Presenting the most crucial information first makes it easier for your web visitors to consume and experience your site.
Any law firm that wants to be more discoverable should have a website. A website serves as the firm’s online headquarters, which people can visit when looking for a law firm online.
With that in mind, your website is like the first representative of your law firm that a potential client encounters. You want to ensure you leave a positive impression as much as possible. Here are some of the best web design practices you can apply to your law firm’s website.
1. Keep the design simple
Avoid going too wild with the design when designing your law firm’s website. Sytian Productions web developer Philippines says your law firm will look more professional and reliable with a simple web design.
How your website looks at first glance, regardless of its content, will be the impression your website visitors leave with. While there’s no harm in color and vibrancy, sometimes, too many visual elements can make your website look like it’s not from a law firm.
The key here is to choose colors and stick to them. Only have a few animations or graphics. If you select images, images of the lawyers in your law firm are a great choice since they show the people working there.
That said, just because you’re a law firm doesn’t mean that your website is supposed to be gray and drab. Again, it’s about a careful coalition between colors and your branding to communicate a personality without leaving behind professionalism. Incorporating color is the best way to keep things clean and simple.
2. Highlight your services on your home page
It would help if you didn’t make your website visitors have difficulty finding the legal services you offer. If it’s harder to see the services you provide on your website, your website users might leave before they even find them.
The key here is to have your main navigation menu readily viewable by keeping it classic and at the top of your web pages. You can then add a Services menu where your web visitors can check through a dropdown menu some of the specializations your law firm offers. That way, they can discern whether your law firm can help them.
These Services pages showcase your experience, previous client case studies, and general knowledge of these specializations.
Since most people looking up your services have issues with the law, they want to see information quickly and clearly. That’s why you want your Services page to be as straightforward as possible.
3. Have clear CTAs
Your website is a great way to get some leads, but the ultimate goal will always be a conversion. In this case, your goal as a law firm is to obtain a new client to sign on with you. Given that reason, your calls-to-action (CTAs) should keep that in mind and make it consistent across most of your website.
While your website’s CTA doesn’t necessarily have to be for them to sign on as your new client automatically, you can get your website’s CTA to be something that can bring your leads close to it.
A good CTA, for example, would be for you to get them to schedule a consultation with you. When a potential client has been through a consultation with you, the likelier they are to sign you on to represent them.
Sometimes, the CTA can also depend on the webpage. For example, your Contact Us page might have CTAs different from those of your different Services subpages. It would be good if the CTAs were straightforward and didn’t conflict on one webpage.
4. Have a visual hierarchy in mind
Visual hierarchy determines what your web visitors will look at when they land on your website. Understanding how that plays into what messages are most likely to register with your potential clients can help you determine how to rank the web elements and create a compelling visual hierarchy.
Your best service offer or the benefit you offer to your potential clients should be the first thing you communicate to your web visitors upon landing on your site. Your firm name and logo can then come after in terms of visual hierarchy to let people know about your reputable law firm.
5. Display reviews and social proofs
One of the most persuasive elements of your website, which can convince a potential client to hire you as a lawyer, is the social proof on your site.
If you get customer testimonials and positive reviews and highlight them on your website, it can let your potential clients know that you’ve got the experience to handle their cases. It can also let them know how pleasant you are to work with, which is much harder to find out about since that’s a little more subjective.
It’s a good idea to update your website every time you get new clients and successfully close their cases, as the more recent your examples, the more convincing they can be.
6. Showcase honors and badges earned
If you have it, flaunt it. The same applies to your law firm’s website.
If you ever win an achievement or award that deserves the limelight, highlight it wherever applicable to your website.
It doesn’t have to be a big banner of your award showcased in your hero section. Some law firms put the subtitles in small font, “Winner of the Blank Award 20xx.”
When adding these badges or awards to your website, consider adding a no-follow link, as this can be an excellent way for your website visitors to verify your claims of receiving said award.
7. Prioritize easy-to-use navigation
As mentioned earlier, you want to make the user experience as transparent and straightforward as possible. Legal trouble can weigh a lot on someone’s mind, so when they’re looking for the help of a lawyer, they want the search to be as quick as possible.
Given that point, you want to create a website with easy-to-use navigation. Again, having a prominent navigation menu is immensely helpful with that. Don’t hide it away. Don’t make fancy animations that make finding the navigation menu harder.
Also, keeping essential web pages on the navigation menu is part of making your website easy to navigate.
Adding a search function to your website makes it much easier for users to find what they need. They can type in a term to see the results.
8. Implement a mobile-friendly design
So many people navigate the Internet and look things up on their phones. Therefore, when a potential lead lands on your website, they view it on their phone.
If you prepare for that, your website will look smooth and load fast enough for their patience. If it does load, formatting can look off, making your website hard to read. That’s why, as you’re designing your website, make sure that it can adapt to the device on which the person viewing the website is.
9. Design for accessibility
When you improve your website design’s accessibility to accommodate people with different abilities as much as possible, you’re not only making your website better for them. Overall, user experience improves for everyone else as well.
By making your website more accessible, it becomes easier for people from different backgrounds to look through your law firm’s website.
Some web design changes you can make to improve accessibility are reducing the amount of scrolling your web pages need, adding alt text for necessary images, video captioning, using headers to break up content, and more.
10. Create above-the-fold content
Above-the-fold content refers to the main chunk of content visible to your web users without scrolling down further.
Your most essential information should either compel your web visitors to scroll down or should make them know what your web page is about immediately with just that content.
Presenting the most crucial information first makes it easier for your web visitors to consume and experience your site.
11. Enhance the loading speed of your pages
It takes just a millisecond too long for a web visitor to leave your website out of impatience. That’s why you should optimize your website’s loading speed.
Having a reliable website host provider can help with that. Another aspect would be reducing website elements that take too long to load.
By making your website load fast, you can avoid losing clients simply because your website is too slow.
Conclusion
Remember these tips if you plan on designing your law firm’s website. Your website can be fully functional, visually appealing, and professional. It’s a great way to reassure potential clients of your capabilities to help with their cases through your website.
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