Web Design for Law Firms; Before & After

When digital marketing came into prominence about 10 or 15 years ago, every law firm looking for clients online was clamoring to design their website.

However, very few website owners maintain their original enthusiasm about their site post-launch and it’s potential to generate business, and so, they do little to maintain or update them. 

Whether they’ve been burned by careless vendors in the past, or because they simply don’t see web design as a marketing means toward a sales end, lawyers are particularly prone to ignoring the business development potential of their websites.

Maybe that’s because, in all of the blogs and articles on web design for law firms, there is rarely an opportunity to see the ‘before & after’ effects of website redesign project.

We’re here to address this.

First, let’s define how effective web design works, and then show you how a good web design can help law firms establish their brand and connect with leads online.  

Effective Web Design Defined 

We’ve been building websites for lawyers exclusively since 1999. During that time, we’ve written extensively on the elements of good law firm web design, how to audit your site, and how to determine if you need an overhaul.

Within the legal vertical, there are some strongly branded and distinct websites. But mostly, it’s just a ton of boring ones ─ which isn’t bad, maybe the design converts where it counts, but really … 

Guess which one this is? And then look at this custom legal website Consultwebs designed…

One of the reasons it’s so hard for lawyers to get their web design right is they aren’t designing it for the right reasons. 

Most lawyers think you design a website “to taste.” They ask themselves, “Do I like this?” But the question they should be asking is: “Do potential clients like this website?” or more pointedly, “Does it sell?”

On our legal marketing podcast, LAWsome, we interviewed the founder of Lawyers Marketing Association, Lauren Currin, and the most astonishing and insightful thing she revealed to us was when she asks her consulting clients if they like their law firm’s website. 

At Consultwebs, our success as digital marketers is directly linked to our clients’ online success. So when we design websites that are supposed to generate business, we design with conversion in mind.

If we’re talking effective web design for law firms, skip over “good” or “bad” and ask yourself the important questions ─ “Does it generate traffic/leads/calls/cases/business?”

Types of Web Design 

According to our Legal Marketing Nutrition guidelines, in order for digital marketing to be effective, there must be a balance between short-term Sales Activation tactics and long-term Brand Growth strategy. 

Web design can grow a brand online with a custom website or creative assets illustrating experience within a practice area. 

More importantly, effective web design can also be directly linked to sales through conversion elements found on homepages or landing pages/microsites/other destinations on the web engineered for direct response.   

A distinct web presence offering valuable content through an easy-to-find destination, engineered to grow your law firm’s brand, increase visibility online, and generate leads and cases. That’s how we think of web design for law firms, but maybe it’s better if we show you …

Legal Marketing Success Through Web Design

Rather than fill this page with technical jargon describing why web design works and why it matters, we wanted to show some examples of legal marketing success through web design. And what better case studies than our own clients? 

Our goal is not to decry the previous agencies or design teams, but to point out a few enhancements we’ve made to actual websites by comparing them to their previous iterations.

One important point to note: Mobile-responsive web design is no longer an option and is now essential to every design we release. However, for educational purposes, I’m only comparing desktop designs.

Cain Law – A fantastic Oklahoma personal injury law firm with a site that launched in September 2017. Visiting the old site here, you can see how, design-wise, the cropping of this header image might impact site performance. And in our estimation, the lack of conversion assets (clear contact info, calls-to-action, trust icons) must have affected conversion and sales potential. 

Here is a snapshot of traffic to the updated Cain website, since the site launch. Although it’s hard to directly correlate the dramatic improvement in traffic reported here solely to web design, and not associated technical or structural work, it’s hard to imagine the law firm would have seen this increase (and the extra 100 leads per month) without this updated website.

Parnall Law – One of the most experienced car accident attorneys working in New Mexico, Bert Parnall has a strong brand. We incorporated design elements and taglines from the previous site and updated them, also adding in proven conversion elements when we launched his site in the summer of 2017.

The design team worked to improve the previous site in a few notable ways. First, with a focus on design for conversion, we added a chat service, form fill, and included the already fantastic slogan and branded phone number.

