Your Online Business Card: Designing Your Firm’s Website

Allison Williams: [00:02:13] Steve Ryan, welcome to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor Podcast.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:02:16] Thank you. So excited to be here today.

 

Allison Williams: [00:02:19] I’m excited to have you on too because we’re talking today about one of my favorite topics of marketing, which is the business card online for the law firm, i.e. the website. And so it’s been said by a lot of people that, you know, your website is really your home base. It’s where people find you and check you out, even if they were personally referred to you. But is, as a marketer, how do you define what is a website and what it is really designed to accomplish?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:02:47] It’s a great question, because as we kind of look at it, I you know, I have got to agree that it is your foundation. Right? And it is where everybody’s going to go to. It’s your billboard, your business card, however you want to say it in terms of what that what that website’s going to look like. You know, I think what often gets overlooked is that it really is truly that place and that opportunity for someone to convert. And that’s really something that we want to focus on. As you think about having a website and really define your website as much as a referral source might be, sending somebody, as much as it’s more you’re looking at is more of a landing page. You’ve got to give people the opportunity to convert, whether it’s click to call, fill out a contact form, get more information. You know, how do we look at that foundational element to make sure that you have that included? Aside from that, I think your website needs to tell the story of your firm, really needs to showcase your value add, how you’re different. Somebody who’s going out, whether they’re personally referred, finding you from a search result, they’re going to be checking out you and maybe a couple other people, too. So it’s important to really tell your story, how you’re different and answer the question why someone should work with you because there’s a lot of competitors out there and making sure that you kind of answer those three questions. That story, that key differentiator, and why someone should work with you and then give them that opportunity to convert. It’s really what I look at it from a high level home base.

 

Allison Williams: [00:04:16] Ok. So this story, the key differentiator and why someone should work with you. Those are kind of very broad global subjects. I just want to kind of delve into them a little bit deeper. So for someone who’s new in practice, how would they find for themselves a key differentiator that would make them the desired choice over someone that maybe has been in practice for 10 or 15 years and has a lot more experience?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:04:40] Sure. So I think there’s a couple of ways that you can differentiate, right? So price could be a differentiator in terms of hourly rate. You could look at it that way. Second could be the tools that you use to differentiate. Maybe you are one hundred percent online or a hundred percent remote or have, are using practice management tools that are really separating you, or you bring a different flavor, a different set of core values to the firm. And that’s what people might resonate with. So they’re looking at somebody who is personable, wants to connect, have that connection piece. And so putting that online and showing that whether it’s a video or an about me or or interesting pictures. We’ve got some clients that we work with who, you know, they’re pictures on their websites are all about the animals that they have. And that’s their key differentiator because it’s all about their animals. Others are much more, had that professional flair. And it’s, you know, here’s who I am. And if you want to work with me, because this is the value that I’m going after a professional, this is why you should work here.

 

Allison Williams: [00:05:42] You know, it’s interesting that you raise the animals. I will tell you, one of the most unique websites I have ever seen in the legal space was a company based in Toronto. I won’t say their name. So nobody is going to flood their website. But I love the fact that they included all of their lawyers on a block of different colors. And then when you clicked on the website or on the picture of the lawyer, it took you to their personalized page, which was very personalized. So one person was with their Lamborghini. Another person was skateboarding. The other person was playing the guitar. You had like all of these different very personalized images because people do hire people. And I thought it was such a unique imagery instead of, you know, lawyers standing in front of legal books with the columns outside the courthouse. You know, we see that 5000 times 5000 websites. I’m sure you’ve come across with that, right?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:06:33] Yeah. You see the same stock photos on repeat across all the different lawfirm websites. Yeah, definitely. (Yes.) That flavor is huge. Because that’s your differentiator. Right? Because people are hiring you. And so making sure that you really kind of focus and and don’t shy away from who you are.

