Reasons Your Law Firm Needs a New Website
Here are five reasons your law firm may need a new website. Learn more about why a new website can help you attract more clients whatever your practice area.
Many Canadian law firms fail to realize that their websites are often the first place that potential clients learn about them -which means that they get their first impression of firms from their websites. It stands to reason, then, that you want your firm’s site to be high quality and attractive to potential clients. But if you have not updated your website recently, there is a good chance that you are missing out on the opportunity to wow your potential clients.
Reasons Why Your Vancouver Law Firm Needs a New Website
1. You hired a company to build your site 10 years ago and have not talked to them since.
The cost of building a website can produce sticker shock today – and it definitely seemed like a big expense a decade ago. Many law firms knew they needed a website, so they hired someone and paid what felt like a lot of money to get it done. After spending so much, they assumed they had what they needed for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately for such firms, website building practices and standards have changed dramatically with the passing years. If no one has updated your site in a while, it likely appears ancient to new clients.
2. You did some or all of the web design yourself.
It is no easy feat to build a website, so if you managed to build your own, you should commend yourself. However, the standards for web design have gone up over the years, particularly for business websites. An attractive law firm website needs to be tightly designed and polished. Much like your legal work, it needs to look like you are highly competent – and since you are probably not focused on web design since you are practicing law, you are better off hiring someone who specializes in building websites to get the kind of site you can be proud of.
3. You do not have quality content.
According to the director at legal marketing company ICONA in Calgary, Dave Taillefer, “Just because you built a website doesn’t mean they’re going to come.” Content is what attracts people to your website, so you need some good quality content and you need to regularly add more quality content to keep pulling in site visitors. If your website does not have much or any content, or if you have not added any new content in a while, you need to remedy the situation.
“From search engine to website, the user basically has simple questions that they’re trying to get an answer to,” says Taillefer. You need to determine what kind of questions your site visitors have and try to answer those questions through your content. You know how important it is to tread carefully when answering legal questions online, so you will want to pay close attention to what your content states – but that does not mean you can’t answer basic legal questions related to your field.
4. You look at other legal websites and realize that yours is not at all competitive.
The best law firm websites have a refined, appealing look and feel. They answer the questions their visitors have. They encourage visitors to contact the firm. They keep a unified marketing message through skillful branding and careful attention to detail. You have probably noticed sites like these, the ones that you feel like are better than yours. Fortunately, you do not have to stay with a site that you are unhappy with. You can get a new, better, more appealing law firm website. You just have to hire the right team to get the job done.
5. Your website is not optimized for SEO.
Search Engine Optimization is what helps your website show up on the first few pages of a Google search. Since most searchers do not look past the first few pages of Google, you want to be highly ranked on the search engines to maximize the visibility of your website and your firm. How do you accomplish this?
Copywriting is what takes you to the top of the page. If you can write high-quality articles on legal topics that your clients are searching for and optimize them for readers and the search engines, you can improve your page ranking.
You shouldn’t expect to shoot to the top of Google right away, even if you write great articles and optimize them perfectly. But with time and consistency, your work or the work of the writers you hire will pay off.
Please contact us today to learn more about improving your law firm IT. The Compunet team is here to assist you.
