A lawyer knows they need to look the part to instill confidence in their clients and their team.

So why don’t they follow the same advice when designing their website?

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how many law firm websites still have tacky designs and pop-up ads that scare visitors away.

Consider that over 96% of people today research law firms online before choosing a firm. You’ll want to rethink your current website’s design.

Having an attractive website is important, of course, but what you need is a website that works. 

This means that within the first few seconds of landing on your website, a potential client can immediately find:

• A clear and direct position statement explaining what your law firm is and what’s it’s about
• Your specific practice areas (divorce, probate, medical malpractice)
• A clean, professional trustworthy image through a well-designed website
• Helpful customer reviews and testimonials to offer social proof
• Easy to use contact forms to fill our their case inquiries

Certain old school lawyers may still think that referrals are king and the website is secondary, however, if you’re reading this, you likely understand the importance a website can have for bringing in new case inquiries to fuel your business.

Continue reading our overview of the key elements for law firm website design necessary to generate leads and get clients.

The Importance of Functional Web Design

At Kaleidico, we always keep the website’s main goal in mind when designing a website — generating case inquiries, or leads.

Ultimately, every design choice comes down to figuring out how to get potential clients to your website. And then get them to fill out an inquiry form. 

We don’t start from scratch designing a revolutionary website design, because that’s not what your audience is used to.

Instead, we research the online competitor space, looking at other law firm websites to see if we can spot recurring patterns, such as the home navigation arrangement, where the contact forms are, what colors the submit buttons are, and what their calls-to-action sayings are.

Once we observe what the norm is, and what the average browser is used to, we craft a clean website design that’s intuitive and easy to use.

In the end, you get a modern law firm website that makes it simple for potential clients to find information they need and contact your firm.

Must-Have Website Design and Development Basics

A great website needs to provide an exceptional user experience for your visitors. It should be able to anticipate your potential clients’ needs and provide thoughtful solutions to their problems within seconds.

Your website’s intuitiveness, branding, navigation, and content should quickly reassure your potential client that they’ve landed on the right website to fix their problems  — “oh look, here’s a contact form!”

Continue learning what separates a good website from a bad website, and the must-have design elements your website needs to start generating more case inquiries.

Home Page

A homepage is essential for any website. Many times it makes the first impression on a potential client. 

At Kaleidico, we don’t believe in having a cluttered home page filled with rotating banner images and other unnecessary elements. 

Your website should be clean and minimal, only showing the most important features, such as:

• A clear and direct positioning statement above the fold 
• The company’s logo
• CTAs and contact forms above the fold
• Clear and simple navigation to practice areas

Company “About Us” Page

This page serves two purposes — it establishes credibility and is used by Google for search results.

Your “About Us” page should explain what your law firm does, what your practice areas are. Tell a story of how your firm came to be and your beliefs.

Attorney Bio Profile Pages

Did you know that 87% of people who contact an attorney go on to work with an attorney? This is the importance of attorney bio pages.

In addition, attorney bio pages also establish credibility and improve your website’s search engine results.

If a potential client Googles an attorney, a partner, or the owner’s name, they’ll find your website from the bio pages. This is a method to lead the client through a journey of discovering your website and filling out the contact form.

Practice Areas Landing Pages

Your website should have individual landing pages for every practice area you specialize in.

For instance, if your law firm specializes in medical malpractice, create individual landing pages for every type of malpractice available — delayed diagnosis, surgical errors, birth injury, etc.

Creating these specific landing pages serves many purposes including:

• Improve search engine optimization for your website (Makes your website easier to find on Google)
• It informs your web visitors of your law firm’s practice areas
• It pulls potential clients further into your website
• Each landing page has its own contact form for visitors to fill out

Progressive Lead Path Forms

Because everything we do is ultimately to get people to fill out forms on your website, it makes sense to use forms that are non-intimidating and quick to fill out.

If you’ve ever used TurboTax, you’re likely familiar with these types of progressive forms and how easy they make it to answer simple questions about yourself.

Progressive forms are designed to ask smarter questions and use programmed logic to ask new questions based on previous answers. This means that ultimately the forms will be quicker to fill out and avoid repetitive questions that can turn off visitors from completing their form.

Because of its ease of use and intuitive questioning, progressive lead paths have a much higher conversion rate than traditional forms.

Contact Us Page

Every page on the website will have a contact form. But for good measure, it’s best to always have a “contact us” page to allow visitors another way to contact you.

SEO and Content Marketing (Maintaining an Active Blog)

Maintaining an active blog on your website is another way to pull people into your website.

We recommend writing blogs related to the law firm’s practice areas in the form of explanatory blogs or client scenarios.

For instance, when somebody Googles a type of medical malpractice, or a specific scenario involving malpractice “Can I sue my doctor for a delayed diagnosis,” ideally they will land on your website’s blog page. 

From there, the potential client will read your blog post and be compelled to reach out via the contact form or link in the article..

SEO and content marketing are a form of long-term marketing. It initially takes a while to get traction, but once established can provide evergreen content. This pulls people to your website for years to come just from Google searches. 

Over time, your website’s Google ranking will increase. Hopefully to the point of showing up on Google’s first page of search engine results.

PPC Campaigns

Looking to get your law firm’s website on the first page of Google’s results without waiting months to rank? Use Google ads to promote your website above the competition.

Using Google and Facebook ads, you can create online ad campaigns to show ads when people actively search for law firms related to your practice areas, e.g. divorce lawyers, probate lawyers, criminal lawyers, etc.

Technically, this isn’t a website element, but it is a very important part of marketing your website and starting the customer journey for more prospective clients to stumble upon your website.

User Reviews

When people search online for law firm reviews, it’s ideal if you can have your reviews on your own company website. This allows you greater control over managing your reviews and adds a layer of “social proof” to convince new website visitors that your company is legitimate and can help them too.

Work With Kaleidico on Your Law Firm Website Design

Kaleidico is a law firm marketing agency helping lawyers generate more case inquiries to grow their business.

We’ve created a proven framework that implements web design and development, content marketing and SEO, PPC ads, email marketing, and other strategies to generate high-quality and consistent case inquiry leads for law firms and attorney offices.

At Kaleidico, we are completely transparent to help you design your law firm website yourself. We gladly share our secrets and proven frameworks, because once you see how much work it is building and maintaining a website, you’ll understand why law firms hire us to handle this work for them.

Are you a lawyer or marketing professional working at a law firm who’s been considering revamping your firm’s online presence? We want to work with you.Do you have any questions?

Email Kaleidico’s owner Bill Rice at bill.rice@kaleidico.com. Do you want help implementing any of these strategies? Schedule a discovery session with our agency and team at Kaleidico.

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