Website features for Law Firm
Do you have a website for your law firm? A website can be effective in attracting new customers in this new age of easily accessible internet, and your website should be sharing the workload as much as possible. We’ve analysed several simple features for your law firm website to attract potential customers online.
Building Trust Virtually
The first thing you want to achieve through your law firm website with your visitors is to build a good sense of trust and a professional image. Everything else would be built on top of this foundation at a later stage.
Detailed Attorney Profiles
Introducing your attorneys and lawyers on the website is a common practice, but there are some details you might need to double check. Generally, there is a brief introduction of their contacts information like email and phone number, the fields they specialise in, their education and experiences, and office hours. Showing a head-shot portrait in formal wears will enhance the image of proficient and polished.
Other than personal details, visitors might want to dig deeper into their individual experience and achievements. Adding links to previous successful cases also help to gives a better description to their portfolio. If there are news clippings about said cases would be even more convincing. If it suits with your law firm’s image, you can include their LinkedIn pages, where interested visitors can connect with them on another platform if they wish.
Law Firm's Past Successful Cases Studies
As we mentioned above, past successes are likely to persuade visitors in choosing to do business with you. Organising previously won cases into one place in your law firm website, and categorise them according to fields you wish to serve in, help visitors search for similar cases as theirs. You can also cross-link these successful cases to their responsible attorney or lawyer, which assist visitors in keeping track of who they are interested to contact or work with.
It is ideal to use news clippings in section like this, as it shows the cases are newsworthy and gained public interest and better portrait you as an experienced professional.
Well-rounded Client Testimonials
Currently in Hong Kong, a lot of potential customers chooses a law firm to work with based on word-of-mouth. Understanding this behaviour, it is a good idea to include clients testimonials on your law firm website.
While winning cases gives you the best impression and comments, other aspects of the business relationship also adds a cherry on top: They can give their thoughts on the communication process between individuals and the company, personal values like patience and tardiness. Reviews can range from a few sentences to several short paragraphs. Include customer’s name, photo or occupation whenever possible to increase persuasiveness.
Jargon-free Contents Tailored for Beginners
A good law firm website act as more than a introduction to your company, but also a gateway to the entirety of legal procedures. On that note, you can get creative and come up with different contents to educate your visitors on your expertise. Keep in mind that they are beginners in the field, and do not understand the big words; keeping the content jargon free would be essential to helping them absorb knowledge and staying on your website longer.
One format of content is to use lead them through a certain legal process. They might have gone through accidents or starting up a business, and are stuck somewhere in complicated process of applications and declarations. You can assist their process, by listing out points of attention and tips on a landing page dedicated to certain legal procedures.
When there are jargons or standard terms used, you can consider using a glossary page to explain keywords to visitors, assisting them in understanding the legal terms and prepare them for upcoming documents that will likely include the same vocabularies.
Other than written formats...
Sometimes heaps of paragraphs might be overwhelming to your visitors, and it is harder to avoid jargon using written expressions. You can consider summarising key points with photos or videos, info-graphics and charts or going through more complicated scenarios using webinars and podcasts to better illustrate your point.
You can apply the varying format ranging from explaining principles of your business, introducing the professionals, or educating on the basics of legal procedures.
Connecting with your visitors
One of the conversions you can do online, is to get contact details from general visitors, and connect with them on a person level.
Interactive Live Chat Box
Everybody wants immediate responses to their questions, and one way to satisfy their needs online is through providing Live Chat feature on your law firm website. While you might not be ready to respond to all incoming messages anytime, you can set up standard responses to some frequently asked questions, and let visitors know that you will get back to them in office hours. It would be the best if you can respond to the live chat during office hours personally, but using auto-reply answers helps take the workload during busy hours too.
On Lipsky Lowe LLP website, you can see that they indicate whether you are speaking with a representative or not in the live chat box.
Instinctive Contact Us forms
Some visitors might have a case with a bigger picture, or a complicated scenario that cannot be explained with a few sentences. Other than the live chat, you can consider upgrading your Contact Us page. You can reduce their effort of sending you a message, eliminating the extra effort of logging on their email and remembering your email address, and simplify the process by including a simple contact form on your Contact Us page. Visitors can fill in and send you their inquiry, and giving personal information allowing you to respond.
From YLAW Group’s example, we can see that other than the form, they also promise to respond within 24 hours after receiving any inquiry, giving visitors an approximate of when they can expect an answer. There are also individual contact methods for each attorney and lawyers.
Starting ground for the new age
As the consideration process of potential customers evolve, upgrading and transforming your firm's website to better suit the current trend and staying up-to-date with technology could be a differentiating factor between you and your competitors. A way to always stay on top is to experience your website from a visitor’s perspective: they are here the first time and do not know where the information they need are located. Always try to reduce their effort and shorten pathways between related contents by cross-linking pages.
Vision One Digital is a Digital Marketing Agency in Hong Kong. If you have any questions about digital marketing, feel free to comment below or drop us a line!