In addition to the conversion opportunities, the Consultwebs design team incorporated strongly branded video work from Crisp Video Group into the homepage design, which warms up potential clients and familiarizes them with the firm before they make contact.  

One great stat pulled from our dashboards: Since launch, the site has facilitated, on average, 200+ leads (calls, chats, form fills) per month! Once again, as part of a balanced marketing strategy, an updated website destination doesn’t only look fantastic, it generates traffic and increases online leads.

McKinney, Tucker & Lemel – This firm is a bedrock of the personal injury legal community in South Carolina, and we worked hard to update this website from its previous iteration, which you can find here. The previous site design, which was perhaps from 2004, was full of clunky HTML code, there was no distinct branding, and there was plenty of room for improvement with design.

Besides facilitating an average of 90 leads a month for the law firm, the website has seen traffic increase by almost 3,000%, as depicted below. Again, the spike you may notice towards the end of the chart indicates the launching of a PPC campaign with Consultwebs.  

The Berry Law Firm – This is by far the most dramatic Before/After web design story here. You can see that the previous design was basically a contact form, heavy on text, with very little room for design and distinct branding. 

The previous site was so obviously a template, the design-only client wanted to go bold, and we did! Our design team and content staff worked with the law firm to create the new site, slogan, and structure, which all add up to create a completely different user experience as to compared to the old site. But, the question remains for the law firm to answer, does the new site deliver new business?

Since launching the site in 2017, we see a 20,000-visitor-a-month increase to the site. This site redesign really is a testament to the quality of work Consultwebs puts into these overhauls, and what transformative results can look like for a law firm website. 

Want to learn more about web design and digital marketing for lawyers? Sign up for the Consultwebs newsletter, follow us on social media, and subscribe to the LAWsome Podcast. 

 

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Eight Tips on Facebook Advertising for Lawyers

With the sands of technology shifting under our feet, it’s hard to anticipate where the lawyer looking for leads can reliably go to find potential clients online.

Thankfully, the answer isn’t in a crystal ball, but in your client files. 

My advice for lawyers wanting to advertise for new clients online particularly through Facebook, is to; 1) better understand their existing clients social media habits and target accordingly, 2) ensure proper scope, budget, & expectations for campaigns, and intake capacity, 3) measure and track progress with advertising, connect it to case sign-ups, and 4) balance engagement on social between selling and sharing.

Want more advice? Here’s some more Facebook Advertising Do’s and Don’ts….

DO – Some research on your most valuable clients, how old are they, where do they live, ask them where they spend their time online. A large portion of FB users are over 45 – so lawyers working with family law or estates may find potential clients easier than IP lawyers. Use an online survey tool, like SurveyMonkey, to ask all of your clients where they consume content online – if it’s Facebook, go forth with your advertising campaign.

DO – Have a strong brand – Headers, images, marketing content needs to match your site. Remember the goal is to stand out, so make sure your ads get attention first, establish the brand, and then go for the ask. 

DO – Have a few options for Calls-To-Action to test in different ads – content to download, free consultations, a link to FAQ, resources on your site; test a few options to see which performs better, the results can be eye-opening and money-saving.  

DO – Ensure leads go to dedicated staff able to sift through them. Are you tracking leads as they come in from your marketing? Are you then connecting the activity in a case management system? Set up digital analytics on your advertising before you hit the Spend button on Facebook and you’ll be able to measure your efforts.

Ok, so now the don’ts…..

DON’T – FB wants your money and they will keep asking for it so before you Boost something or Promote something – you have to be strategic with your ad spend. Put your money behind brand campaigns with specific actions that you can track on your website. Likes and Shares aren’t Cases or Calls.

DON’T – Targeting is essential to keeping a ceiling on your budget, so don’t forget targeting. How far will a client drive to see you? How long would you drive to see a client? Make sure you target geographic areas within 25+ miles of your office with your ads. Same with demographics and interests; based on your client survey, match your targeting on Facebook to mirror the groups you know are most likely to convert. 