 

Allison Williams: [00:06:50] Yeah. So since we’re talking about websites in general, one of the things I have had lawyers ask me is, you know, what is the importance of having a website? Like, if I’m one of these people that gets all of my business from personal referrals or even from other lawyer referrals, how how much emphasis should I really be placing on the website?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:07:11] Yeah. So I get that question all the time, too. And it’s typically a stumbling block of, you know, we get all of this other business, so I don’t need to invest in this. And I would say you can do a lot of things with a website and it doesn’t have to be one hundred thousand dollar website that you’re going to be spending on to not get any conversions off of. There are things that you can do from a smaller scale.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:07:36] There’s just a landing page to have your own url so that you can give that out to your referral sources and say, here’s my url, here’s my web address. And people here, maybe it’s maybe it’s simple. Maybe it’s, you know, a quick about a picture, practice areas, contact form, phone number, address, email address and hours of operation. Just a quick landing page. And it’s up there because people are still gonna be trying to find your firm and want to validate that you’re a legitimate firm as much as everybody trusts the referral network referral relationship. It’s so important to have that street cred and credibility and validation that you are a legitimate business. And people who are tech savvy or internet savvy are gonna do their research and they’re gonna start a search result. And whether they have your domain or not, they’re gonna start with a search result, really start looking at it and finding you.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:08:32] And if they can’t find any, they can’t find you. It really makes it hard for somebody to convert and to start working with you because they might, if they can’t find you, they’re gonna go off to somebody else. And so that’s why I think it’s really important to have something, whether it’s small landing page or a bust. You know, I think it’s controlling your message, making sure that you’re putting out the right information about you and about your firm, validating your business and promoting your brand.

 

Allison Williams: [00:09:00] All right. Great stuff there. So let’s talk about some of the, what I consider to be kind of the fluff of websites, because I think a lot of people, when they think about designing a website, they focus on what I consider to be the wrong stuff. Right? How pretty is it? You know, how cool does my logo look? And yes, we as human beings, we’re drawn to aesthetics. So aesthetics do matter. But what are the things that really convert someone from being a lead to being an actual client and calling that website, calling that law firm and trying to get in to see them like what are the necessary components for conversion?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:09:34] Yeah. And I think I think aesthetics are important because if a website doesn’t respond on mobile or isn’t user responsive design technology, you’re having that immediate barrier to entry right away. So I think aesthetics. You know, you want to look at it in some ways, but the meat of the website shouldn’t be focused on how flashy, color schemes, all of that. It should really be focused. One of the things that we strive for and recommend is where are your calls to action on your website? So from a content standpoint, what are you driving people to do? Is it to learn more? Is it to schedule a free consultation? Is it to click this, click and submit this contact form. Really, users and website users want to be told what to do when they land on your site. And so how do you call them to do that and drive them to the right pages? Maybe it’s from the home page. You want to highlight one of your attorneys and really drive them to that attorney or it’s a recent blog post that you wrote. And so kind of focus on those calls to action, would be first and foremost in terms of what’s going to help drive a potential conversion. Secondly, I would say it’s optimized content that answers questions. You don’t want to just put out content to put out content. But think about the frequently asked questions that you get on a regular basis. How long does this process take? What do I need to do? How much time do I need to commit? If it’s personal injury, what are the fees and be upfront with that? If it’s family law, are you flat fee or hourly? Are there different types of, you know, traditional versus collaborative, versus mediation and kind of where, where are you focusing? And answer those questions for people, because that’s what people are searching online. They’re asking search engines questions. And so it gives you a better fighting chance to answer the question. And if you answer the question in the right way for that consumer, they’re going to be more likely to convert.

 

Allison Williams: [00:11:26] Yeah, I think it’s a great point they should make about the fact that people are going and Googling questions and they’re specifically asking a search engine. How do I? Where do I? What does this look like? And so for people that are interested in answering those questions, how can I do kind of a research based on the search engine? What are the frequently asked questions in this particular practice area?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:11:47] So one of the free tools is out there that individuals can use as Google Trends. So you can use Google Trends to type in basically different keywords and see their trend volume over time. That will allow you to be really specific and maybe just focus on criminal defense and see kind of what those trend volumes look like. Or it might be more specific. What happens if I get a DUI and really it’s going to let you tailor your content to those trends and being able to see what works and what doesn’t. There are some paid tools out there, too, that you can look at to really look at volume of the past 30, 60, 90 days. We use, one of the tools that we use as Ahrefs that allows us to kind of do some deep keyword analysis, see what people are searching and how frequently and location. Google Trends is a good place to start for somebody who’s just looking?

 

Allison Williams: [00:12:40] Yeah, absolutely. So let’s let’s kind of talk about structure of websites. So we know that aesthetics are not the only thing, but they do matter. And we already talked about having calls to action prominently placed on your website so that people know what to do. But what do we know? What is the best way to make your website fit together? In other words, do we go to just having a home page and having some autobiographies or do we need to include other specific types of information and pages on a website to make it as optimal as possible for the user experience?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:13:15] So I think if you’re, if you’re trying to focus on optimization from a search engine standpoint, it’s important to have multiple different pages so that each one can have a specific keyword target, be optimized for those specific keywords. So we look at, you know, if you’re going to put something together, home page, about page, practice area page or multiple practice area pages, contact page. If you commit to writing a blog, maybe you have a blog page on there. But if you’re looking for a website, that’s more than just a landing page, but basic to communicate what you’re trying to communicate. I would say home, about, practice areas and then contact. What I would say is don’t try to flood your practice areas pages.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:14:00] If you’re a general practitioner, don’t try to say I do wills and trusts and divorce and guardianship and and and on one page because it’s not going to rank for anything. And it’s just going to confuse the user.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:14:14] Similarly, I wouldn’t have a bunch of dropdowns on their practice area that have twenty five different practice areas at the same time. So it’s gonna be important to to lump them and really build out sub pages and have that hierarchical component and structure so that you have practice area at the top. Underneath that you might have criminal defense and then underneath criminal defense you might have, you know, DUI, white collar crime and really build out those specific pages to really showcase when somebody is trying to come that they might see big picture or they do criminal defense for what is criminal defense.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:14:46] Oh, do I really fit in this or am I really looking for a family law attorney? So you really want to structure it that way. One of the things that we come back regularly is maybe it’s two attorneys who have come together to join a practice and one of them focuses on personal injury and the other focuses on family law. And so how to really combat that and bring those two together. And so from a structure standpoint, really hitting people in the face, right when they land on the site, on the home page and saying, OK, are you looking for a family or are you looking for personal injury to really drive that person to where they’re supposed to go and not lose them Right? You don’t want them to bounce off of your site because they only see family law and they’re coming for personal injury, if your firm does offer both.

 

Allison Williams: [00:15:27] Yeah, well, I think it’s very important what you just said there about the idea that, you know, you shouldn’t be trying to stack your website with a whole bunch of fluff, because I think nowadays, you know, consumers are much more educated than they used to be. And so they’re going to figure out if you are one attorney and you have 17 practice areas that you really aren’t a specialist in any of them, and you’re going to dilute your message because how can you possibly have a consistent thread that runs through personal injury, corporate law and state planning, family law? You know, there’s just, you know, there’s there’s no synergy to it. So the messaging really becomes very important when you start to narrow down what you’re presenting. Is that something that you find?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:16:07] Definitely. And I think it’s, you know, not just that, but also based off of how many attorneys you have, too. So if you’ve got multiple attorneys, making sure that each of the attorneys have their own page on the site so that if somebody is looking for that specific attorney’s going to find them and see exactly what they practice or what their areas of focus are from a practice area standpoint. And really, own, you know, kind of across the board, it’s owning who you are, and owning your story and owning your brand. So, you know, if you’re just going to focus on family law, focus on family law. Don’t try to also add another practice area, because a lot of time consumers as they’re looking, they’re looking for an expert and they’re looking for somebody who knows what they’re talking about. And if you’re diluting your message or you’ve got too many other practice areas, you might get discounted right away.

 

Allison Williams: [00:16:54] Yeah. All right. So let’s talk now about some of the things that get added on to websites. So I think there has been really an advent of adding on additional, we’ll call it conversion activity. But, you know, some people just call it kind of the bells and whistles on the websites. Things such as live chat or chat bots, which are messaging through your social media pages. And a lot of those services, you know, are of questionable value if you don’t really understand how to use them appropriately. So can you talk to us about what some of those services might do for a website and how we can use them effectively?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:17:29] Yeah, bells and whistles is probably where I stick for a lot of that. Because if you’re not equipped to handle what those tools are going to do for you, you know, that’s where you’re not going to see the return on investment in terms of paying for them. What I do like about them from. From our return on investment, from a growth, from a lead conversion standpoint, especially on the live chat or chat bots on the website or social media, it allows individuals to get questions answered that they might have. And it allows the opportunity to filter out potential clients that might not convert. And say, OK, I’m really looking for this and then I’m going to see, oh, no, that’s not what this firm offers. They’re going to quickly go, it’s going to save your admen time and admin costs of the phone ringing and saying, oh, can I, can I get a will? No, we practice personal injury. So really kind of focusing on filtering out some of those conversions is going to be important. The other part about it that I like is it allows conversions to come in and happen when you’re not open. So we see a lot of people who are at work all day and come back and they’re maybe searching for attorneys at night when you’re not in your office, typically. And so is there a way that you can use these live chats to have these conversations that somebody else is staffing and you’re not staffing to really allow conversions to happen after the traditional workday ends.

 

Allison Williams: [00:18:56] Yeah, well, you know, it’s interesting that you mentioned the idea of converting when you’re not, when you’re not open, because I think a lot of, a lot of tools that are put onto websites now create this wonderful imagery. Right? You see the website, you see exactly what you need. You get the information you need. There’s some questions that are answered, maybe some video content, which has become very popular in recent years. And then you’re kind of left hanging until 9 o’clock, Monday through Friday. So for the user, it’s not necessarily the best experience. It’s like. You got me all excited and then you’re just kind of left me lurch there.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:19:31] And that’s where, you know, having that opportunity either to submit the contact form, book the free consultation, using an online scheduling platform, answer the question through a live chat or get an online live chat or a receptionist 24/7 receptionist that can answer those questions and schedule and book for you is really going to help increase that flow of conversions and get those people that are ready to convert at 7 o’clock at night.

 

Allison Williams: [00:19:58] Absolutely. So I want to circle back to something that you said earlier, because it was a key point and you were just giving us so many great things. I honestly just wanted to keep the conversation going. But I’m really interested in this topic of content, because for a lot of people, you know, we all are trying to do our best to create, if you are a small firm and you don’t yet have a full marketing budget and you want to do the best that you can with what you’ve been given, a lot of times people will research and say great. Content. I just need to like pump out a bunch of content. Right? And so it’s difficult sometimes to know how to use the right types of content on a website so that it’s consistent with your brand, it promotes your message, it demonstrates your value, but also doesn’t overwhelm you so that it becomes a 24 hour a day, seven day a week job for you to to create content. So how would you advise someone who is kind of new to creating content for their own website, where they have a fully staffed business or even before they have a high budget and yet still want to get something out there, want to take some free time that they have and really create value for their website.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:21:04] So I would start by saying content is king and still continues to be king. But what is really important is focusing on quality content as opposed to the quantity or frequency of your content.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:21:19] One well optimized piece of content at eight hundred to a thousand words with a focused keyword is going to provide so much more ROI than trying to get 15 blog posts out in a week because you’re just not going to have the frequency. You’re not going to have that, those blog posts aren’t going to convert. They’re not going to rank. You’re not going to get any traffic. So really focusing on the quality. There’s research out there that says, you know, landing page with a, with a video is going to increase the conversion rate and could be up to 50 percent more conversions if you have a video on there. So I’m not saying you’ve got to have a video on every single page, your website. But if you look at kind of your high traffic pages, you look at your Google Analytics or any sort of web traffic analytics that you have, see what pages are getting the most visibility. And if you’ve got the ability to create a 30 second video to put something on there, that’s OK. You know, if it’s an attorney page that’s getting the most traffic. How about we get that attorney talking. On a practice area page maybe you’re answering three quick questions in 30 seconds. And I’m not saying you’ve got to go out and hire a video production firm or anything like that. You can use a mobile device to create it and embed it, put it on YouTube and let it run on your site or just do a direct upload on the site. So, you know, I would say it’s, it’s, it’s quality over quantity for sure. And then, you know, really look at, look at where your needs are and how you can develop that frequency and get it. Just get it into a rhythm. Maybe you bite off and say one a quarter, maybe you bite off and say one a month, depending on your workload and your balance and kind of what you can commit to. But making sure that you commit to it is going to be the important part.

 

Allison Williams: [00:23:07] Yeah. Well, the committing part is always the hard part for lawyers, right? Because we love to lawyer. We’re not marketers, which is the reason why I always you do what you can to be able to hire a professional like you to actually create something that’s likely to convert for you. But speaking of conversions, you know, one of the things that a lot of people have a general question about when they are trying to look for a company to build a website for them is, you know, what can I really expect of ROI from my website? If I am just now launching a website, should I, you know, what’s a good number for me to be aiming for in terms of people that are converting to calling my office and schedule an appointment or, or directly converting direct from the website?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:23:47] Yeah. And it’s a tough question because it depends on scale of website. It depends on, you know, how much, how many pages you have, optimization, all of that. What I’d say is, focus on the quick wins. So if you look at a potential lifetime value of a client to you and your firm, and let’s say that lifetime value is a couple thousand dollars because it’s a transactional. Wills, wills, estate trusts. What does that look like if you get one client? Does it pay for itself? Do you get two clients? Does it pay for itself? I think the initial part of the website is really making sure that you are optimizing it. So a lot of web design companies won’t, don’t have the SEO technical knowledge. And so you want to make sure that when you’re looking at somebody who’s going to maybe develop a site for you, that they have some SEO knowledge so that they can optimize the meta titles, they can optimize the descriptions, they can add those headers and the calls to actions for you, because that’s going to be really important from a return on investment standpoint to have a fighting chance in search engines and rankings. Making sure that you submit your site to Google, Bing, Yahoo, to make sure that’s been recrawled. That’s going to get it on to potentially being found. And look at, even like we talked about earlier, we’ve got referral sources that are probably sending people to you.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:25:11] So, you know, you might count that as, well that person came from a referral source, but might they have not converted if you didn’t have them on the website? So, if you didn’t have a website, so really the importance to really kind of focus on all of those quick wins. But then on the intake side, it’s really important to make sure you’ve got some tracking to see where people are coming from to say, you know, did you find me from referrals? Did you find me from a search? Did you find me on social media? Did you see an e-mail blast that I got? How did you find us is a great question to ask. Oftentimes, if they say online, they’ll probably say online and what does online mean? So it’s really going to be important to kind of take that a step further and see if you get any information from them. They’re probably not going to say, oh, I Googled divorce attorney near me, but they might, you know, admit it was a Google search that allows you to maximize and start to track and see what your ROI is, and if you see more and more people coming from online, maybe it’s time to shift some dollars if you have some from the marketing spend to some online activity and seeing if you can kind of drive that funnel a little bit further.

 

Allison Williams: [00:26:18] So I think that’s an excellent point that you made the idea that you can’t 100 percent know that your website was the conversion activity. And I think a lot of times people miss that fact. In fact, usually you get this this issue coming up when people are trying to evaluate pay per click ads, you know, because we can determine if you clicked on the ad and went to the website. We don’t know if you came back to the website at a later time. We don’t know if you converted directly from that pay per click ad or if you were searching, had gotten onto our website and later, later saw the ad. And so I think it’s very important that people kind of realize that the website is kind of the tail. Right? Most people, it’s like all things lead to the website. You got to have that great website and we send you to the great website and then you take the action to get a hold of us.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:27:04] And it could be any different. It could be a sponsorship you did at a nonprofit event or you had a table at a chamber event and they saw your name and they went online and they searched your name. So it could be a brand name search too, that you want to, you don’t want to discount at all. So, you know, I think that from an ROI standpoint, though, the other thing from an ROI standpoint, especially on kind of local searches that I would throw out there, is to really make sure that you’ve claimed and you’re optimizing and your posting to your Google My Business page, which is not directly affiliated to your website, but in some ways it is directly affiliated to your website because one of the shifts that we’ve seen recently with algorithms is that local first approach. So trying to get somebody on a map pack that’s going to be really localized search. And so making sure that your Google My Business presence is optimized and, you know, maybe you might get conversions from there as well because people might click to call right from there, ask for directions right from there. And so looking at those analytics will really kind of help as you’re looking across the landscape. There’s so many different ways that you can go and different things that are going to drive traffic.

 

Allison Williams: [00:28:11] Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Google My Business is great for having recommendations there. So if you can get your clients to give you recommendations and they’re on the Google My Business page, you’re much more likely to have people they click to go to the website if they’re reading the positive reviews that are at the top of the page. You know, as you, as you’re using your Google My Business.

 

Steve Ryan: [00:28:29] Yeah. It’s a great tool to add to the toolkit, that’s often overlooked.

 

Allison Williams: [00:28:33] Yeah. All right. So, as we’re winding down, I just wanted to ask you one last question, which is really about the content. We talked about this a little bit earlier, so I won’t go into it a whole lot other than to just note again and to ask you to kind of expound upon this again. You said quantity has become less powerful than quality and the quality of of of posting now, at least from the the marketers that I’ve talked to, really has become much more of a focal point. So they’re hiring lawyers to actually write the content and making sure that it’s a value, that it’s a longer, a longer piece of content than maybe before. But if somebody is really trying to optimize that strategy and they’re looking at quality versus quantity today, how quickly, I mean, how much are we as the layperson supposed to be able to know and track the trends of when is it quality versus quantity? And how do I know when the Google algorithm is changing so that I can really, you know, employ the right strategy at the right time?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:29:35] Algorithms are changing daily so it’s really hard to stay abreast of it unless you’re doing it full time. So I think that’s part of it. What I would say is a quality piece of content will continue to rank and likely stand the test of time. So I would say just because you’re not seeing an immediate conversion from it doesn’t mean that it’s not going to start ranking over time and you’re going to slowly, maybe go from page 10 to page 6 to page 2 to page 1. So really kind of making sure that that focus of that content is going to always be something that someone’s going to ask. A potential client is always going to ask this question or a potential client is always going to want this information, is, is kind of the litmus test that I would use and say, OK, if this is a regular question we get as part of the process or a regular question that I get throughout the conversion process, then it’s going to be something that’s gonna be really important to have and continue to be out there. So I wouldn’t discount it right away. And I would say at minimum, try to commit to doing a piece of quality content quarterly. That’s going to be keyword focused and it’s going to be really in-depth. Eight hundred to a thousand words. That’s going to really drive it to convert.

 

Allison Williams: [00:31:08] Well, there you have it. You know, Steve, I want to thank you again for giving us so much valuable information about websites and how we can employ the use of websites effectively in our law firms. Why don’t you tell everybody how they can get a hold of you if they want to have a consultation about how your company can help them establish a website that can work with your business?

 

Steve Ryan: [00:31:25] Sure, that’ll be great. So I can be, our firm is RyTech LLC. We can be found at RyTech. RY TECH LLC dot com. Phone number 6 3 0 – 5 3 7 – 0 5 5 6. And my email address is Steve at Ry Tech LLC dot com.  steve@rytechllc.com  We’re also happy to provide if you have a current website, a complimentary website evaluation for any of your listeners too.

 

Allison Williams: [00:31:54] Well, there you have it. Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. Steve, I want to thank you again for being a wonderful guest here on the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor Podcast. And if you or anyone that you know needs a consultation about your website, again, Steve, has provided his contact information. It will also be available in the show notes. Everyone, I am Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Have a wonderful day!