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As a law firm, having an impressive website is essential. Whether you run a personal injury law firm or practice family law, your website is often the first impression potential clients get of your firm. It should convey professionalism, trustworthiness, and a commitment to client service. Designing a website for a law firm can be a challenging undertaking, but it can also be very rewarding in the long term.
In this guide, we'll discuss what makes a great law firm website, the benefits, the latest design trends, and essential elements that should be included. We'll also provide a three-step plan for creating an effective and engaging website and share examples of the best law firm websites so you can have the full picture. If you are wanting to get an idea of the cost of law firm website design, just ask our friendly team.
What is a Law Firm Website?
A law firm website is a website designed specifically for a law firm or law office. It typically contains information about the firm, its services, and contact details. It is also used as an online marketing tool to attract more clients and build relationships with existing ones.
The main purpose of a law firm's website is to provide visitors with information about the firm, its services, and its attorneys or team members. It should also be used to showcase the firm's expertise, answer common questions, and provide visitors with informative content about your specific area of practice.
The design of a law firm website should be professional and reflect the firm's brand. It should also be user-friendly and easy to navigate so that visitors can find the information they need quickly and without hassle.
Benefits of Great Lawyer Website Design
Having a great website can be a major asset for your law firm. A well-designed website can help your firm stand out from the competition, increase visibility, and attract more clients. Here are just some of the benefits of having a great law firm website:
Increased Visibility:
A great website can help to increase visibility and ensure more potential clients find your law firm. It can also help with search engine optimization so you can rank higher in search results.
Improved Brand Reputation:
A well-designed website will be aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. This makes a great first impression on visitors and demonstrates that you uphold high standards for your firm. You can also use your website to provide valuable content that showcases your expertise. This is a great way to build trust with your customers and demonstrate that you are an authority in your field.
Establishes Authority:
Having a website is essential for any business looking to establish authority in the market. Think of it as the digital version of your storefront. It's the first thing people will see when searching for your business, and you want it to be attractive and up-to-date. A professional website design also helps to build brand authority and recognition.
Generates Leads:
Law firm websites can generate leads and more potential clients. Having a high-quality website design will also help search engines to recognise your firm as the best choice for people browsing around. The better the website, the higher the chances of collecting a consistent flow of leads.
Law Firm Website Design Trends
It's essential to stay up to date with the latest design trends. Here are some of the most popular law firm website design trends:
Minimalist Design:
Minimalist design is a popular trend for law firm websites. It is a clean, modern design that emphasizes usability and simplicity. This design style helps draw the user's attention to the most important elements of the website and avoids clutter.
Responsive Design:
Responsive design is essential for law firm websites. It ensures that the website looks great on any device and provides an optimal user experience.
Mobile-Friendly Design:
Mobile-friendly design is another must-have for law firm websites. It ensures that the website looks great and functions correctly on all mobile devices.
High-Quality Images:
High-quality images can help to give your website a professional and trustworthy look. It's important to use images that are relevant to your services, and that represent your firm in the best light.
Video Content:
Video content is becoming increasingly popular for law firm websites. It is a great way to engage potential clients and demonstrate your expertise. Video content can include customer testimonies or explainer videos.
Essential Elements For A Law Firm Website
When designing a website for a law firm, there are certain elements that should be included. Some of the best law firm websites can create great visitor experiences and build rapport almost instantly. Here are some of the essential elements:
Homepage:
The homepage of your website should be the first page a potential client sees. It should provide an overview of your services and help visitors find the information they need. Having a high-quality "header", which is the very first part of your homepage, can lead to more leads being collected and having your visitors actually scroll down. Some website designs may focus on the rest of the page and miss that essential first impression, which causes high bounce rates.
About Us Page:
An About Us page is essential for establishing trust and building relationships with potential clients. It should provide information about the firm, its services, and the attorneys that clients may be working with.
Practice Area Pages:
A services page is essential for providing visitors with information about the services you offer. It should provide details about the services and demonstrate your expertise. Make sure you include as much detail as possible, and if it starts to look crowded you can just add a frequently asked questions section.
