Get Ready for Visitors!

“Company is coming,” my mother used to say with a tone of alarm.  “We have to get the house ready for visitors.”  This would lead to a frenzy of vacuuming, tidying up and putting out flowers to make the house look nice.  Special attention would be paid to the rooms that visitors would actually be in – like the dining room and living room.

Law firms should put the same amount of effort into preparing their Web sites.  They must be ready for visitors, especially to show off the “rooms” or pages that the visitors will look at.  Having the site left in the same condition it was a month ago is not good enough.  Visitors – who will include clients, potential clients and future hires – will expect the site to be tidy (no broken links), fresh (new newsletters and articles) and comfortable (a site built around their interests).

How to get ready
This raises the question: where will the visitors go?  Just as you don’t need to clean out the garage when company comes over, you don’t need to rewrite every page of the site each month.  So law firms should focus, at the very least, on the most-visited pages of their Web site.  The identity of those pages can be found in the monthly Web site traffic reports that firms get. 

This information will be called different things in different reporting programs, typically in the “Request Report,” which identifies the most popular web pages on the site and how often they were accessed.  The idea is to nail down which exact pages are visited most often.

In my consulting practice, I have reviewed dozens of law firm Web sites and traffic reports.  While no two sites are the same, I have discerned some patterns in where visitors go.  The three top destinations ordinarily are:

• Home page
• Attorney bios
• Recruiting

All the other parts of the site – newsletters, events, press releases, articles, practice descriptions – fall farther down the list.

Home Page.   This page is the firm’s face to the world and it is online 24 hours a day.  The home page is the firm’s only chance to make a good first impression, to interest visitors in staying on the site, and to entice them to return.  This page should look professionally-designed, not home-made.  It should have a few – less than 10 – well-chosen links; most law firms make the mistake of setting out too many options.  And the entire home page should fit on one screen, with the resolution set at 800 x 600 pixels.  Visitors are unlikely to scroll down a home page to find more information.

Attorney bios.   Remember that clients hire lawyers, not law firms, so pay special attention to the attorney bios.  A web site is an online catalog for the firm.  Accordingly the Web site should have color pictures of the “merchandise” (the lawyers), a detailed and interesting description of the “inventory” (the bio text), and easy “ordering information” (the lawyer’s phone number, land address and email address).    I am continually surprised how many law firm bios don’t have pictures, display boring boilerplate about the lawyer, and neglect to put the land address in the bio.

Recruiting.   Some law firms put too much emphasis on this page, and create jazzy, hip recruiting sections that diverge wildly from the “main site.”  This is a mistake, because the students will see the staid “main” site and simply remember the difference.  Some firms put too little emphasis on the recruiting page, and leave off the name of a contact person or the recruiting schedule.  The firms that get it just right include their NALP form, discuss what it’s like to work at the firm and describe their summer program.

The point to remember is that a law firm should emphasize the areas that visitors seek most.  These sections should be the primary links on the home page and give the visitors the information they want.

By Larry Bodine, National Legal Marketing Expert. Larry is a marketing and Web site consultant for law firms throughout North America. He can be reached at 630.942.0977 and lbodine@lawmarketing.com.