LeadRival LIVE: Episode 4 – Design a Law Firm Website That Converts

Bria and Aaron discuss website elements that law firms should be using!

Join us as we discuss how attorneys can take their website to the next level – and leave old ways behind! 

Read below for the full transcript of the LeadRival LIVE session with Bria and Aaron.

Welcome to LeadRival LIVE! I’m Bria Fox and today I have Aaron here with us today. Thanks for being in this week. We’re going to be discussing website design to get the clients that you want. So welcome back and let’s get started!

 

Let’s get started by discussing how firms can understand their ideal client.

Okay, so we’re discussing websites today, so before you even lay a hand on your website – understand who your ideal client is. Understand the who and the how. Who is your ideal client, understand their demographic, what services you offer. And the how – the how is how you can help them. So the who, you have your demographic, people that are looking to file bankruptcy, looking to file Chapter 7, Chapter 13, had a car accident. and then the how – how can you help them on your website? Not only can you possibly be their attorney, but can you give them additional information? You know, they might not be ready to convert yet, but they just might need additional information before they even move forward. So the easiest way I would say just create a list of who you are, who your clients are, how you can help them. Write down this huge list and then you can kind of get an idea of how to build your website up.  

Alright, and for any of you that don’t really know with this, a year ago, I created a 6-week marketing course that walks you through how to find out your “who, what, and how”, so go ahead and check that out.

But until then, we can go ahead and say that an attorney does know who their ideal client is. How can they use a website to convert said clients and what are some of the home page do’s and don’ts [to follow]?

First off, an attorney needs to understand that most often, they’re just providing a service. They’re not providing products. A lot of times you’ll see an attorney website and they’re just trying to get too fancy. They have too much going on. They have the slider that flies through five different images, cool graphics, and all this. But usually, you want to leave the sliders to digital marketing agencies, website designers, companies that are selling products, e-commerce, something like that. A company that sells a service, you don’t really need those fancy sliders. You can have a single banner image with an immediate call to action on it and your form up there. You don’t want a slider that has five sliders on it and has all these images that push all of your content (your conversion content, your form) down below the fold. So attorneys, get rid of those sliders! You don’t need those.  

Can we also say that it goes the other way too? Like if you don’t have a slider or you don’t have images, maybe we should update your website to have some “pretty elements”?

You still want the elements, but a lot of times sliders now take up the whole “above the fold” area. You don’t really need that. If you’re an attorney that’s selling a service, let’s just say you’re a bankruptcy attorney and you’re specifically dealing with Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, you have two services your offering. Bring those two call to actions above the fold. You don’t need a slider image up there. Just bring those call to actions right there so when someone visits your website, they see merely what you have to offer. You still want images – images help with SEO, that’s for another course. You still want images and everything, but you don’t want this huge slider taking up so much real estate on the first page people are landing on. One of the things about sliders is that you have a slider going across – how long is someone going to be just watching the slider as opposed to going through and finding something to click through? You know, a lot of times they’re going to be going to the slider and they might just leave your website.  

Okay so, a quick call to action! With this, can we also discuss the top bar, the navigation bar on a website?

Yeah, so once again that’s a quick call to action. So keep it simple. Keep your high converting pages on there, your high information pages on there, a contact us, “Fill Out a Free Evaluation” button up there. You don’t need a privacy policy or terms and agreement – all these tier three pages (what I call them). You have your home page and about us. Those are good pages to have up there because they’re helping establish trust in your brand. Once again, back to a bankruptcy attorney – throw your file Chapter 7 page up there, your Chapter 13 page up there. You want the pages up there that are going to help you convert immediately. You don’t want your potential clients to have to rifle through 20 different pages to find the conversion.  

That makes sense. You mentioned having a “Contact Us” page in the bar. How should attorneys approach that?

Once again, keep it simple. You don’t want your contact page to have 2,000 words of content. If someone is visiting your contact page, they’re ready to contact you, most likely. So, have your NAP Data- Name, Address, Phone Number – on there. Have a nice conversion form. When I say conversion form, you don’t want just a basic contact form. You see a lot of people that have the “email address, name, and then what do you want to talk to us about”? That’s a basic contact form. You don’t want that, you want a conversion form. You want a form that asks them if they’re interested in Chapter 7, Personal Injury, Chapter [13] – you want details on that. It will help you understand when you get that, you’re not wasting time on your end having to call this potential client back up to ask them all of these questions. You have the answers already. So keep it simple. I would start off with a basic contact page – imagine it just being blank. Have this call to action up top telling them why they should fill out your form or call you, have your NAP data – Name Address Phone Number – and your conversion form.  

How do you feel about sidebars on websites, because a lot of people still don’t know if the single page form on websites if side bars are usable or not?

I think sidebars are awesome. You don’t necessarily need it on a homepage, but side bars still work. A lot of people are getting away from the sidebar because they’re trying to get too fancy. They want this full width page that has all of this content on there, but users and search engines still understand and know what a sidebar is. It’s an additional place to find relevant content – content they might be interested in. So, I would say on your homepage, you can have it full-width and have the call to actions, everything we spoke about earlier. But on your interior pages, have a right sidebar, have a link to your contact form, have your name address phone number on there. Maybe your top 3 blog posts that are starting to get a lot of traction. So you realize, “Hey people are visiting my website, they’re interested in these pieces”, put those there. It helps the user find the information they want, it helps you with SEO because you’re keeping people on your website and giving them the information they need. Sidebars are awesome.  

And with that, would you suggest having static content or dynamic content (constantly updating without them having to)?

I would have a mixture. I would keep the dynamic content below. I would have your contact form, maybe your phone number, your top 3 pages that you realize are getting a lot of traffic (whether those are blog posts or pages), and then underneath that you can have “Most Recent Blog Post/News” and that could be dynamic and filter through 3 or 4 of them.  

We’ve pretty much covered the basics of how attorney websites are killing conversions and how to fix that. Is there anything else that you think our viewers should know about web design?

I’ll just go back to number one: Know the Who and the How. You don’t want to build for something that you can help somebody with. Build within you, with what your company can do. Understand how you can provide these people the information they need. They might not necessarily be someone who’s looking for an attorney right now, but can you give them additional information, third-party links to, let’s say bankruptcy again. It’s an easy example. If they’re looking for other debt relief options, can you provide them third-party options? Give them anything and everything. If you establish your website as a trusted source, they might come back when they’re ready to convert and they might turn into a client.  

Awesome. That’s all we have time for today. Thanks again for joining us, Aaron, and thank you for all of our viewers for watching, either now or later. If you haven’t already, sign up for our email alerts at leadrival.com/leadrival-LIVE. That will get you our email alerts every time we go live and I’m still putting our free white paper in there from a few weeks ago. So be sure to sign up and tune in every Friday at 3 PM CT.