Contact Page:
A dedicated page just for contact details is essential for providing visitors with a way to contact the firm. It should include all the firm's details and a form that someone needs to get in touch.
Blog:
A blog is a great way to showcase your legal expertise and provide visitors with valuable information. It can also help to boost your search engine rankings and generate more leads. If you do create a blog page, make sure to add content consistently so visitors and search engines alike can verify your currency.
Ethical considerations when marketing your law firm website
Marketing your legal practice with your website gives you huge opportunities. As a lawyer, you must ensure that your law firm conducts its marketing strategy in an ethical manner. Identify the regulations in your legal industry area and refer to the standards set forth by the American Bar Association, Bar Council or the Australian Bar Association as a guideline. So you can remain ethical and grow your firm while maintaining the same standards as your colleagues.
Step 1: Research – The Who, What And Why Of Your Law Firm Website Design
Who is the target audience for your new website?
Knowing your target audience will help you decide the type of content to be included on your website, the design of your website, and the kind of language you use. Whether you have a new business or an established firm, you know what audience you serve.
The best law firm websites are designed so that people get the information they need, positions your firm as the authority figure and gives visitors a way to take the next step. The right design, easy-to-understand content, and tone of voice will help you reach the right people, even if they don’t know that your website exists yet.
What services do you provide?
The next important thing to consider while creating your website is what services you provide. This is something that you can use on your service pages as well as on your "About Us" page.
By giving users a clear list of services and practice areas, describing them in detail and providing an easy way to book that service or consultation, you can rest assured that they will pick you. Before we design websites, we often conduct competitive reviews and often find very brief pages, which causes the visitors to leave the page to find something more detailed.
Why does your law firm exist?
Every business exists for a reason. Your website is the best place to tell people about your business. You can use your website to create and strengthen your brand and explain what problems your firm solves and what value you bring to your customers.
For example, your law firm might exist to provide a specific solution to common problems or a wide range of services. Your website should showcase that your law firm is the best solution.
How can your Law Firms Website Design stand out from the crowd?
After you have identified your target audience, what services you provide, and what makes your firm unique, the next thing is ensuring that it stands out from the crowd. How can you ensure that your website is functional and stands out from the clutter?
Choose the right platform (Or web designer):
There are many website-building platforms to help you create a website. But the question is, which one should you use? If you want to create a website for your law firm yourself, we recommend using Wix or WordPress. The first option is more manageable for first-time website designers and offers great functionality. In contrast, the second option provides more customisation and is a bit harder to grasp.
Be consistent:
Consistency is key when it comes to branding and design. Once you have created a style that represents your brand, use it throughout your entire project. Brand aspects can include font, colours, logos, and imagery.
Keep it simple:
A cluttered website is a turn-off for most people. Keep your website simple and clutter-free to make it easy for your visitors to navigate through it. Visitors love the look of modern websites.
Keep your content fresh:
The Internet moves fast. New websites pop up daily with new content, styles, and features. If you want your website to stay relevant and keep your target audience engaged, you need to refresh your content often.
Remember that your website is an investment. Creating a website will take time and effort, but it will pay off in the long run. A well-designed website can help you grow your law firm generate leads and increase sales with online marketing. A website can be your 24/7 salesperson and help you reach your ideal prospective client without lifting a finger.
Your attorney website must be well-designed and readable. You want a website that keeps your site visitors' attention long enough to convince them to contact you.
Step 2 – Designing And Building Your Law Firm Website
Once you have gathered your research, you can do one of two things, create the website yourself or have a web designer do it for you.
The process is mostly the same, and the only difference will be the time spent - much longer if you are doing it yourself and learning the basics, and within around 4-6 weeks for a professional web designer to make a fully custom website.
Define your goals – Leads, Bookings Or Calls?
Before you even start creating your website, you need to define your goals. What is the purpose of your website? What do you want your target audience to do on your website? By clearly defining your goals, you can focus on the correct elements. It will make your website more effective, with each element supporting your overall goal. For example, if your goal is to get more calls to your business, you should design the website by including clear CTA (Calls to Action), such as buttons for phone calls and placing these all around your design.