DON’T – Facebook advertising tactics are so intense and change so rapidly, don’t forget that it’s ok to outsource your digital advertising to a vendor with a successful track record. (cough – Consultwebs!)

DON’T – Don’t expect miracles from social media without your constant input. You can’t just advertise on Facebook and expect results; you have to engage, post, react, share. Be a helpful part of the social media ecosystem, not just a selling pariah.

DON’T – If you are running a branding campaign, results can take time so don’t give up. Be sure you have your expectations, and budget limitations, in order. 

If you want to learn more about digital advertising and marketing for law firms, listen to the LAWsome Podcast, or subscribe to the Consultwebs Newsletter.

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Consultwebs Ranked Top SEO Provider for Law Firms by Clutch

Building a robust and far-reaching online presence is becoming increasingly important for law firms.

Legal professionals are taking note of the ways that SEO has positively impacted other industries, and many practices are investing heavily to reap the benefits. Finding the right provider for this service is no easy task, which is why we’re thankful for the amazing work that Clutch does!

Clutch, a B2B market research organization based in Washington, D.C., recently published an annual report that lists top providers in a variety of industries and segments.

In this report, Consultwebs was listed as one of the top five legal SEO companies in the world. We were also ranked by Clutch as an industry-leading provider of e-commerce SEO. We’re beyond thankful for this recognition and the many partners who have helped us reach this milestone.

Clutch organizes and ranks companies using a comprehensive research methodology. Analysts compile data regarding market presence, industry experience, and feedback from current and former clients to identify firms that deliver. To collect useful feedback, the team conducts in-depth interviews with customers to produce case study-like reviews. Feel free to check out our reviews on our Clutch profile!

Want to learn more? You can find us on The Manifest, a blog-style resource that publishes lists of the top B2B companies. We’re currently ranked among the top SEO providers in the world!

 

Thank you to all of our incredible clients who have supported us. We’re excited about our feature on Clutch and look forward to the many ways that it will help our business grow! If you’re considering a partnership with us, get in touch with our team. We’d love to discuss your business goals.

“Being a ‘data-driven’ business is essential, but essentially no business truly understands this saying. That’s because most businesses aren’t gathering the right data, which to us is client feedback. We’re thankful for review platforms like Clutch because it’s the easiest type of marketing we engage with; let the experience and our clients speak for themselves!” – Dale Tincher, CEO, Consultwebs

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PPC for Law Firms – Brand Growth vs Sales Activation

As a segment of a multi-channel approach to marketing for law firms, digital advertising, which includes pay-per-click (PPC), is a fantastic way to both build your brand online and activate sales. Since PPC is traditionally thought of as a solely direct-response vehicle, we wanted to explore the different uses for PPC and how it can be used to enable brand growth and how that impacts sales activation, the two main pillars of Legal Marketing Nutrition.

PPC for Lawyers – Familiar Platforms and Use Cases

Google, Bing, their extended companies (like YouTube and Yahoo) and most search engines have digital advertising platforms, and this is the most common form of pay-per-click advertising. Marketers set up PPC campaigns by writing ad copy, selecting the keywords and phrases they would like the ads to be shown in relation to, and choosing a suitable landing page, aligned with the strategy. Unlike CPM advertising (cost-per-1,000 impressions) you only pay the network when your ad is clicked on.

Most people are familiar with the four ads above locations and search engine results on Google:

You can also show up in the local section:

Typically, the keywords targeted in a law firm Adwords campaign will be high-intent, service-related keywords such as “car accident lawyer” or “attorney for car accident injuries.”

This is the standard-use case really ─ and while not very imaginative, it is effective. If you think of the different stages users go through when making a buying decision, it can be illustrated like this:

These high-intent keywords are the ones we see used toward the middle or bottom of the funnel, in the “consideration” and “conversion” stages. This is also what makes them so competitive and expensive ─ people call them “buying keywords” for a reason ─ these are the search queries used when making a decision regarding a purchase. This is 100 percent sales activation.

