The 8 Elements of a Trustworthy Law Firm Website
In recent years, it has become increasingly important to have a well-made website. In the world of legal marketing, having a trustworthy website is of the utmost importance. If a potential client visits your website and doesn’t like what they see, this can easily turn into them exiting out quickly. For legal marketers, this means missing out on the opportunity of another lead all due to a shortcoming that can be fixed with the right tools.
Knowing what elements contribute to a website’s trustworthiness is essential, and in turn can ensure that those who visit your firm’s website are compelled to stay until they find what they need.
Here are the 8 elements of a trustworthy law firm website:
1. A Clear Domain Name
Having a strong domain name makes your website easy to find and understand. Good domain names should be relatively short with 2-3 words and around 20 characters. Ensuring your domain name is as close to your practice’s name as possible is also useful, so that potential visitors have no confusion while navigating to your website.
2. SSL Certificate aka “https/”
SSL certificates ensure that the information your visitor gives your website is private by encrypting it. This means that any data they give, such as contact information on a form, cannot be accessed by someone else. Visitors can ensure a website has an SSL certificate if an ‘s’ appears in the URL after ‘http’.
3. Clean Design
Having strong design leads to more credibility, so it’s essential that your website follows proper design conventions. Some notable ones to follow are:
- Text: having appropriate font that is easy to read and doesn’t exceed margins
- Logo: ensuring your logo is at a high enough resolution and doesn’t appear pixelated
- Header: having a clean header with clear links that makes it easy to navigate
- Footer: adding additional content that isn’t displayed in the header, such as contact and social media
- Menu: having an easy to navigate menu that let’s the visitor easily find information
Ensuring you’ve used these conventions properly, and have a strong color scheme and branding leads to an overall clean look that lends to your law firm’s trustworthiness.
4. Reviews and Testimonials
Showcasing that real life people who have used your practice have seen positive results further lends to your practice’s credibility. By including testimonials and reviews on your website, visitors will now feel a greater sense of trust in your practice. Linking to social media with strong engagement can also bolster your trustworthiness as potential clients can see real life interactions with followers. This element can help the potential client understand that they are in good hands if they continue with your practice.
5. Clean Copy
Having copy full of errors is one of the fastest ways to diminish your trustworthiness. If a visitor clicks on a website and sees errors, they may not feel your practice is a credible source. So, check and re-check for errors time and time again, or hire a copywriter to ensure your copy is error free.
6. Contact Information
A part of making your law firm website trustworthy is ensuring that visitors can easily find a way to get in touch with your practice. Contact information can be placed somewhere discrete, but easy to find, such as the header or footer. To ensure there is no guesswork for the visitor, you should also feature a separate contact page with an address, email, phone number, and social media.
7. Be Human
Part of what lends to your credibility in the digital age and furthers your practice’s trustworthiness is reminding the visitor that there are real people behind the website and the work that you do. Including an ‘About Us’ section with a photo or pictures of your attorneys next to their biographies helps humanize your law firm website.
8. Great Media
Including photos and videos not only livens up the website, but, again, lends to the humanization of your practice. Keeping photos and videos up to date and avoiding the use of too many stock photos helps your visitors create an emotional connection with your practice.
Takeaway
These elements are just a few ways you can bolster your trustworthiness and ensure that visitors to your practice’s website stick around.
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