Assessing Priorities in Law Firm Web Sites

Most law firm web sites involve compromises between various ideals. What elements best serve the business purpose? Is it the Flash or JavaScript effects? The content? Or is it the bit you cannot see - the search engine optimisation?

It is, I am sure, possible to design a law firm web site which looks stunning, is full of relevant, accurate, well-written content, is constantly updated, accurately reflects the firm's image, portrays its partners as likeable and knowledgeable, comes near the top of every relevant search engine hit-list and draws in profitable new clients every day.

The reality is that, whilst many law firm web sites tick some of those boxes, none achieves them all. One does not know, of course, what revenue springs from a site - even the owners of the business find that hard to identify accurately. The rest is discernable from the outside. Some is subjective - do you like the look of it? Some is objective - can you find it with a relevant Google query, is the law accurate, could you find your way around it, and would you go back to it or refer a friend to it?

Web design is a set of compromises. These are not necessarily compromises of budget - you can produce a good site for relatively little money and spend tens of thousands on a horrible one. The compromises lie in trading one element against another, in accepting that there are limits to the lawyer input available, and in recognising that the glossy exterior is the icing, not the cake.

Compromises or not, a business-driven web site is better value for money than most other investments in promotion.

Let us take each of the desiderata listed in my opening paragraph. What are the constraints which force a compromise in each case?

Looks stunning..

You can get some very exciting visual effects with Flash, JavaScript or DHTML. Sometimes these sites can be found easily in search engines. Sometimes they load instantly and take you straight to what you want to see. Try a test. Choose a site you like for its cool effects, then try and find it in Google using generic search terms (i.e. those which might be used by someone who did not know the business name). Once into the site (if you can find it) look up something simple, like the telephone number; over a public wireless connection; at an airport; before your flight leaves.

Often - not always - you find that the beauty has come at a price - the message "Site loading..." and the invitation to skip the Intro which the firm has spent so much to buy. The show-case web brochure is not necessarily the most practical business tool. I revert to this below

..relevant, accurate, well-written content..constantly updated

This is what the prospective clients want to find when they put their search terms into Google or Yahoo. Who in your firm is going to write this material? It takes a long time to research and write an article on the general law, never mind the cutting edge stuff which (you hope) the punters are going to be looking for.

Furthermore, the pages must not only be literate to the human eye but to Google's eye, and Google (and the others) have very different ideas as to what makes a page relevant.

So we have two more compromises here - fee-earning time versus practice development time and human-readable versus Google-friendly text.

...accurately reflects the firm's image...

It is obviously desirable that your web site fits with the corporate image of your printed and other material. It may well be that the latter transfers easily from the printed page to the screen. It is equally likely that your logo looks old-hat on a screen, your corporate colours look drab and that even the type-face you use on paper conveys the wrong impression on a web page.

In an ideal world you have a ground-up review of the firm's corporate image. It is more likely that you will compromise somewhere.

...portrays its partners as likeable and knowledgeable...

I cannot really help if your managing partner looks like the spawn of Boris Karloff and Rosa Klebb, save to suggest that a good photographer can work miracles, and to warn that a long-term recruitment strategy to remedy matters may run foul of various discrimination laws.

More seriously, this is a people business. Prospective clients are not much interested, frankly, in the firm's history or what its office looks like. They want to read some relevant pages to be clear that you know the subject, and to see a decent photograph of the lawyer they are thinking to ringing up.

...comes near the top of every relevant search engine hit-list..

This over-rides all the rest. If no-one can find your site then it does not matter if the appearance is ghastly, your law is wrong, the image looks tired and partners look frightening.

It is not as straightforward as saying that sophisticated effects-filled sites will not get found by the search engines whilst simple text-filled ones will. This alleged truism is in fact largely true, but the linkage of cause and effect is not direct. The use of Flash etc can certainly erect barriers to search engines, but the reason for the site's invisibility is probably not the effects per se but the fact that the designer paid more attention to them than to search engine optimisation. Optimisation is dull, hard work.

In addition to direct hits - your own site being returned in a search - there is the neglected benefit of secondary web hits. These arise when third parties build directories on the back of existing indexes. A Google search for a law firm client of mine has just yielded 1,730 hits; they only have 170 pages. The bulk of their potential exposure derives from secondary hits - but you have to have the direct hits to get the indirect ones.

..and draws in profitable new clients every day.

This is hard to track. Occasionally there is a clear link between the web site and a new client, but you will only know that when you get a direct answer to the question "how did you find us and why did you choose us?".

This subject merits a page of its own, but you can probably take a few things for granted. These include the certainty that if you don't catch that client, someone else will; that a high proportion of new clients (not just those who are new to you but those who have never had a solicitor before) will use a search engine to narrow the field; that whilst first impressions count for a great deal, it is your long-term suitability as a partner for their business and personal affairs they are after, not your pretty face.

Test the analysis

The conclusion from all this is not that attractive, Flash-filled sites are a bad thing but that the effects may distract both the developer and the users from more important things like finding the site, finding an article which they want to read and finding your phone number. Furthermore, budget and energy spent on flashy things might be better spent on site optimisation and content, bearing in mind that content serves a dual purpose and has two classes of reader - the human who must be impressed by the text and the search engine crawler which is more interested in word-frequency and other statistical matters.

You might like to try a test. Pretend you are a prospective client trying to find a solicitor to help you with your tax or matrimonial problem. Search for tax + solicitors and look at the first ten results which are solicitors' web sites. I bet that not one of them will make heavy use of special effects - they will be plain, unadorned, unflashy sites. Do the same for matrimonial + solicitors, and for stamp duty + solicitors.

I have an ulterior motive in suggesting these searches: in each case, a page which I have created comes on the first page of Google's results - in one case as one of 3.17 million hits. Not all my pages rank this high and the site is not the only one to rank very high on a range of subjects. The point, though, is that our pearls of wisdom on tax, matrimony and stamp duty would lie unread, however beautifully displayed, if no-one found the site.

Conclusion

These results are not effortless. Perspiration outstrips inspiration as a contributing factor to the high hit-rate. In commercial terms - clients who cite the web site as their entrée to the firm - the results are worth more than any amount of pretty and sophisticated effects.

The answer to the question posed at the head of this page is that all the elements matter but that content and optimisation matter most. They are interlinked - without content there is nothing to find which is worth reading, and without hard graft on optimisation the most accurate, timely and elegant content will not be read. Appearance and ease of navigation matter too, but they are irrelevant if the content is not present and findable.

If you would like to discuss how I could help to promote your business (whether or not it is a law firm) on the web, please Contact me. If you already have a corporate image with which you are happy, I will translate it to the web; if not I will work with what you have or help you develop a new one. If you have material suitable as content I will get it found; if you do not, I will help you write it and then get it found. I will even take your photographs for you if you wish.

By the way, how did you find this page?

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