Your legal website must be the mirror of your law firm, reflecting the exact image you want to promote. A professional legal website must be modern without being flashy, and you definitely must avoid plagiarism, spelling mistakes, and typing errors.
Additionally, it should never have any of the following things either:
1. Headlines That Fail Your Law Firm
When your potential clients land on your web page, you fail to let them know what type of law you practice if your headline is vague. Vague headlines will immediately have them wondering if they have the right attorney for their case, making prospective clients press the back button.
Ensure that your header and description clarify what area of law you practice and the kinds of clients you serve. The same applies to titles; if you don’t have a meaningful and descriptive header for a section, remove it, allowing the text to shine.
2. Non-Authentic Photos
Your legal website must have at least one photo. However, this photo must be authentic and not a stock photo of you and your team. Stock photos are so obviously false that you can’t fool your audience. You don’t need a huge budget to have a good picture taken, and if you have no money at all, a tasteful selfie will do.
3. Endless Paragraphs
Most visitors to your website don’t have time to read. Instead, they want to scan the information you provide for them. Therefore, keep them interested by providing text in a scannable format. That means shorter paragraphs of three to four lines, bullet points, bold type, and internal links are some of the effective ways your content can capture everyone’s attention.
4. Adding Dates on Blogs
As a lawyer, you probably contribute informative blogs about legal matters for your audience. However, you want to avoid creating the impression that these blogs are dated and stale, especially since the content remains relevant even five years after writing it. The best way to avoid making a legal website look dated is to not add dates to your blogs, headlines, and URLs.
5. Advertising Your Law Firm
One of the worst ways to get visitor attention is to place banner ads of your law firm on your website. These ads, usually disguised as content, are mostly ignored by clients. Marketers call the trend to look away from these ads “banner blindness;” these add no value to your website. Instead, preferably use your content to promote your law firm with native advertising language and internal links and add calls to action at the bottom of the page.
6. Having A Testimonial Page
You must add social proof to your website, and testimonials are the best way to add evidence of your marketing claims. However, adding a separate social proof page appears weak and out of context. Instead, it is best to add a few testimonials to every page of your website, ensuring to place them in relevant pages where they form proof of the services you are promoting on that page.
7. Endless Contact Forms
Qualifying and converting leads requires having visitors’ contact information because not everyone will pick up the phone and call. Therefore, you must ensure the contact form does not include too many fields and is discreet. Just ask for the minimum information needed to respond directly to the lead.
8. Thoughtless Call To Action
When you ask your website visitor to submit their information, the way you ask them to do this needs to show how they will benefit. For example, there are better ways to ask potential legal clients to contact your law firm than just slapping a dull “Contact Us” at the bottom of every page. Use proportional color, icons, and sizing to ensure it is visible. And make sure you create a subtle urgency with your message.
Conclusion
Your website is a valuable tool for your legal firm, creating trust and credibility. Ensure to avoid these things that can make your site appear dated and make it intimidating enough to repel visitors.
