Jump to:
• The power of storytelling
• Design and a seamless user experience
• Leveraging data for success
• Start creating a successful website today
Your website is the hub of your marketing efforts. But, with so much to consider, building an optimized site that attracts and converts ideal clients can feel daunting. To create a high-performing and on-brand website, legal teams must leverage storytelling techniques, user-centric design, and data insights.
Our comprehensive guide outlines ten key elements for shaping an effective law firm website. In each section, you will also find simple action steps you can start taking today to optimize your site.
Building a successful website happens at the intersection of storytelling, design, and data insights.
Like the storytelling skills you use in the courtroom or one-on-one with a client, compelling storytelling on a law firm’s website should be authentic, transparent, and tailored to resonate with your audience. By incorporating these storytelling elements, your law firm can establish credibility and humanize your brand.
Explain the principles that guide your firm’s work, its commitment to clients, and the overall impact you aim to make in the legal field. Defining your firm’s core values and mission creates an emotional connection with people. At LaFleur, we walk our clients through narrative mapping to help define the story they want to tell about their firm.
Start by understanding your mission, values, and background. Incorporate those elements in your website to communicate your brand, foster trust, and attract the right clients. Then, use this information to write copy for any section of your site in a tone and voice that represents who you are.
Simple steps you can start now:
Craft language that speaks directly to the objectives of your client (or potential client). A narrative map and a jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) exercise help delve into a person’s practical needs and motivations. The JTBD framework complements storytelling to create content that connects and helps your target audience on a personal level.
Connecting with content and information on your firm’s practice areas comes in many forms: blogs, articles, white papers, videos, and more. You can position your firm as a thought leader in its field by showcasing your firm’s expertise and providing valuable insights that resonate with visitors’ needs.
But before you commit to narrative mapping or a JTBD exercise, quickly skim your website.
Simple steps you can start now:
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Visual storytelling is meant to enhance, not replace, your written copy. Photos, infographics, and other creative visuals capture attention and connect the copy to that memorable visual. Visual storytelling is a strategic tool to prevent walls of text that overwhelm visitors and cause cognitive overload. Visuals break up lengthy copy, making it more digestible and approachable.
See?
The goal is to convey messages and reinforce the narrative within your written content.
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Simple steps you can start now:
At LaFleur, our content writers and designers collaborate, often writing and designing in tandem. This saves time during production and creates elements of websites that are easy for your visitors to understand quickly and connect with.
This collaborative practice also allows us to work with our development team to create a great user experience.
Consistency reinforces your law firm’s identity and leaves a lasting impression. In addition to maintaining a unified tone of voice and storytelling approach, your brand’s visual elements play a pivotal role.
Logos, a brand color system, and dedicated fonts are strategic choices that make your firm memorable.
Simple steps you can start now:
However, even after reviewing and ensuring consistency in your storytelling and brand elements, an intuitive flow is necessary for your visitors to stay on your site.
Our brains are drawn to clarity, so creating a flow where important information stands out is vital. Clarity and white space allow key elements to stand out, improving comprehension. Our team starts by creating a site map and content hierarchy. Then, we develop wireframes for each page that arrange information intuitively.
These prepare for a responsive, mobile-friendly site where content flexibly adapts without losing function. Keeping the layout uncluttered also enhances accessibility. A clean, minimal interface helps all visitors easily find what they need.
Simple steps you can start now:
Strategic calls-to-action (CTAs) guide visitors to contact your firm, schedule a consultation, or convert. Ensure CTAs stand out in both language and design consistency.
If your website includes forms for inquiries or consultations, design them to be user-friendly. Minimize the number of required fields, provide clear instructions, and create a thank you page to validate their form submission.
These tactics enhance user experience, engagement, and brand sentiment. Clear pathways to desired actions motivate visitors to convert from prospects into clients.
Simple steps you can start now:
Just as you create physical accommodations in your law firm’s office, your website should accommodate individuals in the digital world. We’ve talked a lot about visitor-facing website elements, but many things that aren’t visible on the webpage impact usability. By paying attention to design elements, a law firm’s website can create a positive and practical user experience, encouraging all visitors to engage with the content.
Write alternative text (alt text) for images, limit motion for people with sensory differences, choose readable brand fonts, set accessible contrasts, create keyboard-friendly navigation, use closed captioning and video transcription, and ensure compatibility with screen readers.
Former LaFleur web developer and accessibility specialist Jon Olson notes, “You’re only ‘disabled’ in a world that doesn’t accommodate you.”
Simple steps you can start now:
But how do you know if everything you’ve done above makes a difference? And how do you continually improve performance? Last but certainly not least, leverage your data.
You set KPIs and goals for your law firm; your marketing and website shouldn’t be any different. A website can be beautiful, readable, and navigable, but without understanding who is visiting, where they’re going, and if it’s driving qualified leads, it’s just a parking lot.
Using your data insights helps guide decisions about site content, structure, performance, and security and helps identify areas for optimization.
First and foremost, make sure GA4 is activated on your site. Last year, Google switched from Universal Analytics to GA4, an improved analytics platform that tracks detailed user behavior, deepening your insights and improving your marketing.
Regularly review reports on traffic sources, site interactions, conversions, and user journeys.
At LaFleur, we recommend creating user journey maps to visualize and understand user paths through the website. Identify common routes, entry and exit points, and potential bottlenecks. This information helps inform continual improvement to the UX experiences outlined above.
Simple steps you can start now:
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Implementing tools to track page loading speeds may seem purely technical, but faster load times are critical for giving visitors a seamless experience on your website. Optimization measures like compressing images and adopting efficient coding practices help accelerate load speeds. Slow-loading pages not only diminish user experience but can also negatively impact search engine rankings, underlining the significance of ongoing performance assessment and optimization efforts.
A simple step you can start now:
But it’s not just about speed. Collaboration between web developers and designers allows enhancements across the board—from load times to overall site security, addressing vulnerabilities, and adding layers of protection.
When visitors arrive at your firm’s website, you must protect any sensitive data they share. Implementing encrypted forms, cookie consent banners, and clear privacy policies assures users their trust is valued. Promising data protection builds credibility and is required to comply with evolving regulations.
Regular audits also ensure you continually meet industry-standard data practices as regulations advance.
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By incorporating these data insights elements, a website can become a powerful tool for understanding user behavior, optimizing performance, and making informed decisions to enhance overall effectiveness and user satisfaction.
You may notice how each element connects to the next, and some of the above recommendations could fit into several categories.
An effective law firm website sits at the intersection of storytelling, intuitive design, and actionable data. Create a website that is an online hub, conveying your unique identity, connecting with visitors, and continually optimizing performance.
Use this guide and checklist to equip your legal team to create a high-impact site that drives growth through deeper client relationships.