Best Practices for Web Design for a Family Lawyer

When you’re growing a family law practice, having a good website can make a world of difference. Your website is where potential clients will go to learn more about you, figure out what practice areas you cover, and decide if they trust you enough to hire you to handle their case.

So what makes for a good website that will earn that client trust?

Below, we’ll dive into the best practices for web design for a family lawyer and what you should include in your new web design.

Table of Contents

Why Web Design Matters

Before we dig into the best practices for web design, let’s talk some about why web design matters.

Your web design is the first impression you make on your clients. A good web design can build trust with your clients and convince them that they can trust you during the most vulnerable moments in their lives.

On the other hand, a bad web design can make your firm look cheap and unreliable. If potential clients get frustrated with trying to navigate your website, they’re likely to abandon it.

Essentially, your website is your digital handshake – it needs to be strong.

Start with Your Target Customers

When you begin to look at your web design, the first thing you should consider is your target customer. Take a look back at the target customer profile you built when you wrote your law firm business plan.

Your web design should be tailored to your target customers’ preferences.

Do they look for a firm that’s friendly and reliable or one that’s tough and ruthless? Will they trust an established firm that knows the ropes or new blood that can shake up the industry?

You’ll need to make branding and design choices based on what your target customers best connect with.

Focus on SEO

After your customer preferences, your biggest priority should be search engine optimization.

There are over a billion websites on the internet, and every day, more than 250,000 more are created. SEO helps your website stand out from the crowd.

As you’re developing your content library, be sure to focus on high-traffic keywords for your industry. Include plenty of backlinks to reputable websites, and make sure to optimize the meta descriptions.

A legal marketing company like LawRank can help you implement a more effective SEO strategy and get better results.

Nail the Visual Elements

One of the most important aspects of your web design is the visual component. Your website needs to look good and align with your brand.

There are several things you need to focus on when designing your website.

Make Your Design Clean and User-Friendly

The golden rule of web design is to keep it clean. The more visual noise you have on your website, the more overwhelmed and confused your visitors will feel.

Make sure to leave plenty of white space in your site design, and avoid using any flashy visual elements. Include clear menus that will direct users to the most important pages on your site, and make your logo at the top left of the page a clickable link that will lead users back to your home page.

Choose a Color Scheme

As with all your marketing materials, your website design needs to reflect your company branding. This means using your logo and the same colors and fonts throughout. This helps to create a more cohesive experience for your clients and helps to build brand recognition.

Take a look at your competition and what colors they’re using in your branding. Then consider your target audience and what sort of color palette they’re likely to connect with.

Pick two or three colors that you’ll use across different elements of your web design, as well as the rest of your branding.

Pick a Font

Just as important as choosing the right color is picking the right font. No one is going to take a lawyer with Comic Sans on their website seriously.

Depending on your branding, you may want to choose a nice serif or sans serif font. Our blog on picking the best legal font may be helpful when choosing fonts for your site.

Use High-Quality Images

Few things can bring down the quality of your website faster than blurry images. You need to make sure that every picture that goes on your website is high-resolution.

That being said don’t go overboard on the file size. Large pictures will take a long time to load, dragging down your load speed.

Optimize for Mobile

Did you know that more than half of web traffic comes from mobile devices? That means that if your site isn’t mobile optimized, you could be losing an enormous chunk of your potential client pool.

Your site design needs to be adaptable for either desktop or mobile formats. Most reputable web hosts (such as WordPress) will do this automatically, but it’s always a good idea to check.

Highlight Your Practice Areas

Once you have your web design nailed down, it’s time to start building out the content on your site. Your first priority should be to highlight the practice areas you cover.

It’s a good idea to create a page for each area of family law you work in (divorce, child custody, paternity, domestic violence, etc.). Talk about the topic, how you can help people dealing with it, and what your clients can expect from the process.

Establish a Content Creation Strategy

Even after you have your practice area pages perfected, you’ll still need an ongoing content creation strategy.

Continually adding fresh, informative content to your site can help to keep you at the top of the rankings. It also helps to establish you as an expert in your area.

It’s important to establish a strategy for how you’ll create content to go on your site. Check out our blog post on how to develop attorney website content for top tips!

Use Clear CTAs

It’s a good idea to include a clear call to action on each page of your website. This can help to boost engagement and direct potential clients into your sales funnel.

Of course, your call to action should be for a client to contact you, but the wording you choose can make a big difference. Use phrasing that tells them why they should hire you and conveys the values your firm embodies.

Get Client Reviews

It’s critical to include social proof on your website. This will help to build trust in your potential clients and establish you as a trusted expert in your industry.

If possible, including testimonial videos or photos of your clients can help other potential clients to connect with them. And, of course, always be sure to abide by the ethics rules governing client testimonials.

Focus on Strong Security

Of course, what’s going on behind the scenes of your website is just as important as what your clients see. Your website must have rock-solid security to protect both your company and your clients.

One of the simplest things you can do to improve your site security is to keep everything up to date, including your plugins and site software. Scammers and hackers are always advancing, and updating your software regularly can help you stay one step ahead of them.

Start Optimizing Your Site

Having a strong website is one of the most important things you can do to bring in new clients.

Start by considering your target demographic, and then be sure you nail the visual elements of your design. You’ll want to include pages to highlight your practice areas, as well as CTAs and client reviews.

And, of course, don’t forget to optimize for search engines!

If you’d like a web design that will help you grow your law firm, LawRank is here to help. We provide legal marketing that works, from designing a gorgeous, search engine-optimized website to helping you run PPC campaigns.