5 Website Mistakes to Avoid

Word of mouth may be important for local law firms – but your website could be the real key to generating more enquiries and more business.

As we evolve into an increasingly digital world, there are few services people don’t go online to find. This is why you have to ensure your firm’s website is as strong as possible.

But there are a number of common mistakes you might find your firm making when it comes to your site.

These are our top 5 website mistakes to avoid.

1. Not focusing on mobile

When designing your website, you need to ensure it’s done with mobile in mind. Although mobile-first has been Google’s crawling policy for years now, we’re still seeing businesses producing sites that just don’t work on mobile.

Even if you’re happy with your website and have no plans for development work in the near future, it’s advisable that you reconsider and get a mobile-first makeover booked.

A responsive website that works well on all devices can help you rank better in the search engines, as well as keep visitors onsite. After all, if someone lands on your site and it doesn’t fit on their phone screen, they’re more likely to tap that back button.

2. Forgetting clear CTAs

Your website is there to convert visitors into potential clients. That’s why you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do that. Don’t forget to add clear and convincing calls to action (CTAs) to your site.

This can be in the form of an eye-catching button at the top of the screen – in First4Lawyers fashion – or you might prefer a sidebar CTA. It’s about prompting a user into action. But these aren’t the only CTAs you could think about.

But don’t forget your 404 error pages – if you can’t avoid having these in the first place. Don’t just offer up a dead end for users. Prompt them to continue their journey through your site – a search option or redirect to the home page could work.

3. Disregarding user intent

A user lands on your site after searching for a keyword. From that point, your site has to convince them to convert into a client. But what if they’re looking for something completely unrelated to your services?

It’s all well and good optimising your site for keywords with high search volumes. But these can be irrelevant to your site. So make sure that during your keyword research, you’re analysing the user intent of a particular term.

Target the keywords that are more likely to get you the results you want. There’s little point in ranking highly for a term that won’t drive business and will just increase your site’s bounce rate.

4. Prioritising traffic over ROI

A consequence of prioritising search volume over user intent with keywords is that your website’s traffic levels may be nice and high, but it isn’t converting into the clients you want.

Traffic is considered by many in the marketing industry to be a vanity metric. It can look reassuring on the surface to have plenty of visitors, but if the site isn’t generating leads, traffic won’t contribute to the bottom line.

Make sure that your site provides visitors with what they want. Carry out the necessary research – analyse heat maps, ask visitors what they’re there for and investigate user intent to ensure you’re giving people what they’re there for.

5. Doing SEO once

So you’ve bought into the importance of SEO and you’ve optimised your site. You’ve done the keyword research, enhanced your meta data and made the technical changes that will surely help you rank.

And then you set and forget it. Your work is done, right? Unfortunately, it’s not. SEO is a constant process – you need to be continually reviewing your site’s performance and analysing what’s working and what isn’t.

You then need to apply these learnings to your site. You need to be investing the appropriate amount of time in getting your site to rank well. Your competitors won’t be ignoring SEO, so you can’t afford to.

Learning from mistakes

Your website could set the tone for your firm’s success. This makes avoiding some of the most damaging mistakes crucial.

You may not get it 100% right all the time. You might make mistakes. But by learning from things that haven’t worked, you give yourself a chance to fix those errors and get your online presence back on track.