relevant in front of search engines.
9.Inadequate Content
If you won’t provide your correct contact information and have some Call to actions on your website and landing pages, how will your clients or visitors contact you! A contact page should be there which provides 2-3 contact information like your physical address, location (if possible), Contact number and email address. So, it is easier for people to contact you.
Add 2-3 call to actions which are compelling enough to attract visitor to click on them. They should be big, bold buttons which clearly state some action on your website.
The main mistake that I feel legal websites make is not telling directly which law they practice. Your legal website design should always include what law you specialize in and it should be very clearly stated on the homepage only.
Some extra tips to remember, Try using relevant images, which showcase what you mean. Don’t use metaphorical images, as their meaning changes according to perceptions and that looks very unprofessional putting a dog or cat picture on law firm website design. As, for lawyer’s pictures you can use normal pictures of lawyers that don’t make them look like stiff portraits. Normal pictures can do.
Make sure you don’t make any of these law firm website design mistakes as these decrease your business’s revenue, leads, and goodwill by a significant amount. To get more and better clients try making your website perfect for the law industry and keep up with your website maintenance and support too as you don’t your efforts to go waste in the future, right?
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