Websites Essentials for the Legal Support Industry

• January 09, 2018
• by ServeNow Staff
• Business Tools
• Business Tips

Website Essentials for the Legal Support Industry

Recorded on January 25, 2018 @ 3:00 p.m. MST with Madison Markel

Websites are essential for any business looking to be competitive today and every company, no matter their size, should have a website. In this webinar, learn the basics of what you need in a website and how to get started. We cover design essentials, content standards, technical details, and how to get the most out of your website with links! It will provide you with a foundation to start structuring your website and other marketing materials for a strong brand and online presence.

Madison Markel designs websites, manages content, and creates email marketing campaigns for Lawgical. She assesses process server and private investigators’ online marketing strategies to help create useful information best suited to the legal support industry.

Watch the Webinar

This webinar was presented as a part of the ServeNowEDU Webinar series. To watch other previously recorded webinars and to register for upcoming webinars, visit ServeNowEDU.

Slideshow

Identifying Your Website Needs

When deciding on what type of website your company needs, it’s important to recognize your company’s available resources. You should assess your budget, tech resources, content, available time, and the desired size of your website to determine what type of site works best for your company.

After deciding what type of site you want, you can choose between building your own site or having a company build and host your site for you.

Building your own site requires in-house maintenance and tech knowledge to ensure that your site is functional, professional, and up to date. If you decide to hire a company to build and host your site for you, be sure to research prices, what they can offer, design style, and level of support.

Design Essentials

Layout

Your site’s layout should be clean and organized. Avoid overcrowding information into all available spaces on your webpage, but allow for negative space to make your layout readable. Separate and clearly labeled sections will create an easily navigable site that allows your customers to easily find the information that they are looking for.

Strategically placing your contact information and calls to actions are crucial so that you increase the likelihood of someone calling your business. Therefore, we recommend placing your phone number in the header of your site to help.

Strategic Color Choices

Color choices are important on your website. A concise color palette will help most the most of your site’s design. Typically, a precise and small color palette with one of two complementary colors works best. Be sure to use your bright and complementary colors to highlight the important information on your website to direct your user to contact you!

Branding recognition and relevant imagery

An important design element is creating a style that is recognizable to your customers to help establish your brand. To do this, you can choose memorable and unique imagery and colors that you use on all your marketing materials.

Professional logo

Branding recognition is important for your website marketing and beyond. Create memorable and unique imagery that you keep consistent across all your marketing materials. Alongside branding colors, a logo is important for your brand. A simple, clean, and recognizable logo will help customers remember your brand and company.

Logo Resources: 

• Fiverr
  
• 99 Designs
• Upwork
• Crowdspring
• Canva

If you decide to hire a professional graphic designer for your company logo, ask what is included in the purchase. Typically, a graphic designer will include multiple versions of the same logo, one in black and white, one color, and one (or more) transparent, often in a .png file.

Content Basics

Easily found information

Your contact information and calls to action should be easily found on your website. Make sure that you include a basic description of what your company does and your location to clearly define your company.

Separate Sections

Be sure that your information is separated logically and appropriately labeled so newcomers can find the information they need quickly.

Informative

Write content for real people, not search engine bots. Your content should be informative and answer relevant industry questions. Go beyond just lists of eye-grabbing words and focus on embedding keywords in descriptive sentences.

Your content should also be easily understood by not only industry professionals, but newcomers as well. Keep in mind that your content should also be different from other online listings and websites as you may be penalized by search engines for repetitive content.

Technical Details

Mobile Friendly

Mobile searches are steadily increasing, and Google is placing a higher importance on mobile-friendly websites, making this feature a necessity. Your site should respond to the width of the browser and the device size so that you don’t lose customers and maintain good online ranking.

If you are unsure that your site is mobile friendly, use this tool to get a definitive answer.

Fast Loading

Nothing is more off-putting than a site that doesn’t load. A fast that loads in a couple of seconds will make all the difference to those impatient clients! Google will also appreciate your site’s speed.

Crawlable Code

Clean code can be a major benefit to developers and search engines. The easier the code is to read, the better for everyone. Make sure that your site has the appropriate tags, all content is crawlable and not hidden in images, and that meta descriptions and titles are used properly.

Keywords

Research your industry’s keywords and focus on what you want to rank online for. However, avoid long lists of keyword variations. Rather, embed keywords into your content.

However, just because your site contains specific keywords in important headers, doesn’t necessarily mean that you will rank for those keywords. Good keywords are supported by the site’s overall content and the unique, detailed information you provide.

While picking your ideal keywords to include on your website, be sure to provide some variations. Research effective keywords by browsing the web or using tools available online, like Moz’s Keyword Explorer. This tool will help get you started and provide some inspiration for new keywords!

Security

A secure site enables that https feature of a site URL and provides encryption between the site and server. While not all sites need a high level of security, it can help make your customers feel at ease that what they are doing is not being openly tracked.

Domain

Picking the right domain can be a game of budget and availability. Often times, you are deciding between a branding domain (similar to your company name) or a location/industry specific domain (like denverprocessservers.com).  Branding domains are good for company recognition and repeat clients, while location/industry specific domains can help identify your services and coverage area.

You should pick the domain that works best for your company, but there are also features where you can take advantage of both. Domain forwarding is a great alternative should you want both options.

Domains themselves are a valuable asset for your company, so if there are any domains that would provide benefit to your website, we recommend purchasing those domains and forwarding them to your main site.

Make the Most of Your Site

Links and Listings

Links are the easiest way to build an online reputation for your site. Link your website to your business social media profiles, as well as any company listing sites like Yelp!, Manta, or YellowPages. Links from these sites will help verify your company as active and in business.

Additional links from legal industry-specific websites (such as directories, associations, courts and state bars, and law firm sites) can the web identify what type of work you provide. Industry-specific links help search engine bots (like Google) identify your industry, purpose, and services and rank them accordingly.

ServeNow Sites

ServeNow sites are built with these guidelines in mind. Our sites load fast, provide industry-relevant content and keywords, are mobile-friendly, and are designed with clean code and organized design. Our team makes sure that your site is running properly, and is up to industry standards so that you can focus on serving papers.

If you’re interested in a ServeNow website, feel free to contact us, or browse our site designs. To support our customer’s sites, we also provide additional products like local optimization, social media set up, and marketing consultations so that your online marketing is most effective.