If your goal is to get people to book a service or consultation, you will need to design a booking system and explain the booking process throughout your website. To research these goals' small differences in design, look at some competitor accounting websites. The best law firm websites nowadays have a mix of all of these goals, while unsuccessful ones appear to have no goals at all.
Create your Design Mock-up
Once you have set your goals and have all the information from analysing your audience, it is time to create a mockup. Creating a mockup is the first step in creating a high-converting website. Why? Because it is the visual representation of your goals. It is the skeleton of your website. A mockup can be sketched on paper or made in web design software.
However, you must choose the right design and colour palette for your website. A neutral colour palette is excellent for websites that appeal to a wide range of audiences. Blue or Grey palettes are popular for law firm websites because they can signify trust and a serious approach to their work. You can use competitor research to get an idea of the structure of your website.
Something you want to avoid is reinventing the wheel in terms of design because visitors already have an expectation of how a website should look, operate and respond. Make sure to include a professional photo at every stage of your design, and make your practice area clear and informative.
The goal should be to create a simple and high-converting website, not an artistic interpretation of what law firm sites should look like.
Build your Law Firm website on a platform of your choice
Now that you have a design mock-up and clearly defined goals, it is time to build your website. Choosing the right platform to build your website is crucial. There are many different website builders on the market, and deciding which one to use can be confusing!
The best law firm website builders:
WIX
Wix is one of the most popular website builders on the market. It is perfect for creating service business websites and for lawyer websites. It has a range of features, such as lead generation forms, booking integration and chatbots, that are readily available.
We build most of our client's websites through Wix, especially if they want to be able to make updates and changes themselves later on. The only downside to building a website on your own is that if you don't have a lot of knowledge about design and layouts, you will have to use ready-made templates, which are limited in terms of customisation.
WordPress
WordPress is the original website-building platform, with hundreds of thousands of options for plug-ins, customisation and various capabilities. It works great for a law firm website. The downsides are the additional costs of hosting, which you have to pay to keep your website live. And the additional charges of plug-ins are required to make the website convert visitors into leads and clients. You will also have a steep learning curve unless you add on a website builder like Elementor (Add more costs)
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is another simple website builder with drag-and-drop capabilities; it is constantly improving. However, it is not as customisable or conversion driven as the other options. If you want a simple, elegant design for your law firms website, then this is the option to pick.
Squarespace
Squarespace is great for building sleek websites fast. However, it currently lacks the extensive library of plug-ins and features that other website builders do. This is perfect for small law firms wanting an entry-level website.
Elementor
This is an additional plug-in for easier website development on WordPress; it has a free option that gives you the essential tools you need. For more comprehensive features, you will have to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
Duda
Duda is also an excellent option for small law firms, and it offers plenty of advanced features that will help you make a great-looking website.
Step 3 – Testing and Improving Your Law Firm's Website With Key Performance Indicators
Once you have created a website, it is essential to test its effectiveness. You don’t want to create a website and just leave it running without making tweaks and changes to improve it.
Websites are ever-evolving, so once you have completed your website, you must make tweaks and changes as you learn more about your audience. This way, you can improve your conversion rates!
There are many ways to test your website and gather the data you need to improve it. The best law firm websites constantly run A/B tests, experiment with content, or even survey their audience. You can also use website analytics to see what your users are doing on your site and where they are dropping off.
Key Performance Indicators for The Best Law Firm Websites
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is determined by dividing the number of single-page sessions by the overall number of sessions on a website. For example, your website's bounce rate would be 15% if 100 visitors visited it (total sessions), and 15 left without making any more requests (single-page sessions).
Conversion Rate
Divide the number of goals (link clicks, leads submitted, bookings) attained in a certain amount of time by the total number of website visits, then multiply the result by 100 to get your conversion rate. Therefore, if 1,000 of the 10,000 visitors to your website complete the required action, your conversion rate is 10.00%.
