Partnering with law firm web design companies to enhance your firm’s online presence can provide significant marketing and client experience advantages. Your website is a crucial first impression for potential clients searching for lawyers online, it’s a way to establish and reinforce your brand, and a showcase of what your firm offers. Your law firm’s website is also a prime opportunity to capture leads and attract new clients.
Put simply, a website can be an indispensable marketing tool for your firm—especially with the right law firm website design.
However, effective law firm web design isn’t always a simple task for legal professionals. Creating a polished, informative, and easy-to-navigate website isn’t something typically taught in law school, and a basic website might mean missing out on the valuable marketing opportunities a well-designed site can offer.
This is where law firm web design agencies can help.
Just as you’re a professional in the law, law firm web design companies have the specialized skills and expertise to optimize your website—making it easy for clients to find and turning it into a powerful marketing tool.
Read on to learn what you need to know about law firm web design companies for your law firm’s website. We’ll cover how to find the right law firm website design company for your firm’s needs, where to start when budgeting for web design services, and more.
If you need a website for your law firm but have a limited budget, check out Clio Grow’s law firm website builder–Get your website up and running in just three steps!
Why law firms need professional web design
As more and more people look online when they need to find a lawyer, today’s effective law firm marketing strategies emphasize building a robust and polished online presence—which means law firms need a professional and user-friendly website.
As part of your overall marketing strategy, a well-designed law firm website can help attract and retain clients by:
- Generating leads. An effective website employs tactics like search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your website’s visibility online, driving traffic to your site—and, consequently, your firm.
- Establishing your brand. When clients visit your firm’s website, it’s crucial that it conveys your firm’s brand and leaves a positive, professional impression.
- Providing the information clients want. A well-designed website makes it easy for prospective clients to find the information they need about your firm—including contact information or lead-generation forms to facilitate connections.
But what exactly makes a law firm website “well-designed”?
Consider the following key elements of effective law firm website design:
- User-friendly navigation. Your law firm website should be easy for people to navigate quickly, with:
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- Quick-loading pages
- Prominent, intuitive placement of crucial information (like your firm’s practice areas, services offered, lawyer and staff bios, and contact and booking information)
- Features that enhance the user experience (such as online intake forms or payment functionality)
2. Search engine optimization (SEO). A visually appealing website isn’t useful if people can’t find it online.
As our guide to SEO for lawyers explains in more detail, SEO is the practice of driving online traffic to a website by employing strategies to increase the site’s ranking in search engine results pages.
For law firm websites, SEO could include steps like:
- Keyword optimization, by incorporating relevant keywords across your site’s content.
- Technical SEO, or optimizing user experience factors like page speed and site structure.
3. Clear brand representation. A well-designed law firm website instantly conveys your firm’s brand identity and helps you stand out from the competition.
This may mean visual elements (like consistent use of your firm’s logo, a cohesive color palette, and typography) as well as text-based features, like a clear tagline.
4. Mobile responsiveness. Even if your clients predominantly use their desktop computers to visit your firm’s website, a mobile-friendly website can benefit your firm’s website searchability, as Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a website’s content for indexing and ranking.
5. Accessibility. Your law firm website should be designed to be as accessible as possible to all potential clients.
Wondering what an effective law firm website should look like? While this varies depending on a law firm’s brand, goals, and marketing strategy, we’ve collected some great examples of successful law firm websites for inspiration.
And, if you have an existing law firm website and want to see how it stacks up, Clio’s law firm website scorecard—which assesses your website for factors like branding, technical performance, and client experience—allows you to quickly and easily compare your current website with your competition.
How to find the right law firm web design company
According to the ABA’s 2023 Websites & Marketing TechReport, website design is the most common marketing activity that firms turn to external consultants for help with. Specifically, of the firms surveyed that hired an outside consultant or agency for marketing activities, 42% hired externally for website design.
But once your firm is ready for professional website design, how do you choose the right law firm web design agency?
First, consider the following factors when evaluating a potential law firm web design company:
- Experience in website design for law firms. Does the company have experience or specialize in law firm websites, or does it predominantly design websites for other industries? Knowledge of the legal industry is important to ensure that the company can create a website that aligns with applicable industry regulations and ethical rules (for example, for lawyer advertising).
- Legal marketing and SEO skills. Your website is a prime part of your firm’s marketing strategy, so it must be designed with marketing and SEO in mind.
- Past successes. Take a look at the company’s portfolio: Has it created other websites that are on par with the quality of work you’re expecting?
- Fit for firm size and needs. You should also consider if a potential company is the right fit for what your firm needs at the moment. If a company works mostly with larger law firms and you’re a solo practice, it may not be the best fit for what you’re looking for. Similarly, if you’re a small firm, it’s a good idea to look for a design company that can scale your website as your firm grows.
- Technical capabilities. Can the company design a website that’s responsive, fast, mobile-friendly, and secure?
- Support. Ongoing customer support and maintenance assistance is key to ensuring your website is up-to-date and functions well in the future.
- Reputation. Don’t just take the company’s word for it—look for reviews and testimonials from other law firms.
- Budget. As we’ll explore in more detail later in this post, budget is also a key factor when choosing a website design company. Look for a design company that offers transparent pricing and fits within your firm’s marketing budget (both for up-front design cost and ongoing support and maintenance).
