Attorney Website Design Blog

When a prospective client stumbles across your website, you can be pretty certain that your site is not the only one they will visit. Chances are they will also check out three or four other local firms online. We hear from many practices that acknowledge this inevitable fate and state that they want the “wow factor” so they really stand out to prospective clients. As a team of marketing consultants and graphic designers, we love when firms want to move outside of the box but we’re often surprised by their vision for “standing out.”

Recently as I was skimming through our Twitter feed, I came across a blog post from a marketing consultant that we follow. She wrote about a blog challenge which she had undertaken, vowing to post a new entry every day for 90 days straight. And while it seems like a tremendous undertaking (she is currently about three weeks in), it will undoubtedly have significant benefits on her website and the way she connects with online visitors and clients.

The issue with most people and committing to long-term marketing goals is that we want instant gratification. Most firms we work with start blogging because they know it will help their websites “do better.” They post twice a week for three weeks and then they give up.

Most of the firms that we work with have no shortage of links on their websites. These links take users to websites for colleagues, organizations that the attorneys belong to, online resource guides and news articles. And while strategic links to well aligned websites can make your law firm’s site a great tool for visitors, they can often require frequent review and modification.

Of the 500 attorney websites we’ve developed over the past 5 years, the overwhelming majority have been for solo practitioners or firms with 5 or fewer lawyers. Not to tip our own caps, but we have become the experts in small firm marketing. When we ask most of these firms what the main message is that they’d like to convey with their new websites, the large majority say, “that we’re different.” Many have come from Am Law 100 backgrounds and want to shed the reputation that many firms carry with them—that they are expensive and largely inaccessible. And while this message of being different, with lower rates and more personalized service is appealing to some prospective clients, it is not different from many of the firm’s competitors. In fact, in small law firm marketing, it’s become the status quo.

Guest post by: Peggy Emch

Once you’ve got your new website up and running, there is a lot it can offer beyond just serving as a marketing tool to engage prospective clients.

Your clients will find your website useful for resources like document storage, article libraries, interactive calculators, and FAQs.

You can also make your website a great resource for employees by integrating your Timesheets.com account with your website allowing them to track their hours right from your site Employees can enter hours, look at timesheet history, request time off, and see what’s in the time off bank. All right from your own website!

Many law firms host educational events for clients, colleagues and prospective clients throughout the year. These seminars can be a great way can be a great way to demonstrate your expertise and drum up business, but they do require a bit of “advertising” on your end to ensure you have a significant number of registrants. To get the word out about your upcoming events and make them a great success, consider the following promotional tips:

This week, members of the Amicus Creative Media team will be heading to Atlantic City to attend the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Annual Solo & Small Firm Conference. The day-long event hosts attorneys from around the state and provides them with practical advice and tips on building a successful practice. Our team will be on hand to discuss our starter website package, developed with solo practitioners in mind, and will provide complimentary website assessments for all attendees. Stop by to say hello, learn more about our services and see how we’ve taken over 500 small law firms across the country to new heights.

You set up a great looking website. You blog daily, writing insightful posts oozing with keywords and helpful tips for clients.  You send out e-newsletters every week, and you reach out to referral sources and have them link back to your new website. You put in the work for website success, and in just a few short months, you start getting big cases from your website; your site is optimized and will continue to bring in business, right? Not so fast.

There are countless legal marketing scams out there. Companies regularly target law firms trying to sell them costly domain name renewals (when already set to renew with existing host), expensive yet ineffective directory listings, a mobile version of the firm’s website or engage them in a link scheme. We hear all about these rip-offs from our clients who call us to ask if it’s worth the investment or whether there is any merit to the claims that these sales teams are making. Recently, we’ve heard from many clients who have been solicited by multiple companies who make “landing pages” for the firms in hopes of increasing online exposure for a particular set of keywords. Before you decide whether or not this is a valuable strategy for your firm, it’s important that you consider how they work and why they’re generally ineffective (and may actually be harmful) marketing tools.

When firms see our Site Manager they are often blown away; it’s easy to use and packed with marketing tools in a single interface. To familiarize our clients with our unique content management system, we schedule a one on one orientation during the development phase to give them a comprehensive lesson on making changes to their websites and utilizing the integrated features such as our Seminar Management tool and E-newsletter feature. Often the entire office, including attorneys and support staff, join in to learn the tool. And while it’s a great idea to get everyone onboard and familiar with the technology employed, it’s important that you designate one person on your team to be the office “webmaster.”

In theory, writing your attorney profile should really be the easiest part of building your new website, but for many of our firms, the development comes to halt as the attorneys put off drafting their biographies for inclusion on the site. The truth is, most people don’t like talking about themselves and they find it challenging to present their background in a way that is interesting and engaging to a complete stranger. Here are a few simple steps which will help you put pen to paper: