5 Ways Law Firms Can See Online Success

When it comes to online success, metrics are subjective. What your firm considers a great success, another might not.

But if you can raise your online presence and help more clients realise what you offer, this will invariably give your bottom line a boost.

So what can you do to help your firm achieve greater online success?

1. Build a technically robust website

Your website needs to be technically robust to compete. This involves several factors, but your aim is to reach the point where you have a strong foundation to build off.

Some aspects are vital to give you the best chance of performing well online.

You should address the following areas before you start working on others:

• Be mobile

One of the most important things you can do to your website is ensure it’s mobile-friendly. Many search engines crawl the mobile version of websites so yours will have to work well on a mobile device to perform well.

• Fix errors

If your website has any errors, this can affect how well it performs on search engines. Take the time to examine your site for errors and correct them. They could be the result of serious problems in your site architecture, so it’s important to analyse your site health.

• Stay secure

Your site needs to be secure. Even if you don’t take details from your visitors, security is a huge factor affecting how well your site does. Make sure you use HTTPS rather than HTTP. You can tell if your site does by looking in your address bar – if there’s a padlock before the URL, you’re secure.

• Think fast

Fast loading times are crucial to online success. If your site loads too slowly, visitors will lose patience and leave, while search engines will punish you. There are free online tools to monitor your site speed, so take the time to check yours.

2. Create informative pages

Potential clients are visiting your site for information. They want to know how your firm can help them. Many potential clients will want to carry out their own research before taking the plunge and contacting you. So make it easy for them.

Explain what your specialist areas are. Let them know what your terms and conditions are. Let them know how you process things and what you expect from a client. Detail the options they have for funding their case and what success means in various scenarios.

For extra credibility, think about a Meet the Team section, where clients can peruse your solicitors’ profiles. Highlight their experience and qualifications. A face to a name can help leads identify with your firm and understand that they’ll be in good hands.

3. Maintain an active online presence

An active online presence is about more than keeping up with your social media mentions. As we explained in our guide to reputation management, you need to be active in the spaces where your clients and leads are.

Make it easy for clients to find you online. You can own multiple properties online – so you should. You can use your website, your social media accounts, a Google My Business account, review site profiles and more to boost your presence and help people find you.

You should also be engaging with clients if they do leave reviews on any of these sites. If it’s a less than glowing review, addressing it can help reduce the negative sentiment they hold towards your brand and can assure other potential clients that you do take concerns seriously.

4. Update your site regularly

If a potential client lands on your website and sees that it hasn’t been updated in months, they might not think your firm has the capability or knowledge they’re looking for. It may sound harsh but people have a huge array of options in the legal sector so they can very quickly discount your firm on this basis.

Not only that – a regularly maintained website can show search engines that your content is fresh, helping you perform well online. Regular updates give search engines a reason to keep coming back to crawl your site.

It also gives you the opportunity to discuss highlight your expertise. You can use your site to share your perspective on what’s happening in the outside world – and there’s plenty to talk about right now!

5. Use and monitor social media

You need to be present on social media. Your competitors will be – but more importantly, that’s where your potential clients are. Facebook has more than 50 million UK users, while Twitter has more than 16 million.

Social media is a platform for promoting your services and your website, as well as engaging directly with existing clients – think of it as a branch of your customer service. It can help to build trust in your brand too. For many, finding that a firm doesn’t have any social media profiles can make them lose trust instantly.

There are plenty of examples of companies using social media badly. To avoid becoming one of them, just remember to think carefully about what you post and always – and we mean always – stay polite and professional.

Invest in success

The more you invest in your online presence, the more success you’ll see. It’s not enough these days to create a website detailing your services and then leave it alone, hoping that leads will come calling.

Online success requires activity. You need to put the time in to see the results. And this will need to be across more than just your website.

But when you do, it should be worth it.