8 Elements Of The Best Law Firm Website Design You Must Pay Attention To

Having a stellar website is a key factor in showing your law firms’ professionalism and ability to be relevant. Websites are much easier to create today than they were a few years ago, so it’s relatively easy to get a site whipped up in no time. There are, however, a few elements to put in place to ensure your law firm website is not just another run of the mill “one size fits all” website.

Law Firm Website Design Tips to Consider

An important point to remember is that your legal practice is still a business, first and foremost. While it may be your company’s vision to assist people with legal issues, your law firm still needs to generate a projected amount of revenue to remain in business.

With that in mind, creating your custom law firm website design should have a few key elements in place to ensure that you not only advertise your legal services but continue to attract new business. Let’s look at eight of the most important elements of law firm web design you must pay attention to.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The first step in having an effective website for your law firm is to identify your desired target audience. Having a clear indication of this will determine the tone of how you’ll create and market your legal practice.

For instance, if you specialize in dealing with work-related issues, you need to ensure your approach and language use speaks to those types of people. Language should be clear and without any hidden messages.

2. Brand Logo and Colors

When it comes to creating your website, bear in mind that it needs to be a visual representation of your business. Professionals recommend using your law firm logo with brand colors on your website. Potential clients should instantly associate your site with your law firm. When perfecting your logo design, consider the basics that should be in place.

Some of these include:

• Use whitespace effectively to make your law firm website design look professional.
• Use high-quality images and place them prominently, preferably on top of your site.
• Use professional-looking fonts throughout the whole website.
• Ensure pages load at a proper speed rate. Slow loading pages will provoke the potential client to click on another site.
• Make your page easy to use and clink between links. Get to the point quickly. Users will get bored if it takes them too many clicks to get to the relevant information.

3. Review Your Competition

With so many other law firms competing for the same space in the market, it’s important to know what your competition is up to. Review the content they’ve placed on their own websites. Use this information to better your law firm web design.

It’s important to identify and highlight your own advantage. Determine what it is that makes your legal practice better than the rest. When creating your website, ensure you advertise this aspect prominently.

4. Optimize Your SEO

Your law firm website should also take search engine optimization (SEO) into consideration. This means you want clients searching for law firms on Google or other search engines, to instantly find your law firm’s website.

A few tips to get higher rankings in SERPs are listed below:

• Use proper formatting. Your site should be easy to read by clients and search engines.
• Use contextual links as this will allow potential clients to understand what they’re linking to.
• Use proper names for any images used, so called “alt” attributes. This makes it easy for search engines to find your law firm’s website for relevant users’ search queries.

Having a phenomenal law firm website design is great. However, if there is no strong call to action, your potential client will just click to another site. You can use testimonials from past or current clients to create credibility and trust with new clients.

The more you show potential clients that you can win their types of cases, the more interest they will show toward your business. Your website should also have a call to action that focuses on getting clients to “ACT NOW” or “MAKE THAT CALL TODAY!”

5. Proper Use of Images

Images can add to the aesthetics and profession of a law firm website. But you must use high-quality pictures and designs especially if you’re using banners. Poor quality images can make your site look unprofessional and untrustworthy. So stay away from low-resolution images.

You want to make a positive impression on potential clients and it will pay off in the end if you use a professional photographer to take original pictures for your site. Original images of your law firm, employees, and the city you work in boosts your website’s credibility.

On the other hand, you can also purchase high-quality stock images from sites like iStock that work well for your blog posts. But it’s important to pick these stock images wisely because you want them to enhance the look of your website.

Lastly, the images you pick should be scalable for mobile devices and computers.

6. Professional Typography is Essential

Some companies underestimate the importance of website typography. However, your typography may be the most important feature on your site. Your fonts should represent the quality of the content and you can only achieve this with typography that’s easy to read.

Law firm website content is written in a formal manner to provide a sense of seriousness. But if you use elaborate fonts it will look incredibly informal and you will lose the seriousness you want to express on your site.

You must use a font that won’t force clients to strain their eyes to see what’s written. The weight and size of the typography are also important features to consider. Font weight refers to the thickness of your lettering which ranges between 100 (light) to 900 (extra bold). The ideal typography weight is 400.

A suitable font size for your main page is 16xp because it’s not too small or large. This font size helps to improve the readability of your paragraphs. Stick to this typography sizing to get perfect proportioned font sizes on your site.

This font size and weight will still be readable on mobile devices and computers.

What About Typography Color?

Don’t put a light font color on a white background because it will be difficult to read. Always use a dark-toned font when writing content on your site. If you don’t want to use black then try navy blue, dark gray, or brown.

7. Build Trust with Storytelling and Testimonies

You can get potential clients to use your law firm services by providing stories and testimonies from other clients. This is essentially a review section of your website where past clients provide a short testimony about their experience working with your legal practice. For example, if your firm specializes in Employment Law and has represented and won cases for their clients (employees, companies, firms etc.), you can record testimonies from those clients and use them for your website.

When potential clients see positive testimonials on your site it provides them with a sense of trust. Another way you can build trust with website visitors is to tell your personal story. Highlight stories that helped with the growth of your practice in your ‘About Us’ section. Or talk about the following topics:

• How your law firm was founded
• What were your challenges in the beginning
• How did you solve problems
• How much your law firm has grown
• What your plans are for the future
• Your process when representing a client

Providing a short story shows vulnerability and allows clients to connect with you on a personal level.

8. Fast Loading Speeds for Mobile and PC

The design, branding, and content matter on your website are excellent but what happens when your site has slow upload speeds? If clients have to wait for your site to load they may be forced to pick your competitor.

Don’t lose your clients because you have a slow website. Look into getting private and managed web hosting so your site can be placed on a private server for faster speeds. You should also optimize it using PageSpeed Insights tool to work on all internet compatible devices. This is so users can access your website through their smartphones, tablets, and PCs without hassle.

Conclusion

Optimizing your law firm website design is an effective way to generate new clientele. It shows people that your legal practice offers professional assistance that has the potential to win cases. An updated law firm web design is just another step in ensuring your eventual success. If your website needs a makeover, use our tips to make your legal practice the best around town!

Author Profile

David Anderson is a business graduate with a marketing major. He specializes in communication design and has helped many brands achieve their goals in marketing communication. Now he writes for freelance clients on topics related to brand design, visual communication, and marketing.