There are many things to think about when starting a new law firm website. What sort of site is best, and how can you drive the right kind of traffic to your site?
The first thing is to do some background reading on what makes for an effective law firm website design. Here on the blog, we will explain some basic principles, but bear in mind that web design involves much more than just picking out colours and fonts on your own. A good web designer will do this for you based on their knowledge of how people use websites. You should, however, have input into this process rather than simply leaving it up to your web designer (more on their role later). First things first, though, let’s look at some simple design principles to make sure your law firm website is as effective as possible.
1. Don’t Be Afraid of White Space
Essentially, white space simply means the empty bit between where one element ends, and another begins. We don’t actually see it in much use on web pages because most are packed with information – but it is absolutely crucial for making things readable because it helps your eyes move across the page more smoothly, avoiding “jumps” from one section to another.
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One tip here is not to put too many paragraphs together without using any line breaks. This makes the text far harder to read than if you were to break it into smaller chunks by spacing out your sentences or adding in some sub-headings.
2. Don’t Be Afraid of Color
Another tip for law firms website design is to not be afraid of using colour. Now, this doesn’t mean you should go overboard and throw in so many different colours that your site ends up looking like a clown vomited all over it (unless, of course, that’s part of your brand image). It simply means you can use colour as an effective tool to help break up text and draw attention to important points on the page. As long as the colours you use contrast well with each other (so they don’t blend into one big sea of multi-coloured mess), then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t experiment with some bold tones to enhance readability.
3. Don’t Get Too Caught Up in the Details
It’s very easy to get carried away with your law firm website design, especially if you’re not too familiar with how sites work online. Resist the urge to cram your pages full of every little graphic element you can think of because this will only serve to make your site look cluttered and complicated rather than clean and professional. If at any point, it feels like you are spending more time looking for icons or images that fit well with what’s on-screen rather than worrying about readability, then it’s probably time to make things more simple before carrying on.
A good way to help yourself keep track of detail overload is to print off the current web page you are designing, grab yourself a pen or pencil and go through the site marking everything out that doesn’t look useful. When you have done this, you will know what the most important things are – if any. This will give you a good idea of how cluttered your actual site is.
4. Don’t Make it Too Wordy
Another common tendency for law firms website design is to cram too much text into too little space. If your pages are littered with tiny paragraphs of information that are difficult to read due to the small font size used, then chances are visitors aren’t going to bother reading them before moving on to another site. Try instead to break up large chunks of text into smaller chunks; having two or three sentences making up each paragraph is generally much easier on the eye than one massive blob of text.
5. Don’t Forget Social Media
More and more people these days use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends, find out what’s happening in their local community, and even get the latest news headlines from major media outlets. If your law firms website design doesn’t feature a prominent link to your official presence on at least one of these sites, you could be missing out on a lot of business! Make it very user friendly and easy for visitors to contact you by including buttons linking off to all your social media profiles alongside your main contact details so they can follow you to receive updates.
conclusion
In conclusion, here are five tips to consider when thinking about law firms website design. While they aren’t the only things, you should think of when designing a site, following these guidelines can help give your site a professional look and ensure it is as effective as possible at getting new clients through the door. If you need expert advice on this, then you should reach out to a team of legal marketing specialists like Solicitors Marketing, who are professionals in this field.
