Small Law Firm Website Design: What You Need To Know

Are you a small law firm needing to establish a prominent online presence? The key to success in today's marketplace lies in a strategically designed website that converts visitors into loyal clients.

This article explores the essential components of an impactful website, focusing on how good design and digital strategy help you build awareness and convert visitors into leads and leads into clients.

Small law firm marketing funnel

Your website is an essential tool for converting leads into sales. But to set your website up for success, you need to identify how to get potential clients to your site. 

A marketing funnel is a helpful framework for earning visitors. Simply put, a marketing funnel is a set of tactics to generate awareness and facilitate a desired first step. In web design, that action is usually a click on a link from a search, social media post, or other third-party website or typing your website URL into a browser.

As a small law firm, you're likely competing with many other firms and DIY software programs for clicks. It's helpful to break down your potential new clients into two strategic segments to maximize the impact of your budget.

The first is identifying how your law firm can attract users actively looking for services like yours, called "active" demand. A second is to build awareness among a pool of potential, but not yet active, individuals who may need your services later, called "inactive" demand.

Active demand

Consumers with active demand actively seek information, evaluate options, and consider a purchase. They may have a specific need or desire for the service and are actively looking to fulfill it.

An active demand strategy for a small law firm involves targeted marketing efforts to attract potential clients when choosing legal services. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an effective way to do that. Implementing SEO strategies will ensure that your small law firm's website ranks higher in search engine results for relevant keywords and phrases. 

That's why it's crucial to do keyword and audience research before building your website. Instead of considering your website independent of search, social, and other marketing channels, consider it the second phase in a more extensive user journey.

Additionally, with solid keyword and user research, you can build landing pages for other marketing campaigns, such as pay-per-click (PPC) on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Business. You can also create traditional marketing, such as business cards, flyers, and other tangible materials that temp users to enter the URL of a conversion-optimized landing page.

Inactive demand

Inactive demand, conversely, represents a potential or latent demand not currently being expressed or acted upon by consumers. These individuals may have an underlying need or desire for a service but are not actively seeking it or aware of its availability.

One approach to tap into inactive demand is finding keywords related to your service with less competition. For example, people looking for retirement advice in your local market may also be interested in Estate Planning services. Create a blog post targeting a strategic retirement-related keyword and prompt users to sign up for a newsletter for future content. 

Content marketing helps you build your brand and authority while allowing you to sell visitors on a service later more easily. Along the same lines, consider content syndication and guest blogging. Partnering with other websites, legal blogs, or community platforms to publish informative articles will help you reach a wider audience and boost your domain authority.

Leveraging social media platforms to share valuable legal tips, case studies, and success stories can increase the firm's visibility among a broader audience. Hosting webinars or workshops on legal topics relevant to the firm's practice areas can attract individuals who might have legal concerns but are not actively seeking legal representation. 

By offering valuable insights and educating your audience, your small firm can position itself as a helpful resource and encourage participants to consider their legal needs more seriously.

Small law firm sales funnel

Whereas social media, search, and other forms of marketing and advertising usually occur on properties you don't own, your sales efforts typically happen on your turf. 

Let's focus on active and inactive demand and consider how your website design can facilitate lead generation, also known as your sales funnel.

Active demand

‍If you've effectively tapped into active demand via a marketing channel like search, you must deliver an exceptional user experience when they land on your page. 

User experience consists of many variables, including page speed, content, and style. Each of these deserves its blog post, but here are a few things to keep in mind when crafting high-conversion landing pages:

• Be unique: Doing as others do is an adaptive impulse. Designing your site's aesthetic less conventionally may feel risky, but that's how you'll stand out. If all your competitors feature your city's skyline on their homepage, consider focusing on people rather than buildings.
• Focus on benefits: What will be true for your clients after they receive your service? How can they expect to feel? Safe? Successful? Benefits, unlike features, describe the "states" of experience gained from a service or product.
• Provide proof: Why should new visitors trust you? Reviews and testimonials grease the sales funnel's wheels by making users feel more confident choosing your services. 
• Address questions: Only some leads are good. FAQs can help visitors better understand your offering, making them feel more confident in moving forward. Or maybe, they discover they're not a great fit and don't waste your time. 
  

Finally, landing pages focusing on active demand need a call-to-action such as a free consultation, which your potential client can claim via filling out a form, clicking on a scheduling link, or calling your firm.

Make call-to-actions obvious, but avoid being too eager by interrupting the landing page experience with non-stop popups. Instead, trust the design. From there, strategically supplement the design's impact with popups if appropriate.

Inactive demand

With inactive demand, your goal should be brand and relationship building. Well-designed landing pages taping into inactive demand should leave a remarkable impression. 

When designing pages that host your articles, webinars, and other content marketing, keep the following in mind:

• Be helpful: Useful and usable are the hallmarks of excellent content marketing. Ensure that the content you're creating will help visitors with a challenge they face.
• Be better: It's rare to find keywords, even long-tail keywords, with little competition. That's why your content needs to be better than what's currently ranking at the top of search results. If you can't write a better post than the top few posts offer, consider going after something else. 

Your content marketing may quickly convert users from inactive to active, but others may not be ready. Consider adding call-to-actions, such as a simple newsletter signup, to help reengage users later.

Final thoughts

Your small law firm website must be better than the competition to stand out and get results. If you've gotten this far, I have good news: most law firm websites are not good. They're ugly, popup-filled, and cluttered. They prioritize the firm over the user.

You'll provide excellent service for yourself and your small law firm if you aim for better design and a user-centric experience. I'm happy to assist if you need help with your small law firm website! Contact me, and let's discuss your vision.