You’ve prob­a­bly been there your­self. When you’re look­ing for a restau­rant to eat at, a physi­cian, a per­son­al train­er, or any oth­er prod­uct or ser­vice, you con­duct your ini­tial search online. The same rule applies to your legal clients as well. How can you cap­ture their atten­tion? Prop­er law firm web design can be the first cru­cial step to help you grow your clientele. 

In the world of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, a pro­fes­sion­al online pres­ence plays a vital role in client deci­sion-mak­ing. A func­tion­al attor­ney web­site design can help lawyers tip the scale toward their own favor with an easy-to-read and nav­i­gate web­site that’s dis­cov­er­able and intu­itive right from the get-go.

As such, we at Rosy Strate­gies have cre­at­ed a com­pre­hen­sive guide that explores all the crit­i­cal attor­ney web­site design areas and address­es every aspect that law firm web design­ers should assess before get­ting start­ed with a project.

How Law Firm Website Design Can Help

How can web­site design for attor­neys help grow their busi­ness and clien­tele? The truth is, no mat­ter how expe­ri­enced a lawyer is, most poten­tial clients will prob­a­bly con­duct their research online, on their own. Accord­ing to an expert report, more than half of the asked con­sumers researched attor­neys on their own (57%). Addi­tion­al­ly, 17% used search engines, and anoth­er 17% vis­it­ed attor­ney web­sites directly. 

Per­son­al refer­rals aside, attor­neys shouldn’t for­get that most poten­tial clients will be look­ing for rec­om­men­da­tions on the inter­net. This is why a pro­fes­sion­al and intu­itive design is cru­cial for your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts.

Getting Started With Attorney Website Design 

When talk­ing about web­site design for attor­neys, there are a few things you need to think about before get­ting started.

For instance, if your firm main­ly relies on repeat busi­ness and word-of-mouth refer­rals, you might only need a sim­ple dig­i­tal plat­form with all the vital info about your firm and con­tent to show­case your exper­tise and social proof.

If you dri­ve most of your busi­ness from online traf­fic, you should take advan­tage of the ben­e­fits of web design for lawyers to give your online pres­ence the push it needs to stand out. 

Designer Drawing Website Development Wireframe

Hiring Professional Designers and Developers

Tech-savvy attor­neys might choose to cre­ate their web­site from scratch and design it them­selves. While this can be lighter on their bud­get, most lawyers will advise against this. Why? Because using even the most straight­for­ward plat­form with the most acces­si­ble themes, many things can go wrong, and a work­ing attor­ney won’t always have the time to debug an entire sys­tem, let alone update the design if needed.

This is where hir­ing a pro­fes­sion­al law firm web­site design com­pa­ny comes into play. That way, you can get a dig­i­tal plat­form that will cater to your firm’s every need, no mat­ter whether you’re get­ting the lion’s share of your busi­ness from refer­rals or using the inter­net to land clients. 

Considerations For Hiring Law Firm Web Designers

The best approach you can take when look­ing for pro­fes­sion­als is to do your research. Apart from get­ting price esti­mates, you will need to ask a few ques­tions before hir­ing a reli­able design­er. These are: 

  • When will the design­er be avail­able to work on your site, and how long will the project take?
  • Will they be able to help you with train­ing, i.e., show­ing you how the site works?
  • Should you have any con­cerns regard­ing mak­ing reg­u­lar con­tent updates on your own? 
  • Will there be any sup­port? This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant if the same pro­fes­sion­als are devel­op­ing and main­tain­ing your site.
  • In which ways can the new design help with search engine optimization? 
  • How will the design affect web­site responsiveness?

Choosing the Right Imagery

Images are cru­cial when it comes to web­site design for lawyers. It dra­mat­i­cal­ly impacts how site vis­i­tors see you and your firm.

First of all, images are prob­a­bly the first thing your vis­i­tors will see and will prob­a­bly be respon­si­ble for their first impres­sions of your site. That said, all the pic­tures your law firm web design­ers use should be pro­fes­sion­al and pol­ished. High qual­i­ty is nec­es­sary as you want to show­case your brand in a pro­fes­sion­al and expert light. 

While talk­ing about images, we should also dis­cuss the cor­re­la­tion between law firm design and web­site speed. Large images can slow down your web­site, neg­a­tive­ly affect­ing user expe­ri­ence, and mak­ing the over­all design less func­tion­al. Attor­neys should use mobile site speed as an anchor. More pre­cise­ly, when con­sumers encounter a slow-load­ing web­site on mobile, they are more like­ly to aban­don the site before actu­al­ly tak­ing a good look at it.

Law firm web design­ers can help you find the per­fect bal­ance between image size and qual­i­ty, ensur­ing you get the best of both worlds.

Mobile Friendliness

It prob­a­bly goes with­out say­ing that a good web­site design for attor­neys should work per­fect­ly on every device. Even if your cur­rent sta­tis­tics show that most of your traf­fic comes from desk­tops and lap­tops, you need a respon­sive web­site. Why? Because one of Google’s pri­ma­ry rank­ing fac­tors is respon­sive­ness, mean­ing it will help you improve your rank­ings as well.

Intuitive Navigation

A good attor­ney web­site design should also include easy nav­i­ga­tion. There’s noth­ing more frus­trat­ing than a web­site where you sim­ply can’t find the infor­ma­tion you’re look­ing for. When your poten­tial client lands on your pages, they should imme­di­ate­ly know where to go next or where to click. If they have to spend a lot of time search­ing for a phone num­ber, address, or any oth­er piece of info, chances are, they will take their busi­ness elsewhere. 

Attorney Web Design and Accessibility 

As an attor­ney, you want to con­nect with all your poten­tial clients. There­fore, mak­ing your web­site acces­si­ble is also cru­cial for your design efforts. Some peo­ple use screen read­ers or mouse alter­na­tives to search the web. 

Your best bet is to eval­u­ate the acces­si­bil­i­ty of your cur­rent design and go from there. Chances are, your design­ers might help you address cer­tain issues as well. Some of the most cru­cial acces­si­bil­i­ty fac­tors include:

  • Using prop­er head­ings to cre­ate a rec­og­niz­able con­tent structure
  • Includ­ing alt text for every image
  • Giv­ing links descrip­tive names
  • Using col­ors that aren’t over­whelm­ing in any way
  • Design­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty forms
  • Using tables to show­case tab­u­lar data
  • Using land­marks and ARIA roles
  • Mak­ing dynam­ic con­tent accessible
  • Ensur­ing that every piece of con­tent can be accessed via the keyboard

Website Development Layout Sketch Drawing

Work With Experts

Cre­at­ing a stel­lar design that can help your busi­ness goals requires expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge. That’s why seri­ous law firms should look for seri­ous niche design agen­cies that under­stand the online needs of an attorney’s prac­tice. Our expert team knows all the intri­ca­cies that go into attor­ney web­site design, help­ing our clients get the most out of their online presence. 

That said, if you want to raise the bar regard­ing web design, feel free to reach out to us.