Most law firms and law firm marketing companies focus only on increasing traffic to their website. While no doubt that’s important, another important question that should be asked is “How many people are leaving my site and going to a competitors website?” If you want to increase your chances of keeping a potential client on your site, you need a website that looks better and provides better information and answers to the questions your prospective clients are asking. Consumers don’t just go to the 1st website they visit and then contact that firm. After 10 years of analyzing law firm website analytics, I can tell you from experience that great design makes a big difference in conversion rates. Law firms lose leads and potential cases when visitor leave their site.
What are the most common reasons people leave a law firm’s website?
- Poor or outdated design – Your website design is a direct reflection of your law firm’s brand. If your design is bad or outdated, it can make you look like a second-rate law firm. Whether you are or not, that’s the impression you are giving your site visitors. If you want potential clients to think you’re a trustworthy and reliable law firm, your sites design needs to reflect that.
- Poorly written content – Content that is stuffed with keywords can be incredibly annoying to read for site visitors. Many attorney websites try to do this for SEO reasons but today keyword stuffing your content can cause your site to be penalized. Don’t do it.
- Lack of information – Consumers are looking for information on you and your law firm. If you don’t provide them with enough information, in most cases you will lose them.
- Hard to read on their mobile or tablet device – If your site is not built responsive or mobile friendly, it’s time you make that investment. Over 50% of all digital media is consumed on mobile devices. If your site is difficult to read on mobile or tablet devices you increase your chances of losing that prospect.
- Annoying pop-ups – Users hate pop-ups, don’t annoy your visitors. If you are going to use them, allow your visitors to easily close them out. I’ve seen law firm sites where chat windows pop up on the page with no way to close them and that’s simply a bad idea.
- Information is difficult to find – If the content on your site is burried or difficult to find, most likely your visitors are not going to find it. Important information shouldn’t be more than 2 clicks away at any time.
- Low budget video – Blurry video, poor audio, bad editing….what a terrible message this can give visitors. If your videos look cheap and unprofessional, you look the exact same way to your potential visitors. In most cases it’s better not to have these on your site at all.
- Slow load times – If your site takes a long time to load, you risk losing visitors. Especially on mobile devices.
All of these things can contribute to you losing a visitor or more importantly a potential case.