When you are going about the law firm web­site design, there are cer­tain mis­takes which you should avoid at all costs since they’ll make poten­tial clients not want to vis­it your firm again. The worst mis­take is to vio­late the rules and reg­u­la­tions which have been set by the state in which you’re plan­ning to mar­ket your web­site. All attor­ney web­sites should com­ply with all rules and reg­u­la­tions which gov­ern the code and con­duct of attor­ney ethics. To avoid the most com­mon mis­takes peo­ple make dur­ing a law firm web­site design, you need to focus on the fol­low­ing key elements:

The Use of Legal Terms Throughout the Website

You should under­stand that your clients are not lawyers and it is for that rea­son that they’ll be vis­it­ing your web­site for help. You should avoid the jar­gon and the lan­guage you’re accus­tomed to as you prac­tice. Most peo­ple do not under­stand this jar­gon. Dur­ing the law firm web­site design, you need to under­stand your audi­ence. By using lan­guage they can under­stand, it will be eas­i­er to attract more clients. The con­tent should be that which is easy to under­stand and they should be able to under­stand the main rea­sons why they need to hire you to rep­re­sent them in court. The best way to go about this is to get some­one who’s not an attor­ney who can read over the con­tent on your web­site to ensure that the ordi­nary per­son can com­pre­hend every com­po­nent of the website.

Using Copied Templates

Why don’t you have some­thing which is total­ly dif­fer­ent from your com­peti­tors? Law firm web­site design doesn’t imply that you use the same old tem­plate your com­peti­tors have used. In fact, there are sev­er­al com­pa­nies that claim to have spe­cial­ized in this field, yet they only reuse the same web­site tem­plates. They only change the col­or theme and claim to go about the law firm web­site design process with­in a short peri­od of time. Just go an extra mile to get a web­site with a dif­fer­ent struc­ture. You should be very cau­tious about cer­tain quotes which are too good to be true.

Overusing the Typical Attorney Stock Images

In law firm web­site design, peo­ple will tend to incor­po­rate almost all images that are asso­ci­at­ed with the legal field such as the Con­sti­tu­tion, U.S. flag, or scales. All these images are found on almost every attorney’s web­site, thus it will only make your web­site unmem­o­rable to clients who have browsed through oth­er attorney’s websites.

You can replace these cliché images with oth­er inter­est­ing images dur­ing the law firm web­site design process with: Your lawyers in a court­room; pic­tures of your firm meet­ing with clients, or when you’re work­ing on cas­es. An image of your office can also make the firm’s web­site unique and attrac­tive. You should use unique con­tent to show peo­ple that you’re a lawyer. Just try to make the web­site mem­o­rable to your visitors.

Strength

Strength

Incor­po­rat­ing the “prac­tice area page” dur­ing the law firm web­site design is not enough. You need to demon­strate to your poten­tial clients the exact ser­vices your firm can offer. The fact that the firm has includ­ed the bio info about every mem­ber in the law firm may not be enough to pitch clients on their lev­el of exper­tise. Don’t think clients will read metic­u­lous­ly through the attor­ney bios. As a mat­ter of fact, it may not be convincing.

You need to under­stand that a law firm web­site is a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tool that should indi­cate to poten­tial clients the main rea­sons why they should actu­al­ly opt for your ser­vices. It should edu­cate clients through the use of infor­ma­tive con­tent. You can incor­po­rate a blog where you can dis­cuss var­i­ous issues relat­ing to the legal field such as the lat­est cas­es or var­i­ous leg­is­la­tion that has been enact­ed with­in your prac­tice area, etc. This will make your clients want to come back for new infor­ma­tion all the time. Fur­ther­more, it will also demon­strate to them your exper­tise in this field.

Ethics Compliance

As you go about the law firm web­site design, you need to under­stand this pro­fes­sion is reg­u­lat­ed and all web­sites should com­ply with the attor­ney adver­tis­ing dis­claimer. Firms are oblig­ed to make cer­tain dis­clo­sures on their web­sites. Of course, the legal rules also apply to the web­site and it is the main rea­son why you should opt for an indi­vid­ual who’s an expert in design­ing law firm websites.

At any giv­en instance, you need to refer to all the state legal ethics which reg­u­late attor­ney adver­tis­ing, include all the nec­es­sary dis­clo­sures, and the web­site must be free from any con­tent which could be vio­lat­ing oth­er ethics rules. Legal action can be tak­en against your firm if you fail to fol­low these rules and regulations.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How do you expect clients to find your web­site with­out incor­po­rat­ing rec­om­mend­ed SEO prac­tices? Law firm web­site design for SEO may not be suf­fi­cient, it’s the SEO tech­nique which will deter­mine whether the web­site will be found on the first pages of the search results or not. Search engines such as Bing, Yahoo or Google have dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria which they use to rank web­sites. Nor­mal­ly, you can hire a third par­ty who can help you to opti­mize the law firm website.

Content

Despite the fact that the law firm web­site design may have all these fac­tors list­ed above, a law firm with an out­dat­ed copy­right date may find it dif­fi­cult to attract new clients. Web­site users are always look­ing for new and fresh con­tent. Can you imag­ine a web­site with a © 2009 yet, we are in 2020? You need to update the con­tent of your web­site reg­u­lar­ly with cur­rent and infor­ma­tive con­tent.  At times, you may find it dif­fi­cult to update the con­tent of the web­site reg­u­lar­ly thus, you should employ some else to do it for you.

SOURCE: Legal Read­er