Designing your law firm's website is a fundamental law marketing exercise. Here are some key tips.
Putting a website together is an essential part of law marketing but it is usually an exhausting experience. Mainly because it involves a lot of creativity, image selection, market research and skillful copywriting not to mention all the revisions and endless meetings about the project. Most lawyers just want to get on with their fee earning work so apart from the pain involved, it is also an unwelcome distraction.
Being a complete pedant when it comes to spooling misteeks I definitely don’t leave the final proofreading to anyone else. Not that this means the final result will be perfect, just that if it isn’t then I only have myself to blame.
Here are few of my pet hates and all of them may seem obvious but there is no shortage of examples still alive and kicking on the web:
- Poor navigation systems
- Over-designed fonts that are difficult to read
- Irrelevant information that doesn’t have a law marketing purpose
- Stock photos of grinning people who obviously don’t work for the firm (We are guilty of this to some extent on www.eleonline.com our main site, but that will change when I can face another site re-vamp!)
- Overly corporate sites that have no soul
- Dead web links
- Out of date ‘News’ pages
- Missed opportunities (no client testimonials; no free downloads; no blog or newsletter… in other words, no sign of life!) and of course...
- Spelling mistakes!
I think my favourite law firm website of all time has to be the one in which the usual rogues gallery listing of ‘Our Team’ featured a perky headshot of a Jack Russell terrier who was billed as ‘Meeter and Greeter’. Now that firm definitely took a risk but it worked for me!
If you want to get your law marketing right when it comes to designing your website, here is a useful article by Allison Shields to help you.
Tags: Copywriting, Design, Law marketing
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I recently spoke with Lara King of BBC Radio Humberside on the subject of Employment Law. Click on the Play button, above, to hear the interview.