Top 10 Things Your Customers Expect

Posted on April 6, 2011 by adminlaw

Here it goes. Here’s what your customers need to see on your website.

  1. Use Standard Design Conventions – Boring, but it’s near the top of the list. Don’t try and go funky with your design with some circular rotating icon list that spirals away from the screen when you mouse over it. Stick with how people are used to finding information on the web. Don’t make them have to try and figure out how to use your site.
  2. Easy to Read – Kind of like above. Black backgrounds with green text make people want to tear their eyes out of their sockets. Use concise text, and keep it actually readable, but don’t bury them in words. They want information, not a book.
  3. Easy to Find Practice Areas – Surprising how many law firms actually make this hard to find. It’s the number one thing your potential customers want to know. Where you practice and what you specialize in. Your law firm website should be in html, and easily readable, with pictures or stock photos. Don’t upload a 40 meg PDF of your printable brochure. People hate that. Have it be easily seen on your home page, in your navigation, and have it be in quick loading html.
  4. Readily Available Biographies – Again if you have attorneys don’t hide them. Make them easy to see and find on the front page, and easy to deal with when people meet or call them.
  5. Address, Map and Contact Information – This is actually the second thing people say they want, after the practice areas. To actually FIND WHERE YOU ARE! Why would you make this more complicated. Address, Google map. Phone number. Don’t bury em. Make it easy to see where you’re at.
  6. Accurate Information – People also want to confirm you’re open, so have your hours of operation on your website but make sure they’re accurate. Nothing will make someone more angry than reading information on your site and having it be wrong.
  7. Hours of Operation – So yeah, I mention that it needs to be accurate but people want to know when you’re open.
  8. iPhone/iPad compatibility - This should read a) no flash sites and b) test them on the iPhone and iPad. We do both. People are gonna look you up, and then click on your website, and you sure as heck want someone who is in need and walking / driving  or in lock-up around your neighborhood to be able to see your website
  9. Usable Events Calendar - This is more for places that actually have events, speeches, meet-ups like entrepreneur workshops. If you have this stuff on a calendar, it needs to be easy to use, easy to read, and have accurate information. Don’t bury it, and don’t ignore it. An empty events calendar is a great way to turn someone off.
  10. Web -> Real Life Synch – If you use any contact forms or free consultation forms, then you need to actually use it. People don’t like to contact you or request a consultation, and then call up your law firm and have you go “huh? wha?”. If you’re going to put something up on the web, you need to support it in real life.

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LinkedIn For Lawyers

Posted on March 28, 2011 by adminlaw

For months, we have been working with different lawyers and law firms. To my surprise not many are using LinkedIn, and the ones that do barely put in any information. One attorney didn’t put in anything more than his name and email address.
If your goal is to make it easy for clients to find your firm and learn more about your services, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool:

  • It strengthens and extends your existing network of trusted contacts;·
  • Allows your contacts to help you with testimonials;
  • Allows your contacts to forward your LinkedIn profile to their connections; and
  • Creates power search engine links back to your website.

Your law firm website design is a presentation of your firm’s assets and capabilities and should answer all the questions a potential client may have. LinkedIn gives potential clients a way to see what others think of you or your firm. You have complete control over who you are connected to and who recommends you. If you don’t like a recommendation one of your colleagues writes, you may choose not to add it to your public profile.

In your business network you likely have business associates that recommend you and that you recommend to others; maybe your accountant or bookkeeper or a lawyer in a different field. The people who recommend you on LinkedIn don’t necessarily need to be past clients. They can and should be the people you trust most and who trust you.
Give LinkedIn a try – the worst thing that can come of it is a higher ranking website linking to your firm’s website. Which is always a good thing.

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Pinkham Busny’s New Website Is Live!

Posted on November 22, 2010 by adminlaw

Pinkham Busny came to us a few months ago looking to have a more professional looking website. Within a month we launched Pinkham’s new look with:

  • Numerous new pages
  • Practice Areas listed on multiple pages with a summaries page improving client usability
  • Successes listed by practice area on multiple pages
  • Cross site searching by potential clients
  • Non-Flash front slider featuring main practice areas
  • Phone friendly site design usable on all smart phones
  • New map with directions from Google maps
  • Detailed biography pages for attorneys
  • Google analytics installed and tracking client website use, site analytics will be reviewed and site changed based on activity.
  • Site has been added to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools both sites have crawled Pinkham Busny’s site and its being listed.

The Pinkham Busny law firm is located in Woburn, MA.

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The Value of a Good Law Firm Website

Posted on October 16, 2010 by adminlaw

One of the most important things we need to do is prove the value of our products. If you don’t see the value in something you won’t pay for it. People don’t blink at spending $400 for an iPhone but hesitate to spend 99 cents on an App for it. They see the value of the phone itself, but not necessarily that of the App. People judge value constantly when they consume products and services, and a lower price doesn’t necessarily sell someone. However people are very good at looking at at similar item and seeing the differences in value.

Say your Uncle was charged with a felony crime he didn’t commit. One that could put him behind bars for a significant amount of time. You need a criminal attorney, and you do some searching online, and talk to some people. Everyone recommends this one lawyer downtown. He charges $1000 an hour, but he’s supposedly the best at what he does. If you also found an $100 an hour lawyer, someone with far less experience and testimonials, would you question spending the $1000 on the best attorney in town? “Why on earth would I spend $1000 an hour on that guy, when this other guy is $100 an hour?”

