Attorney Website Design

Developing a new website for your law firm is no easy feat. When it’s launched, you’ll likely head into celebratory mode, relishing in the fact that the writing, meetings with your website developer and revision reviews are now a thing of the past. But don’t kick up your feet too fast; the launch of a new website is just the beginning of a successful online marketing campaign. If you’re on the verge of launching a new website or have recently introduced a new site to the World Wide Web, review the following checklist to make sure you’re setting your site up for success.

In 2007, Amicus Creative was founded by Fred Cohen, an attorney who was frustrated with the different options available to market his trusts and estates practice online. Today, Fred continues to serve as our CEO, leading our team of developers, marketing consultants, designers and client service representatives. On March 26th, he will host a webinar where he will share some of his expert tips for success and what he has learned during his career as a practicing attorney and leader in the legal marketing industry. In this fast paced presentation, he will explore simple actions that attorneys often overlook when developing an effective website and powerful online presence. Learn more and register online.

You can’t go to a restaurant, a local sporting event, the airport or a business meeting without being surrounded by people using their smart phones to surf the web and check email on the go. With the number of cell phone-owning Americans who surf the web from their mobile devices doubling since 2009, it's no surprise that the need to have a website that works well for mobile is no longer an option for law firms; it’s a necessity. If you have considered making your site “mobile-friendly”, you've likely encountered two different options for doing so: a mobile website or responsive design. In this post, we'll explore how these options differ so you can make the best decision when it comes to marketing your firm on the web.

If you frequently visit our blog, it’s no secret that we’re fanatical about great attorney website design. That doesn’t just mean captivating graphics but also smart content, a user-friendly layout and integrated tools for maximum visitor engagement. Over the past few weeks, we have been hard at work developing and launching websites that feature all of these critical elements for success.

If you appreciate good web design, we know you’ll love these new masterpieces!

Allan Weinberg, an experienced attorney practicing family law in Manapalan, NJ

Carter Pilgrim, a criminal defense and family law firm located in Suwanee, GA

Hankins Law, an Indianapolis family law & estate planning firm

Law Office of David A. Bolson, a Newark-Essex County workers' compensation attorney

Macedonio & Duncan, LLP, a leading Suffolk County criminal defense firm

TrustBuilders Law Group, estate planning & probate attorneys located in Hampton Roads, VA

Allotta Farley Co., L.P.A., a Toledo, OH law firm representing labor unions, employees, and multiemployer benefit plans

To see more great attorney websites, check out our complete portfolio.

Design is about more than the aesthetics of a website; it’s also about the usability. How easy is it for a brand new site visitor to find the information that they’re looking for? Far too often firm’s focus on the graphics and the copy but they fail to look at the usability of their websites. It’s absolutely essential that your website be structured in such a way that navigating through it is intuitive to the visitor. When it comes to usability, consider the following elements of your site:

Most websites have a sitemap. Simply described, a sitemap is a list of all pages on a website. Although a sitemap is not necessary for a site which is well-organized with a straightforward structure, most webmasters will create one and submit it to the major search engines at the time of the site’s launch. This provides Google, Yahoo and Bing with a roadmap of the various pages in your site which should be accessed by crawlers to compile information for their respective indexes.

At Amicus Creative, all of our sites feature a dynamic sitemap. As part of our Foundational Optimization, we submit these maps to all of the search engines but we don’t stop there. We’ve implemented a sophisticated system which recognizes each time a change is made, automatically revises the sitemap and resubmits it to the search engines so they’re immediately notified of the change, speeding up the indexing process.

Contact us today to learn more about our advanced SEO strategies that have helped countless attorneys reach new heights.

In developing and enhancing your law practice’s website, it’s always important to keep your ideal visitor in mind. Depending on your marketing goals, that visitor may be a prospective client, current client or referral source. As you develop your site, make a list of your visitors concerns, needs and questions. Then compile a list of the benefits that your firm offers that helps to address some of these issues. This list should not only be a description of how you’re different from competitors but how you can specifically speak to the emotions of your site visitor.

Our clients often ask us where our programmers are located. They are accustomed to working with companies that outsource their development needs to Russia or India and assume that we too take this route. At Amicus Creative, however, we take a different approach. We never outsource any of our development needs and employ a full team of developers right from our offices in Port Washington, NY.

Could we outsource our programming needs and save some money? Sure, but we firmly believe in a collaborative approach to deliver the best service and marketing tools to our clients. Our team of experts really is a team that works together each and every day; it consists of attorneys, marketing consultants, graphic designs, client specialists, SEO professionals and of course, accomplished web developers. You outsource your online marketing needs to us, and we want you to be confident knowing that you have a diverse team working together to help you achieve your goals.

With our one stop shop, you can call our offices at anytime for help with a technical issue, SEO question or marketing idea; we’ve got you covered.

Most firms develop a website to get found by prospective clients. It’s not enough, however, just to be found; you need to have the right tools in place to engage visitors. At Amicus Creative, we work to get your firm on the map and in front of new clients but that’s not all we do. We’re also experts at engagement and we’ve developed the most comprehensive attorney website system to foster interaction with prospects. The following tools are built right into our Site Manager and allow visitors to interact with your firm in a matter of seconds:

As we head into Labor Day Weekend, everyone is trying to sneak in those last minute vacations before the kids head back to school and business picks up once more. While we had a great summer filled with lots of sun and some gorgeous beach days, our work weeks were far from slow. In fact, since Memorial Day Weekend, we’ve launched over 30 new websites for attorneys throughout the country! We wanted to share just a handful of these great sites and show you how we spent the dog days of summer.

Volin & Swartz, a Mesa, AZ estate planning law firm 

Raymond Iryami Law Firm, a NYC practice specializing in corporate law, commercial litigation, and healthcare law

Russo Law Group, a Miami appellate law firm

Barbrack Law Firm, a Princeton, NJ collaborative divorce lawyer

Fitzgerald Campbell, a CA credit card lawsuit defense and collection harassment firm

Fuller & Fuller LLP, a NYC business immigration law firm

The Law Offices of Mark Raymond McDonald, an Irvine, CA criminal defense lawyer

Pozzuolo Rodden, P.C., a Philadelphia business & estate planning and family law firm

We also held a number of great educational webinars including one on “Converting Website Visitors into Leads.” If you missed this great presentation, you can watch it, and others, for free now by visiting our Webinar on Demand page.

We often hear from attorneys who have hundreds of new visitors to their websites each month but only receive a handful of leads despite these strong traffic patterns. There may be many explanations for low conversion rates but a poorly executed call to action is almost always one of the culprits. Last week, we held a webinar for attorneys exploring the development and implementation of an effective call to action. 

If you are struggling to generate leads from your law firm’s website, we encourage you to watch the recorded session and learn more about this critical component of online marketing success.