7 Website Tips for a Better Client Experience
When it comes to your law firm website, the key factor is not how much you paid for it, or what web designer you used.
And it’s not whether you love or hate your site.
The key factor – actually, the only factor – is how your site is performing.
If it attracts visitors and prompts them to engage with you, then it’s a success regardless of how much you paid for it – or even if you built it yourself on Squarespace.
“It starts with a website,” says the US Chamber of Commerce article Website Design: What Makes a Great User Experience. “If you don’t have a website that is easy to use and simple to navigate, you can lose sales.”
Stay on top of marketing trends with Lawyers Mutual. Our email newsletter “Practice Reimagined” offers timely tips, pointers and valuable links to keep you safe and successful in the new normal.
7 Ways to Improve Your Website Performance
Following are seven pointers from the article Website Design: What Makes a Great User Experience, from business writer Sean Ludwig (the quotes are from the article):
- Know your ideal client. Who is your ideal client? What are their defining characteristics? Here are some questions Ludwig suggests asking: “What demographic of users are you targeting? What type of devices are customers most likely to use when learning about you? What are customers primarily looking for from your company? How long do people spend on your website? What do people click on most frequently on your site? Knowing the answers to these questions will help inform your design philosophy.”
- Keep site navigation simple. The fewer buttons, bells and whistles, the better.
- Make it fast and mobile friendly. “Two common problems for websites that can scare away potential customers are slow load times and the site not working correctly for common mobile browsers,” writes Ludwig. “Part of your design process should make sure your site loads quickly. An Aberdeen Group suggests that 40% of shoppers will immediately exit a website that takes more than three seconds to load, and they won’t come back. Relatedly, part of your design process should include testing your site for popular mobile browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Samsung Internet and Firefox. As of mid-2021, more than half of all global internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and its share grows every year. With that in mind, mobile users will expect to land on mobile-optimized sites and mobile users are five times more likely to exityour site when it’s not.”
- Use creative and original art. Relying too heavily on stock images makes your site vanilla.
- Test the site. “Once your site is live, be sure to do frequent testing. Have regular people that are not employees test the site to get a wide range of feedback.”
- Gather feedback. “Create a giveaway to users who complete a survey about what they think about the site experience,” suggests Ludwig and the US Chamber. “Include questions such as: Can you rate our website from one to five stars? What can we do to make your experience better? Which features would you like to see added to our site? Were your expectations generally met?”
- Customize 404 and error pages. This little detail is often overlooked, but a clever 404 / error page keeps visitors engaged and on the site. Here are some example
Source: US Chamber of Commerce
Jay Reeves is author of The Most Powerful Attorney in the World. He practiced law in North Carolina and South Carolina. Now he writes and speaks at CLEs, keynotes and in-firm presentations on lawyer professionalism and well-being. He runs Your Law Life LLC, which offers confidential, one-on-one consultations to sharpen your firm’s mission and design an excellent Law Life. Contact jay@yourlawlife.com or 919-619-2441.
