Most law firms have a website these days. This allows them to reach out to a wider audience, improve brand value and make their services more accessible to their target audience. Having said that, different firms have different considerations with respect to judging their website's performance. Some firms think of website traffic as a parameter for performance, while others give more importance to improved conversions, and there are still others who might think of improved brand reputation as a factor to judge a website's performance.
For the website to deliver the value that law firm's expect from it, its design must be of top quality. But the problem is even the best designs lose their luster after some time, which is characterized by their decreasing ability to deliver value to their target audience. When this happens, it's time to give the website's design a re-look, in fact it's time to give the website a design makeover.
Here are 5 wake up calls that tell you your law firm's website is no longer working for its target audience.
1. You see your website traffic slowly drying up
One of the critical website best practices is keeping track of your website traffic. There are plenty of available tools that you can pick from for this purpose, with Google Analytics the most popular of the lot. The idea is to make sure your website is generating the kind of brand footprint that it is supposed to. Website traffic is one factor that will help you determine the website's efficiency in this regard. If you think it's going down, there is a problem with its design.
2. A sliding conversion rate
A website is a law firm's online presence, which allows the firm to leverage the immense potential of the World Wide Web to attract more clients. The information up on the site makes a visitor want to click on the call-to-action button, which usually leads to visitors getting in touch with the law firm to discuss their problems. If you feel, that the number of people getting in touch with your firm through your website is seeing a downwards trend, it's time you started thinking of redesign. It's not that your website suddenly stopped delivering any real value to your its visitors, but just that other law firms websites might be presenting information in a far more credible manner than your website.
3. The website's design looks stale
Website visitors are far more discerning about the kind of websites they visit than they were ever before. If your website has a design that looks like the relic of a bygone era, it's not going to work. Yes, even the design of la aw firm website needs to be trendy in order to beat its competition. If flat design's in and your website is not conforming to the flat web design approach, it might be coming across as cluttered which a website visitor isn't going to appreciate. The staleness of such design must be infused with a breath of fresh air and redesign is perfectly poised to save the day for such websites sand their associated law firms.
4. The website doesn't look worthy of engagement
Early websites that represented specific services domains displayed an academic kind of approach, wherein they disbursed information with no attempt to make this disbursal appealing or interesting to the website audience. But things have changed and contemporary websites now give the much needed importance to user engagement; the design is used as a means to create dialogue between the visitor and website and not a one sided monologue. Unfortunately, many legal websites, still stick to old school website design, where their only job is to offer information. This approach is boring, staid and not engagement friendly. It's a recipe for disaster, characterized by increased bounce rates. In such cases, redesign helps improve the engagement levels of the site by integrating engaging content. The use of different content formats is just one of the many ways this is possible. For e.g. videos, infographics, case studies, white papers, legal FAQs are just some of the many different content formats that can be used on legal websites to make it more engaging.
5. Lack of Credibility and Trust in the Design
It's important to remember that your law firm's prospective clients are spoilt for choice. Your firm's not the only firm offering 'expert' legal services that will get rid of all the 'legal trouble's of your clients. Every other firm's saying the same thing, so the firm that sounds the most credible wins its potential clients over, hands down. Showcasing law firm credibility through the right designing choices is an ongoing process. A designing choice that exudes credibility today, might look really ordinary tomorrow. It's your job as a website owner, to keep vetting the design on the credibility front and making an improvement when you think, your website's design lacks the credibility it needs to exude. This is when you need to redesign your site.
Periodic Redesign is Necessary for a Successful Online Footprint
Even a popular website like Apple, has gone through plenty of redesigns to stay with the times and to meet changing user expectations. The World Wide Web and the world of web design is in a constant state of flux and your website's design must be able to keep in step with it. Redesign more than anything else is to ensure the relevance of your website in a highly competitive market. It's about making sure that the website does its job not just reasonably well, but exceedingly well. It needs to be able to offer high ROI day in and day out and become a proactive active client generation tool for the law firm. This is only possible with redesign.