Once you’ve narrowed down a potential law firm website design agency, ask questions to help get a better feel of if it’s a fit. Some questions to consider include:
- What is your pricing for website design? What pricing options are there for ongoing website support?
- What services do you offer related to website design and SEO?
- What is your experience with designing legal websites for firms in my practice area?
- Do you currently have availability to work on our firm’s website? Once you start, how long will the process take?
- What do you offer for ongoing customer support and training resources?
- What is your approach to SEO? What are my options when it comes to integrating SEO into the website?
- What happens if something on the website breaks or there’s a security update needed?
- How do you design for mobile-friendliness?
- How do you design for accessibility?
- Will I be able to make changes to the website? If not, how long does it typically take for your firm to make a requested change or update on a site?
- Who will own the website’s domain and hosting accounts?
- Can you provide examples of past success or testimonials from previous law firm website clients?
What are the best law firm web design companies?
When it comes to the best law firm website design company for your law firm, there’s no one winner that works for every law firm—what’s best for your firm depends on your specific needs and budget.
While you can use the above criteria and questions to help you vet potential providers, the following popular law firm website design and marketing companies are a good place to start your search:
Understanding the cost of hiring a law firm web design company
Budget is one of the most important factors when investing in professional law firm website design. The amount that a law firm web design will cost varies greatly based on the size and scope of your firm’s website needs. Depending on what a firm needs, the cost of professional website design could range from a few thousand dollars for a basic website design to upwards of $20,000 for a custom website design.
Common factors that influence the cost of web design services include:
- The number of pages on the website
- Design elements (such as custom graphics, logo design, or interactive features)
- Advanced features and functionality (like integrating lead qualification forms, booking systems, or payment gateways)
- Customization (for example, custom branding elements like color palette selection)
- Content creation (such as graphic creation, photography, or copywriting)
- SEO (such as keyword research or technical SEO)
- Responsive design (such as making the website mobile-friendly)
- Support (for example, ongoing customer support and maintenance assistance)
- Languages (such as translating the website copy into multiple languages)
When selecting a law firm web design agency, you’ll also want to consider the pricing models that may be available. Examples of commonly used pricing models commonly include:
- Fixed or flat rate per project. This model gives a fixed price upfront for the cost of the entire website project.
- Hourly rate. This model allows the design company to charge an hourly fee. Clients are billed based on this rate multiplied by the number of hours worked.
- Package rate. This model allows clients to choose from a range of packages at different price points, each offering a specific set of services.
- Retainer pricing. This model, which may appeal to firms that need ongoing support and website maintenance, sees the client paying a recurring fee in exchange for a set amount of design work in a specific period, per a predetermined retainer agreement.
How to budget for a law firm website design specialist (and more)
Consider the following best practices to help your firm budget for professional law firm web design:
- Figure out what you want. Start by outlining your goals and expectations for law firm website design. List out any essential features, as well as features that would be nice to have if they fit into the budget.
- Do your research. Look into potential web design companies and their pricing. Get quotes and compare what each can offer for your budget.
- Determine a realistic budget. Once you have an idea of what you want and how much it costs, you can look at your marketing budget to determine what is realistic to budget for website design.
- Think long-term. Remember to include long-term costs related to your law firm’s website (such as hosting, content updates, and technical support) in the budget.
The role of web design in law firm marketing
As we explore in more detail in our guide to creating a digital marketing strategy for your law firm, digital marketing is all about creating a robust online presence for your law firm so that clients can find you—and easily see why your firm can be the right fit. For many law firms, the website is the foundation of this online presence.
While online marketing plans typically use multiple approaches and channels like social media, SEO, content marketing, and more, they can all funnel back to your firm’s home base online: the law firm website.
If your firm’s website is well designed, then potential clients that end up on your site should be able to find any information they need about your firm, while also getting a clear vision of your firm’s clear and compelling brand.
How will you know if your law firm website is working as part of your marketing strategy? To measure the success of a law firm website, you can track a number of marketing key performance indicators, such as:
- Website traffic: Total website visits, unique visitors.
- Website landing page conversions: The rate at which website visitors complete an action like filling out a contact form.
- Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who go to a page on your website and then leave without visiting any other pages. (You can learn more about ways to improve a high bounce rate here).
- SEO performance: Such as website ranking for relevant keywords in search results.
Final thoughts on law firm web design
In today’s digital age, there’s no way around it: law firms that want to stay competitive need to cultivate a strong online presence—which means they need a law firm website.
While most legal professionals don’t have the expertise to design an effective law firm website themselves, law firm web design agencies can help. A website design specialist—particularly one that specializes in websites for law firms—can help your firm create a professional, informative, SEO-optimized, and customized website that conveys your firm’s brand and makes it easier for potential clients to find your firm.
However, if hiring a law firm design agency doesn’t fit into your firm’s marketing budget right now, it’s still a good idea to get a website up and running as soon as possible to start building your firm’s online presence. Clio’s law firm website builder makes it easy to create a simple, single-page website, complete with built-in connections to Clio, to get you started.
We published this blog post in May 2024. Last updated: .
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