So, what about the top of the funnel? Awareness. What’s happening there and how does it relate to PPC? Can PPC be used to create brand awareness ─ and perhaps give us the edge with regards to recognition at the time of purchase? It can, but in order to start reinforcing that brand and getting that crucial brand recognition effect, we should make sure “brand” is clearly defined.

Is Your Law Firm Name Your Brand? If Not … What Is Your Brand?

We’ve written extensively about law firm branding and why it’s so much more than a keyword, a font, or some colors. Your brand is an important asset to develop not only to help focus content and keywords, but to guide your marketing strategy. To summarize:

Your brand is what your clients think about your law firm, what’s in their heads, how they experience your service, and then how you encapsulate this experience into your brand.

With a concrete vision of your brand, and the law firm marketing strategy it informs, the tactics required to defend and promote your brand online most successfully will be clear.

Why Should I Spend PPC Budget on Brand Awareness?

We’re going to get into specific examples and scenarios a little later in this article, but let’s think big-picture strategy first. Take a look at this graph:

• Source https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/the-long-and-the-short-of-it-balancing-short-and-long-term-marketing-strategies

In particular, note the middle portion, where the Sales Activation and Brand Building lines intersect at several points. These points are where your brand messaging will help your sales, which then helps reinforce your brand. Trust and recognition are key points that can give your sales a big lift, and the messaging that brings those points home should come from how you are telling the story of your brand.

With the above graph in mind, let’s take a look at some of the different tactics, tricks, and tips for brand awareness using PPC.

Buying Your Brand Name

Most people hate this, and do it grudgingly as a sort of “blocker” move to prevent other firms from buying their firm’s name and then running ads to it. Here’s an example:

Notice ─ none of these firms are Glen Lerner, and the really sneaky ones have generic URLs ─ “winnininjurylawyersil” could be anyone, including Glen. It’s deliberately vague. However, it’s important to note that the branded term that I searched for is not represented in the ad results, and say what you will about Mr. Lerner, he is great at advertising. He knows how to brand himself and his business, so he must have a reason for not buying his branded terms in Google Ads ─ or else the campaign exhausted its daily budget by the time I Googled him.

In our experience, it’s not a bad idea to pick up the keywords for your law firm name. This ensures you are at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPS) ─ always good for those lazy click mobile phone searches ─ and you add to the number of times you appear on the page, which has been shown to be beneficial.

According to Searchengineland, running paid ad campaigns that 1) offer precise messages and 2) are located next to your organic listings on Google can increase overall click-through-rate (CTR) and lead to a higher return on your investment.

Got a Slogan or Catchphrase? BUY IT!

“One call, that’s all.”
“In a wreck? Get a check.”
“Personal service, effective results.”

Any of those sound familiar? Pretty common taglines ─ some have been turned into jingles on TV commercials ─ but do this: Google them.

Not a lot of ads are there. Maybe none ─ at least in the examples I checked. This is a low-cost, high-reward opportunity. You take the top of the SERPS, you get to use ad copy to define what message is associated with the phrase ─ and bonus, if it’s yours, you’ll probably get a couple spots on the page, which is a good thing.

Side note: You can buy whatever phrase you want here ─ even if it’s not yours ─ but depending upon state bar rules, this may or may not be ethical, so tread lightly here.

Beyond that, just … use your imagination.

Word Association

This isn’t quite as easy for lawyers, but let’s step back for a minute and look at some cars as a good illustration of this technique. Most car makers have worked very diligently on their one-word “identity”:

Ford = tough
Volvo = safe
Subaru = reliable

This is a little more “blue sky,” but one tactic the big advertisers with a strong word association employ is buying that word and running branded ads. You need to be very intentional and mindful here because a LOT of money could get blown if this is set up even a little bit wrong. However, it’s an intriguing concept.

Trends

This is an old trick, but worth checking out ─ if you want a bunch of traffic quick, use Google Trends to find trending search terms/queries, then buy them. HOWEVER, you better be careful with this because there is a lot of potential for negative feedback.

