Your law firm’s website is like a door. If it is informative, responsive, and well-designed, chances are great that more and more clients are enticed to navigate it. Otherwise, it will drive them away before they even get to familiarize what you have to offer. How do you help your visitors and convert them to potential clients? The answer is simple. Identify the possible problems on your homepage that are driving away possible clients. Here are some of the most common issues with website home pages.
1. Potential Clients Don’t Know How You Help
Believe it or not, we all have short attention spans. If a website does not load within three seconds, we end up closing it. Even if your home page loads quickly, you have to grab their attention just as quickly.
Whenever potential clients visit your home page, they want to see what services you offer and what clients you help. If potential clients visit your website and they can’t tell whether you can help them, they are most likely going to leave. They would not hesitate to click that close button as they would rather search for more information on the web.
Therefore, you must have a website that tells potential clients right away what you do and how you help people. To stand out as the best law firm or the best criminal defense attorney, you have to show them what type of law you practice. If they are interested in the type of law you practice, they will stay. If you tell them that you are not the right type of law, they will leave, but they will silently thank you for the information by telling them upfront that you are not the right lawyer for them.
The content on your home page should be informative and capture their attention quickly without turning them to other sites.
2. Your Home Page Is Not Responsive
Because your law firm’s website is what visitors see first, you have to make it as engaging as possible. You must ensure there is nothing in it that could discourage your visitors.
- Navigation. If your site’s navigation is organized, potential clients can easily find solutions to their problems. They want to know where to find the information they seek. For example, if they want to know what services you provide, you should have a button that lists your services. These buttons should be found easily.
- Responsive. Almost everybody uses their laptops, tablets, and cell phones. That means you have to take advantage of that fact and make sure your law firm site’s home page is responsive on all types of devices. You don’t want people to keep on zooming in and out your home page just to find answers. Many sites look fine on a desktop, but they look tiny on a cell phone. You need a site that can convert to the size of the machine being used without you having to do anything special. The coding of your site should be able to do this.
- Contact Us. To make your law firm website’s home page effective, it is best that you put your contact information on the front. This is very important to boost your search engine optimization efforts, build credibility, build trust. Having a way to contact you on the front page also leads to more conversions of potential clients. People don’t like to search for basic information, such as name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. And, lawyers need people to call for consultations to determine if the clients are worthy of your time and talents. Make the call to action visible and prominent. You also should have several forms of a call to action, such as a chatbox, a phone number, or a subscription form.
3. Too Busy
Your homepage’s design can scare potential clients away. If it is filled with flashy elements, like pop-ups or glittery backgrounds, one might assume the site is outdated and not a legitimate company.
If you go to a coffee shop that is crowded, would you stay? Of course, not. When there is too much noise in the background, it might be hard for you to converse with people. You don’t want that, right? The same goes for your home page’s design.
If too much is happening in the background, potential clients would not want to stay on the site and engage with the company. Worse, the potential clients might not even visit your site again, hurting your search engine optimization efforts. The problem with a busy site would convince people that they don’t want to call you, which is ultimately what you want. You need new people to call regularly.
Yes, we get it. We understand that you want your law firm’s website to show everything about your practice. But as they always say, too much of anything is not good. Everything must be in moderation. And, that is why websites should have more than one page. As much as possible, learn to segregate content and put it in the right places. Keep your home page, neat, and at the same time, filled with the right amount of information needed for engagement.
Think about the times you saw something with a lot of stuff on the design, you probably rejected the item. People don’t like clutter even if the dislike is an unconscious response. Keep your site clean and pleasing to the eye. You will convert more people.
4. Lack of Experience
You want your homepage to show you in a good light. Therefore, people need to see that you have the experience they need. They don’t want a lawyer without the necessary experience. The more experienced the attorney and special expertise he or she might have, the more they understand how to represent you.
For example, if you are in Minnesota you should target highly targeted keywords on a homepage such as Minnesota criminal defense attorney. The more experienced the lawyer, the more they know different judges and how they are in the courtroom. You want to present your experience in a clean and eye-pleasing way on the first page of your site so that potential clients can determine right away if you are a good fit and could help them.
At the same time, you don’t want a resume on your site. You don’t have to list all your work and all your accomplishments. You want to highlight key points of your career that show you know what you are doing.
1536 Views