Website Speed
Speedier pages are more effective and offer a far better on-page user experience, so both visitors and Google choose them over their slower competitors. If a website loads slowly (more than 3-5 seconds), more than 25% of users would leave and select a different search result. This number increases with every second of loading that a visitor has to endure.
Total Sales/Revenue Generated
It's always good to track total sales made directly from your website to have accurate data regarding the return your website provides for your firm. If your website hasn't made any sales for you yet, it's time to get a new one.
Time On Page
The time on a web page between when a visitor first arrives and when they leave to see another is known as the time-on-page. This is important to monitor because it can uncover issues with loading times, content or the offer you showcase on your website. The longer a visitor spends on your website, the better.
Leads Collected
This is a simple one, but you should monitor it. Leads are the lifeblood of any law firm, and having a website that brings them to you consistently is always the goal. The best law firm websites can serve as a consistent revenue source, so it's definitely worth investigating.
A Few Tips On Getting More Leads For Your Law Firm
Several factors decide the number of leads your law firm website will receive, some of which you can control and others that you can't. Once you have designed your website and launched it, you should ask people to check it for you and answer a few simple questions.
Your visitors should be able to answer four questions within 3 seconds of landing on your website: Does this law firm provide the services I require? Does this law firm service my area? How can I get in touch with this law firm? Why should I hire this law firm over other lawyers?
If all those questions are answered, you can move on to adding these additional tools to improve lead generation. These tips focus on simple marketing and psychological elements people want to see before taking action, like trust, clarity and convenience.
Use professional photography
It is not advisable to take photographs yourself (Unless you're a pro!). Besides being informative, you have to use relevant photographs to increase your visitors' engagement on your website and to also increase credibility. Think about hiring a professional photographer who can capture your law firm in the best light.
Watch your load times
Today's website users expect fast loading speeds. Load speeds can have all kinds of effects: from conversion and bounce rates to search engine ranking benefits so your website can get more traffic. You must check the speed of your website, both for a desktop and a mobile device, every time you add new content. The best law firm websites in today's top-ranking spots have load speeds of less than 3 seconds.
Embrace the power of videos
Videos can benefit your website in a number of ways, including increasing time on page, conversion rates and increase visitor trust. In addition to this, videos can convey the brand and approach your firm has to your legal area of practice. You can also include previous client testimonies or case studies.
Make your Calls To Action very clear.
You can start to see an increase in leads by making it clear to your visitors how they can take the next step and creating an enticing graphic, button or text for them to take action, like calling your firm, filling out a form or chatting with a customer service representative. You can also offer a free consultation as an option for your website visitors (These can greatly increase lead generation, everyone loves a freebie).
Some websites overlook this extremely simple aspect and make users scroll or look around their website for that next step; this, in turn, causes a higher bounce rate and fewer leads and bookings.
Your law firm web design should provide multiple ways for users to get in touch with your firm and take that next step:
1. A visible phone number that is Click-To-Call (Especially on mobiles)
2. Web forms located on every page (And a button on your Header)
3. Booking options with simple steps
4. Buttons placed at the end of descriptions or service details to book or enquire
Add Reviews and Social Proof.
Everyone wants to work with a law firm that is well-respected in the community and is rated highly amongst its previous customers. You should showcase any awards, association memberships, recognition, and accreditations your law firm has received, especially actual clients reviews.
All your website visitors want to see is that you are qualified, professional and can be trusted to help them in the legal world (Which is oftentimes quite intimidating for them). The data below shows that around 9 out of every ten people consider reviews before making a purchase.
You can also link through your Google My Business reviews straight to your website to add an extra layer of trust. Have some testimonial videos? Add those too! You should add as many social proofs and reviews as possible to increase your law firm marketing and lead generation efforts.
Add a Chat Bot to your website.
Chatbots are not new, but many websites still haven't incorporated them. They can provide several lead-generating benefits, including answering customers' frequently asked questions quicker, qualifying leads, and acting as a 24/7 sales representative for your law firm.