The key to it is to make a catchy/relevant ad ─ you will need to somehow tie the trending search into your brand message ─ and then lead them to a page that further reinforces this while at the same time giving your brand a lift. You really need to be on-the-spot with these, and I believe someone may have set up a Google Ads script to incorporate Trends data, but it can be quite effective ─ check out what Converse did (and this is about 7 years old!):

Moving Away from the SERPS

Once you start to consider the possibilities for creative keyword bidding and branded text ads outside of the more typical direct-response, sales activation-focused methods you may be used to, you’ll see that the only limit for testing some of these brand-building campaigns is your imagination. However, the SERPS aren’t the only place you can use PPC for brand awareness.

Display Ads

Everyone who’s online should be familiar with these, depending upon how effective your ad blocker is. Display ads are banner, text, or animated image ads shown on publisher sites in various locations ─ above the fold, below the fold, sidebar, etc.

Display ads generally have a lower click-through-rate, primarily because it’s a different approach than ads in SERPS. Display advertising is disruptive ─ you are interrupting an article the user is reading or the video they are watching, whereas in SERP ads you are appearing when a user is actively looking for something, in the context of results to a query.

Compared to search ads’ average cost-per-click, display ads are usually pennies to the dollar, if even that. The low cost combined with the broad targeting options available means the typical approach many law firms take for establishing brand awareness is: “If people see my ad everywhere, eventually it will stick.” This is why oftentimes branded display campaigns will be more focused on views and impressions instead of clicks.

As long as you use category exclusions to eliminate some of the more questionable/sketch areas of the display network (ie porn and gambling) and you have the budget for it, this isn’t necessarily a bad approach, particularly on a local level.

Similar to the more imaginative search ad targeting methods, you have a lot of options on display ─ in fact, many more. Audience, interests, in-market segments ─ there’s a lot of room for experimentation here. So if you have identified a particular market segment to target ─ say, 34- to 45-year-old men who like NASCAR and hockey ─ you can do it.

One point to make with this ─ and it is a word of caution. Brand association is a real thing, and it should not be far from your mind when building audiences or implementing different targeting methods. Your ad will be shown on a website, therefore it is building a connection with that site in the users’ mind. Do you want your law firm to be associated with funny cat memes or pirating software? No? Then pay attention to your placements and keep that stuff out.

Retargeting

Retargeting, also called “remarketing,” uses cookies to track website visitors and show them ads after they leave the site. For example, a person who searched for a deal on a cruise, visited Travelocity.com, but left without purchasing may be shown an ad with an offer for a certain percentage off if they book now. At its best, remarketing is used as a means to re-engage users who left a website or landing page without taking the desired action. If you want an example of this, go to Amazon, put a few items in your cart, and leave without checking out.

The cool thing about remarketing is that you can make all kinds of audiences based on user behavior ─ pages they visited, pages they didn’t visit, returning visitors, etc. So, for a brand reinforcement in this scenario, you may want to try a more direct sales message for the first 48 to 72 hours after they leave your site, but after that, go for a more general branded ad. This will give you visibility and keep your firm top of mind in those cases where a potential client is stuck in the research phase of their search for legal help. Please note: These timeframes are arbitrary. Your best bet is to look at your new vs. returning data in Google Analytics to determine the different opportunity windows for your remarketing ads.

Brand Reinforcement Is Good for Your Digital Marketing Bottom Line

This article from Moz should be the final word on why grabbing that branded traffic is good, as well as a caution to what can happen if you don’t. Additionally, it is a great way to take more space on the SERPs, stay top of mind on display, and create associations in potential clients’ minds while they are in those “top of the funnel” stages of their search for legal representation. A well-built digital marketing strategy for lawyers will hit on a variety of channels, and they will reinforce and fill in the gaps for each other:

“A strong search marketing strategy has always involved organic, paid search, and PLA (Product Listing Ads) combined. Sites optimizing for all search channels are already well-positioned to capture search traffic regardless of ad changes to the SERPs: if SEO growth slows, then PLA and paid search growth speeds up. As real estate for one channel shrinks, real estate for others grows.”

If you’d like to learn more about PPC services for your law firm, or if you want to get in touch with us and chat, we’re here. 

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