With legal marketing, just like any other marketing, the best way to avoid having your campaign deteriorate is to have a strong foundation. However, you should understand that even with a strong foundation, you will likely need to make adjustments over time.
In my opinion, enhancing the user experience is the best bonding agent you can use to attract and maintain site visitors. In fact, you could even argue that user experience is one of the most important aspects of executing a successful digital marketing strategy.
If you are marketing to legal professionals, here are five ways to enhance the user experience in 2019:
1. Find a balance.
It is important to find a balance between research and creativity, especially when creating content for lawyers. Try to avoid overloading a potential client with information. Instead, pinpoint if, where and how specific information should be used.
When marketing for legal professionals, it can be tempting to include pages of statistics about specific subjects, such as trucking accidents or bankruptcy filings. However, you risk increasing your site’s bounce rate if you confuse site visitors by overwhelming them with information. You could instead hook a potential reader by opening a paragraph with an important statistic that could be useful to potential clients. Content should strike a balance between being informative, creative and useful to site visitors.
2. Curate the experience.
Clients have varying needs and interests. Since this is the case, you should spend time curating your content toward your audience. However, you will first need to meticulously research what your customers care about. There are a couple of ways to determine how you should curate content toward your desired audience.
First, it would be wise to take a look at competitor sites, social media profiles and other online data. How are their clients interacting with the site or social media profiles? Is there something about the content that might be driving traffic to the site? Competitor research can help you understand how to curate the experience for your own website. Once you get really good at competitor research, you can develop strategies that outclass your competitors.
In general, you should never underestimate the power of research. For instance, search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of website development. There are various tools that can help legal marketing companies determine which keywords are important to potential clients. Without research, it would be difficult or even impossible to curate the experience for potential clients.
3. Make the experience simple.
No one enjoys finding a website for a service or product, only to be confused by what they clicked on. You should avoid making your experience too complicated.
Legal marketing professionals often feel tempted to produce content that is heavy on legal terminology. After all, these folks are writing for lawyers. However, visitors will be turned away from sites that contain complex terminology and confusing content. They certainly will not understand an 800-word essay on all factors involved with the Means Test before filing for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Instead, summarize the important points in plain language to get the reader curious enough to call your client’s office. Don’t be afraid to use bullet points. You could also use a video or infographic.
There are additional methods that you could adopt to make the experience for site visitors less complicated. For instance, content clustering makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site. With content clustering, you could have a hub page covering a specific topic that links to other pages on your site with similar content. FAQ pages can also help simplify complex topics.
4. Focus less on the product or service.
While you do want to focus some aspects of your campaign on your client’s services or products, you should devote more time and resources to creating an experience with content that interacts with and guides potential customers.
For instance, some personal injury law firms have videos and guides that explain what to do after a car accident. Potential visitors, especially those who were recently involved in collisions (or their friends and family members), could be enticed to interact with and share this type of content. The point is to get the reader curious enough to call the law firm to find out more information. This type of content is also more likely to be shared on social media, as opposed to only discussing general information about the steps involved with litigation after an accident.
If you were to focus on the specific services involved with litigating and trying a personal injury case, you would likely bore your audience and take away from their experience.
5. Never underestimate quality assurance.
You should never underestimate the importance of quality assurance. Be sure to check your site for errors as often as possible. You can do this with certain tools and the naked eye. Fix any broken hyperlinks, formatting problems, typos and 404 errors. These types of errors take away from the user experience and could cost your clients money.
A Good Rule To Follow: Pretend You’re A Client
If you’re a law firm or a legal marketing company, a good rule of thumb is to look at your website like a potential client would. This is especially important with attorneys, as many clients are looking for legal representation with an affinity for small details. Potential clients also want to feel cared about. They want an attorney who understands their needs. If a website contains a bunch of errors, a confusing layout and irrelevant content, it reflects badly on services that are offered by the firm.