8 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Law Firm’s Website for Lead Generation

Your website is your best marketing tool. It’s important to use it to generate leads as well as build brand awareness and provide valuable information to visitors. Unfortunately, online lead generation continues to be a huge source of frustration for many law firms. Just because you build a website, doesn’t mean leads will just flow in. There are a lot of moving parts. Law firms need to be strategic and continually look to optimize all aspects of their website in order to get visitors to take the desired action. Here are 8 tactics law firms can try immediately to make lead generation easier and more effective.

8 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Law Firm’s Website for Lead Generation

1. Promote lead magnets on pages that pull in the most traffic.

To begin, conduct an audit of your online performance. Document the current sources of leads and which pages they land on. This is important to do anyway so you can measure your efforts. Look at things like blog posts, live chat, email marketing, etc. (If your law firm uses HubSpot, you can use attribution reporting to visually review the lead sources for new contacts in your CRM.) From here you need to make sure that the pages are designed to nurture a visitor’s interest. On the most visited pages, offer downloadable content (lead magnets) through pop-ups or in-line calls-to-action (CTA) so you can capture a visitor’s contact information before they exit your law firm’s website. 

2. Understand where you can optimize current lead magnets.

How are your lead magnets (whitepaper, eBook, webinar, etc.) performing? Are there any content consumption trends among your audience? Test how each lead magnet is bringing in leads. You can also compare landing pages – look at those that perform well vs. those that don’t. Understand the differences and try to use best practices to improve the lower-performing landing pages. You can use website grader tools as well as internal reports and analytics. See: Anatomy of a Perfect Law Firm Landing Page.

3. Keep the CTA on your homepage simple.

Don’t bombard your visitors with an invitation to your most complex content right away. Consider your law firm’s home page the top of your marketing funnel, and use it to encourage ongoing interaction to further move people through the funnel. You might try CTAs such as “Subscribe to updates” or “Free consultation”. 

4. Use blog posts to promote content downloads.

A non-invasive way to generate interest is to create longer form content such as white papers or eBooks and then write shorter blog posts on the topic. To make the most of this strategy, you should use SEO best practices in order to get traffic to the posts. Research keywords associated with the content topic, and create a group of blog posts around the subject matter. From there, draft content that delves deeper into the topic and package it into a PDF that people can download. Visitors seeking answers on that particular information will land on your blog post, and will be more likely to exchange their information for more robust information. 

5. Maintain a live chat service on your website.

Chat services are getting more sophisticated and people have come to expect them. Perform an audit to see which pages people spend the most time on, and make sure a chat service is installed in order to better answer questions. If your law firm is successful at driving traffic, live chat apps can assist in converting those visitors into qualified prospects for your firm. If you have a client services team, you might integrate their efforts into the chat as well. See: 10 Best Live Chat Apps for Law Firms.

6. Use dynamic content to personalize CTAs.

Dynamic content lets you tailor your website’s experience to the visitor. Personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors than general ones. Plus, from a user experience perspective, people are more likely to trust your site and return if they see images, buttons, or content that speaks to what they’ve looked at before. 

7. Look for opportunities to nurture your law firm’s leads.

Even when you do acquire new leads, it’s unlikely they will turn into a client overnight. In the legal world, it’s critical to stay top of mind until the time that people in your funnel do need your services. Lead nurturing is ultimately about getting the right message to the right people at the right time, whether it’s through email drip campaigns or retargeting ads on LinkedIn or Google. It is a constantly evolving process that will become increasingly effective as you gain more information about your prospective clients and the way that they engage with your law firm online.

8. Test and test again.

We can’t stress enough the importance of testing. A/B testing can make a significant impact on your website’s ability to attract and convert leads. Try testing things like your CTA placement or wording, the layout of landing pages, images or button placement. Consistently test and make a point to try new things regularly, and then make changes that reflect the test results. For more examples of elements you should consider A/B testing, checkout our previous blog: 6 Conversion Rate Optimization Tests Legal Marketers Can Try Right Away.

Takeaway

You can’t grow your law firm without leads and the success of your firm depends on a full pipeline. In addition to your business development team, virtual networking, and other traditional marketing formats, make sure your website is set up to encourage and capture leads. Then, ensure you have thoughtful workflows that nurture leads and keep your law firm top of mind. 

If you need any assistance turning website visitors into clients, we can help you to develop an effective and impactful conversion rate optimization strategy.