Law firms have two main reasons to spend money on a web site:
1. To get more business.
A properly designed and placed web site will generate qualified inquiries.
2. To provide useful information to prospective and existing clients.
Visitors will realize that the information you provide is important and helpful. This will give them the confidence that your firm is the one to help them with their legal problem. In addition, by providing this information you will better prepare new clients for the first visit. Thus saving you time.
Many of you have web sites as part of general listing sites. This is a good thing, but there are draw-backs. Prospective clients can only get to your site through the hosting site since you are pretty well invisible to most search engines. With your own site, properly keyed for search engines your site can be found independent of any other site.
The other major draw-back is that sub-sites all look the same. Template sites with standard verbiage. Your firm looks the same as any other firm. With a custom designed site you can distinguish yourself from competing sites. We can easily incorporate your firm colors, logos, etc.
We are only concerned with web sites that are expected to pay for themselves. Flashy websites winning design awards usually do NOT generate business, although they might be a showpiece for the designer. The designer is NOT your potential client.
A web site works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year and never takes a sick day.
What can you expect from a web site?
- Screen potential clients before they call or visit you. You do this by explaining what problems you solve, how it is that you are the best lawyer in your field of expertise and how you have helped many others with similar problems. This will shorten your sales cycle as well since clients will know a little about you before they call.
- Tell them HOW you work. This goes towards making it clear to potential clients what’s going to happen when the client retains your services. It warms your clients up to before the dreaded first call.
- Educate the visitor. A good tip is to give away 75% of your knowledge and charge well for the remaining 25%. Sounds weird? Not at all. Most of us in the professional service industry do this anyway. And in today’s high-tech world – 75% of all information is readily available anyway. Your main product is to sell services that are EXCLUSIVE to you. Services only YOU can provide.
- This strategy will produce excellent leads for you, since you don’t have to give away free advice on your billable time. We suggest you take all your articles and information and organize them into a database driven library. People can search for keywords and find the answers.
- Increase your credibility. By constantly delivering educated advice to the public you will get known as “THE EXPERT”. People will seek you out.
- Advertise your practice. By using your web site URL in all your correspondence, listing the site with major search engines etc. You WILL get visitors.
- Get free publicity. A good, informative web site that people actually use to learn and solve problems is news. Issue a press release about your new site, and how it helps people solve some of their legal problems. If done correctly, this will often generate a write-up which you couldn’t buy for any amount of money.
- Get people to come back for more. This is a very strong marketing tool. If your potential clients know they can go back to YOUR site to find out the latest scoop on whatever you specialize in – you have captured their loyalty. And when they need help, who are they going to call?
- Stay in touch with your existing clients. A time saver, and a base for add-on business. Make it easy for them to contact you. Share with them information that might relate to their problems.
- Expand your practice to non-local business. This has worked for us. We now have over 80% of my business from out of state, and 20% from abroad. This would never have happened without a web site.