Things to Consider with Your New Law Firm Website
If your law firm is considering a new website, there are some other important factors worth considering. In particular, driving traffic to the new website and of course, ensuring you have state-of-the-art website hosting that delivers your website to potential clients at lightning speed.
Get your new law firm website loads of traffic with our proven SEO strategy and tactics Google Ads
Work with our Google Certified Ads experts on driving file opens. CRM Technology
Use our tried and true CRM technologies to track, nuture and convert your clients Web Hosting
Don't underestimate the importance of website hosting. Our servers are hosted in ultra-safe and secure locations in the region of your law firm. Content Writing
Always where things fall over. We can create every piece of content that your firm needs. From practice area content through to bios to articles.
Some Latest Websites
Here are a few of our most recent law firm websites.
Why a New Law Firm Website?
Quite apart from the fact that these days people invariably search for legal help online, your law firm’s website we see as the quintessential hub of how your law firm is positioned in the marketplace. Without being too esoteric, a law firm’s website is often the only piece of marketing collateral that exists that strives to give breathe to who they are, why it matters, what they do, for whom they do it for, when they do it, how they do it, why they do it and for how much. Your law firm’s website stands as an ambassador beside all your competitors defining why you and not them.
Accordingly, at Fast Firms, we don’t take the development and design of your law firm’s website lightly. It’s a derivative of a fundamental understanding of your firm, how it’s currently positioned in the market, where it may need to be positioned to garner wider or narrower attention.
Website Design
At Fast Firms, we’re old school. Every website begins its journey with pen and paper, later migrating to what we call wireframes, then PSDs. We’re iterating with your law firm, conjuring up better ways of telling your law firm’s story while being mindful of the key objective of guiding the potential client through your website and into your office.
Website Development
At Fast Firms, we primarily design for a WordPress platform because of its ubiquitous nature and its robust nature as a content management system. We also have considerable experience with Headless CMS technology and Laravel, designing and constructing our own bespoke software and if necessary, via this platform, data-driven websites.
Effective law firm websites are often augmented with a myriad of third-party software to achieve marketing outcomes. Whilst in the most part this is usually successful, increasingly we’re working with clients who are working with our preferred and adapted CRM technology, which is one singular marketing platform and dashboard that conducts 95% of all marketing triggers and automation sequences. Think Salesforce for Law Firms, but less convoluted and less expensive.
The Must Haves for Your Law Firm Website Design
When it comes to law firm website design, not all things are equal. Working with an agency that has a strong record of website design, technology and hosting is imperative.
You don’t need us to tell you, that when it comes to law firm website design, mobile compatibility is one of the most important considerations. Week after week at Fast Firms, we’re witnessing incremental mobile traffic increases to the point that in a number of practice areas, mobile outcompetes desktop.
Most importantly, great law firm website design isn’t just about ensuring that the desktop version of your website displays on mobile. It’s ensuring that the design is customised for mobile.
Accordingly, at Fast Firms, more times than not, we’re creating custom mobile websites for our law firm clients to optimise the experience for potential and existing clients. Our work has also been featured in the best legal website design awards.
In our experience, most law firms suffer in numerous aspects of marketing their practice because of poor website speed. Speed now is a significant ranking factor for major search engines like Google and Bing. Notwithstanding this, potential clients will not hang around while your website loads.
At Fast Firms, when it comes to speed, our law firm websites rank in the top 10% of all websites.
The adage “content is king” still reigns supreme! Law firms that don’t create content are disadvantaged in every aspect of law firm marketing.
We know that content creation is difficult for law firms and for this reason, at Fast Firms we have a content writing team who are all trained journalists. We typically are writing blog articles, guides and completely writing practice area content from the ground up.
In fact, not only do we week after week write articles for our law firm clients, but we podcast and produce videos as well, if necessary.
What you need to understand about 99% of website design agencies is that they build all their websites based on a template that they keep using. At Fast Firms, we don’t. Every design is designed pixel by pixel and coded. This allows us to be creative in all our calls to action, designing them for conversion. Over and above this, often our content writing and design team are writing downloadable guides ready for download and automated follow up.
Underpinning all calls to action, we deploy sophisticated automation and tracking software.