Have you ever been on a website and wanted to know something quickly? This is where chatbots can shine and take the place of slower communication methods like an enquiry form or a long wait on the phone. They can also help to fill your pipeline with more qualified leads. Including these little gems on your law firm website can increase your conversion rates by double digits.
Keep your forms short.
You should consider several factors when deciding between form and enquiry sizes. Some law firms keep it extremely short with just "Name", "Phone", and "Email" fields, and this is perfect if you want to receive a large number of leads. If you require more information to service your clients, you can add more fields or make a simple booking form with apps like Calendly or Wix Bookings.
The more fields potential leads have to fill out, the more likely they will leave your site. More often than not, you can collect a few simple details and simply discuss more details over the phone directly with the lead.
Examples Of Great Law Firm Websites Design
When it comes to law firm websites, it's essential to keep up with the latest trends and learn from the best. Here are some examples of the best law firm websites:
- Kennedys Law: The Kennedys Law utilises a high-quality video header and a simple minimalist design that emphasizes usability and simplicity.
- MinterEllison: MinterEllison has a bright, modern and professional design. The website clearly conveys who they serve and their expertise in the area with a large number of blog posts.
- Landers&Rogers: Landers & Rogers has a very modern and clean-looking design; they utilise professional images that take advantage of their geographical area beauty. The header slider also helps visitors get the information they need, including the different services this firm offers and other helpful items.
- Dechert: The Dechert website utilises a unique side menu and scrolling function and also features current news releases and articles that showcase their expertise. The website has prominent social proof in the form of awards and client reviews.
Law firm SEO: The key to driving traffic to your law firm website
What is search engine optimization? Law Firm SEO is a complex art and is essentially focused on increasing traffic to law firms' websites and improving the site rank on Google search engines.
Law Firm Web Design Services
Creating an excellent website for a law firm yourself can be a challenging undertaking, but it doesn't have to be. We can create a modern and excellent-looking website excellent for your firm. Our services include professional website design, content creation, and SEO optimization to ensure your law firms website is effective and engaging.
We can also do a FREE market and competitor analysis to find the demand within your geographical area and give you a plan to a high-converting website.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does every lawyer have a website?
Most law firm's websites are owned or managed by law companies. It can be hard to get an exact figure on the amount of lawyers that aren't online. Even solo attorneys can benefit from having their own website, including helping to establish credibility amongst their prospective clients or making it easy for their existing clients to book legal services.
What should be on a law firm's website?
The firm's website should contain information about its practice area, services and details for visitors to get in touch with the firm. The contents of a website can change depending on what it is used for, whether it is a single landing page for a marketing campaign or a lead generation campaign for prospective clients.
How much does a law firm web design cost?
If you have a small law firm with only a few services and want a simple website to collect leads, you can budget around $2500-$4000+. This will usually include everything you need to achieve your goals in a neat, presentable website.
Suppose you have a large or boutique corporate law firm or are planning on expanding your current business and need a more customised solution (One that includes specific landing pages or bookings and advanced Customer Relationship Manager tools). In that case, you should budget anywhere from $4000-$5000+. A high-converting and software-infused website is an investment and can save you time and money in the long run, especially with a booking platform.
The best law firm websites can go up in cost if you need a web designer to produce the sales copy or search engine friendly text content on the page. This involves a deep dive into competitors, analytics and more to discover what will convert the most visitors to leads and then to paying clients for your law firm.
Is website design important for Law Firms?
There are plenty of reasons why website design is essential for lawyers. One of the main reasons is that a good law firm website will add credibility to your business. In today’s highly competitive world, you will most likely have other service providers that are similar to you, whether they are personal injury law firms or divorce law.
To stand out, you need a high-converting website. It allows you to get more leads, builds your brand and authority, and cements you as the number-one service provider in your area.
Without a website, people may question your legitimacy as a business. Law firm and attorney websites can convey a brand and instantly lead to higher-paying clients and more of them.
The best law firm websites can also serve as a 24/7 salesperson. It’s easy to add updates and special offers and outline your services in detail so you can spend more time on the phone organising the job and getting paid.