The person focused on price is missing the value that the higher priced lawyer brings.  The difference is your Uncle going free and vindicated, or languishing in prison for 20 years. The more expensive lawyers add value over the cheaper ones, far making up for the price difference. Cheap is rarely good. Good is rarely cheap.

It’s the same thing with our products. “Why should I pay you guys $250 a month, when I can go to X and get a website for $25?” The answer is that we provide a much higher value and level of service than you would for the $25. The websites we provide people are far more than 10 times superior to a $25 website, in many ways.

We offer:

  • custom high quality law firm specific design,
  • based on your business and our process,
  • this is not a generic template.

This is important because it helps set you apart from your competition visually. People refer your firm for great services you have done for them, and the people they refer look at your website.   If they have done there homework and gotten more than one referral.  Who are they going to call first? They are going to call the one with the nicer website.

In addition we provide a tremendous amount of additional functionality specifically targeted to your law practice:

  • change your content yourself whenever you want (without having to wait for someone to respond to your phone call or email).
  • Your site comes with an internal search feature allowing potential clients to get to inform about your firms attorneys and practice areas quickly.
  • Your lawyers can have profile pages that they’re able to control. You can have simple or in-depth information.
  • Your practice areas are organized with customers in mind, so they can easily see what your firm offers and access more in depth information about your services.

All this gives you a much bigger ROI than by getting a site that does nothing, from a company that provides you no specific guidance.

Also we provide personal support. We are there to guide you every step of the way by phone and email (and sometimes even in person) to help you make the most of your website. It’s in our interest for you to not only quickly see the value of the website, but realize that it’s actually a steal for you. We want you to feel that the money you spend with us on your website is the best money you can spend.

If you’re still not sure exactly how we can help your business, or what it’ll mean for your bottom line, we urge you to email or call us at (339) 707-0287. We’d love to talk with you.

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Web Design Matters

Posted on October 6, 2010 by adminlaw

When a lawyer or law firm is looking to construct a website, they have a number of questions to ask themselves, and choices to make. Unfortunately, they often ask the wrong questions and make the wrong choices.

Before and After new law firm website design

One of the first bad questions is “Do we need a website?”. Of course, I’m biased in this matter, but with reason. I have the facts on my side. Yes you need a website. Over 90% of your potential customers look for goods and services online as their primary method. To not have a website, and expect to get customers is a bit of a stretch these days. It was different 10 years ago, but today? Things have changed. Even if you hope for referrals to hear about your firm, one of the first things those people will do is look for your website. If you don’t have a website you’ll be seen as illegitimate. What sort of law firm doesn’t have a website? If someone asked you to consider their product or service, and you asked them what their web address was, and they said they don’t have one, and they were using a yahoo.com email address, would you give them the time of day? It’s unprofessional to not have one.

Yes, you need a website. Yes, you need a domain of your own. Yes, you need an email with that domain name on the end of your email.

After that comes another bad question: “Why do we have to spend any money? Get a $5 site from Godaddy.” Again, I’m biased by the facts, but think about it yourself. Someone is looking for a lawyer, they have a website address and everything. They look at it and it’s a plain page, with a phone number on it. Maybe a home page on a generic template, no logo, no real content, an about us page, and a contact page. Maybe a poorly placed photograph that’s completely unrelated to what you thought the business was, or some stock photo….Are you going to contact that lawyer? Most people won’t. They’ll bounce, ie they’ll leave your site as soon as they got there.

The bounce rate of a website should as close to 20% as you can. You MIGHT get lower, but you can’t expect to. 20% is about the base of people going somehwere they didn’t want to go. If you’re looking at a 40% bounce rate on people coming to your site, that means 1 in 5 people might actually have come to you for legiitimate reasons, but left immediately. Why? One of the main reasons is design. People see the website, think it looks bad, or unprofessional, or illegitimate, or confusing, and they’re gone.

And even after people don’t bounce, a bad web design can harm you. Often people need to be convinced to buy something, and a poor website is no way to convince people. If you need to choose between two or three lawyers or law firms, and one is well designed, professional, with in depth articles and a knoweldge base on the legal issues you’re facing, and the other websites are 3 pages of static plain generic content, which one are you more likely to choose to meet with? If you’re the only lawyer in your specialty within 100 miles then maybe it doesn’t matter, but most lawyers have competition. Alot of competition. Your potential clients need incentive, and a poor website will incentivize them to keep their money in their pockets or give it to someone else.

High quality web design is very important. The design has to be appropriate to your club, your character, who you are, and be visually pleasing, and designed with usability studies in mind, so that you keep your bounce rate low, and have a better chance at capturing new customers. On top of that it needs to continue to be good, and to grab the user, so that they see your businessl as looking good, professional, high quality.

A low quality looking site says you’re low quality. A high quality looking site says you’re high quality. (A non-existant site says you don’t exist)

A cheap template design, on a low functioning website is essentially asking to lose half your prospects within minutes of seeing your site. 20% or more will bounce immedately, with the same, or double to bounce within minutes, never to return.

oLawoffice offers each of our clients a custom high quality web design made specifically for their law firm. One that keeps usability and conversions in mind, to help make your business successfull, and to not send people away as soon as they come in your doors.

Does your law firm need a website? Yes. Does it need to be high quality? Yes. How do we get that for a reasonable cost? oLawoffice.

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