Ask most website design agencies what suite of metrics they have in determining conversion tracking and they’ll look at you blankly. At Fast Firms, we use a diverse range of tracking software, including heatmaps, live recordings and numerous dashboards to assess effectiveness.
Being readily available to potential clients is a no-brainer. At Fast Firms, we have built our own software that allows potential clients to make an appointment immediately in your diary or a designated office diary.
At Fast Firms, we have deployed numerous payment gateways for law firms, including Stripe, PayPal and Rapid Legal Pay.
Automation is more than just a buzzword, but rather brings together front of house and back of house for law firms. In other words, at Fast Firms, we can build out complex workflows that are initiated by a potential or existing client completing a form on your law firm’s website.
At Fast Firms, we have deployed numerous chatbot technology for our clients, both front of house and back of house.
Your law firm’s choice of website hosting is a major factor when it comes to speed, SEO, security and accessibility when things go wrong.
At Fast Firms, we host all the websites of our clients using the very latest VPS technology. All websites are hosted in Australia for our Australian law firms and similarly in the US, the Asia Pacific or New Zealand, we host in those countries.
If your law firm is considering a new website, ensure that you work with an agency like Fast Firms that can offer your firm this important bundled option.
Security is of the utmost importance is giving confidence to potential or existing clients that your website is safe for them to use. Surprisingly there still remains many law firm website designs that are not SSL compliant.
Having a great looking law firm website is an important objective, but so too is driving traffic to the website in order to assist your firm generate leads. SEO is the practice of getting your law firm’s website found for keywords that people are searching for.
At Fast Firms, we have a phenomenal record of SEO for our clients and continue to outcompete large national legal practices with in-house SEO teams.
Great law firm websites are underpinned by a broader strategy of which lead generation, nurture and conversion are all very important parts.
At Fast Firms, we deploy numerous CRM technology platforms for our clients. We’ve worked with Hubspot, Sharpspring, Active Campaign and more recently, Microsoft Dynamics.
Many of our law firms run Google and/or Facebook Ads. Consequently, we’re frequently building out targeted landing pages that respond to the relevant Ad and in doing so assist in better conversions with higher click-through-rates and quality scores.
Law firm website design is largely based on a series of assumptions that need to be tested. At Fast Firms, we acknowledge that assumptions can be wrong and particularly in the early stages of engagement between the website and users things become apparent that require design optimisation. At Fast Firms, we come to every new website design with the view that things will require optimising.
Frequently Asked Questions
We get that designing and developing can be a very big deal for law firms. We always start with the strategy and your law firm’s key objectives! Here are some of the most asked questions!
How Long Does it Take to Build a Website?
Typically a law firm website design and development will take Fast Firms in the vicinity of 6 – 8 weeks depending upon complexity.
What Technology Do Fast Firms Use?
At Fast Firms, we base the technology we use upon the objectives of our clients. For the most part, we’ll use WordPress, but for specific projects that have certain idiosyncrasies, we will consider Headless CMS or Laravel technology.
Do You Just Use WordPress Themes?
Most law firm web design agencies will use a cheap template and clone it continuously for their clients, making a few differences. At Fast Firms, we build design pixel by pixel and then code using the highest standards of PHP., ensuring that our work meets the international best-practice “PHY Coding Standards.”
Do You Build Big Websites?
At Fast Firms, we have experience in the design and development of websites for law firms of all sizes, ranging from 1 to 5 lawyers through to practices with upwards of 50 lawyers.
Do You Work Internationally?
Yes, we do. At Fast Firms, we have worked with clients internationally, in particular the United States and Asia-Pacific.
Do You Build Websites that Play with Other Technology?
We sure do. One of our biggest gripes in working with third-party technology, particularly practice management software is the likelihood that they do not avail an open API. At Fast Firms, we will work with your law firm to ensure that from our end, your firm has all it requires to bridge a range of software connections.
What about CRM Technology?
At Fast Firms, we have very strong expertise in the design, development and integration of CRM software into your law firm’s website. We have worked with numerous platforms, most notably, Hubspot, Sharpspring, Active Campaign and most recently, Microsoft Dynamics.
Can You Migrate all the Content from Our Existing Website?
Yes, we can. For the most part, we’re able to migrate content easily. However, if your firm is using Squarespace or similar technology, it may be the case that a manual migration will be necessary.