Visibility Tip #5

Does your firm's voice mail mention your web address? It should. Obviously not everyone will call during business hours and not everyone will want to leave a message. A good practice is too say something to the effect... "For more information about our firm please visit our website at...."

Making the Right First Impression

Once upon a time the typical person opened up the yellow pages to find a lawyer. Today they go online. Your web site then is often the first and most lasting impression of who you are. Its critical that you make the most of that first impression by having a well designed web site.

Your window of opportunity is small. You have just seconds to persuade a potential client to stay on your site and delve deeper. Your message must be clear and memorable. In fact a recent study by Candian researchers suggest that window may be even smaller. In the study they discovered that people could rate the visual appeal of sites after just 1/20th of a second!

So given that, a well designed legal website needs to do a few things; 1) It should load right away. If not people will click elsewhere. 2) It should have your location and phone number clearly visible on every page 3) The design should express who you are and distinguish your firm. 4) It must answer the question, "Why should I hire you?" 5) Finally the site should be easy to navigate.

John Gaertner, an Arizona Divorce Attorney, has a custom FindLaw web site. In my view, the design of the site (featured above) makes a wonderful first impression for anyone searching for a family law attorney in Arizona. Immediately upon clicking on the site, the eye is drawn to the flashing tagline which clearly spells out what he does and who he helps; Arizona families. The flashing family law imagery reinforces that focus. Finally, the smiling picture of John personalizes the site and further conveys the inviting theme of his site.

However, you don't need a custom website to create a great first impression. If you purchase a template site, try an “un-templatize” it as much as possible with logos, photos and other content unique to your law firm’s brand. Paul Englander, a Phoenix personal injury attorney, does a great job with this. Paul has added pictures to just about every page of his firmsite; http://www.paulenglander.com/.

*For more information on FindLaw website design visit my website.

Largest Law Firms in Arizona

Wondering where your firm stacks up size wise in the State of Arizona? Randy Swart's website, http://www.randyswart.com/, likely has the answer. The site attempts to capture every law firm in the State by number of attorneys, both nationally and locally. It is a truly an impressive list, one that your firm's website should definitely be on. Listing on Randy's site is completely free and provides a highly ranked link to your website. Its important that you check to see if Randy is linking to your main site, rather than a FindLaw or Martindale-Hubble profile. If you need to make a change, email Randy at randy.swart@thomson.com.

Randy Swart is an account manager for Thomson West. A lawyer himself, Randy graduated from William Mitchell College of Law in 1984. He has worked with West since 1990, starting as a West reference attorney in Minnesota. He moved to Arizona in 1993, where he has been training Arizona attorneys and paralegals on WestLaw ever since. Having dealt with the majority of law firms in Arizona, Randy always wanted a comprehensive list of law firms in Arizona, so he created one himself!

Randy started his website in 2004 and has found it to be an effective way of communicating with hundreds of people each month. Besides the list of the largest law firms in Arizona, the site contains a lot of great information regarding new West product relevant to Arizona practitioners. The site receives over 1000 unique visitors every month!