Leveraging your ROI online

The legal services industry has become intensely competitive over the past five years. Law firms in the UK have never before been faced with so much disruption to their long-established business models and have been forced to rethink business development at every level.

Having gained an awareness of the challenges and opportunities many firms face, I remain convinced that in these times
of change, an intelligent digital business strategy supported
by a strategically developed website is one of the most powerful business acquisition tools at your disposal.

Rare is the firm that does not have a website, but rarer still is
the firm that is fully realising the value of leveraging their website for their business development goals. The following are five
ways to improve the return on investment (ROI) for law firm websites.

1. Sales funnel

Many of the websites I visit are merely passive online brochures that do little to add to the firm’s bottom line. Having a website is
a moot point if it doesn’t act as a sales tool and present conversion opportunities by generating qualified leads that support commercial objectives.

Your website’s design, imagery, content and user journey need
to be formulated as a sales tool that converts website visits into measurable enquiries and interactions.

This means positively influencing your website visitors, building trust and credibility, and guiding them
on a user journey towards what you want them to do, whether that is filling out an enquiry form, requesting a consultation, attending a networking event or downloading a whitepaper.

2. Consumer psychology

Most websites exhibit a poor understanding of the consumer psychology of their target audiences, be they prospective clients, new legal talent or lawyers from abroad seeking international associations.

All too often, firm websites talk more about ‘Who we are?’, rather than ‘Why choose us?’, regurgitating legal jargon instead of emotionally compelling messages that position them favourably against competitors.

A website that will
actively generate business opportunities for your firm
is one that understands the psychology, concerns and purchasing behaviour of prospective clients and
assures them of the superior levels of expertise and client care that your firm can provide.

Your website needs to exhibit a highly distinctive corporate personality and communicate your unique selling point (USP) in a way that allows visitors to clearly discern why your firm is the best fit for them and feel emotionally connected to your core messages.

3. Mobile catering

In the not so distant past, any firm that wanted to generate business via the internet merely needed to have a website that was built for desktop computers and laptops.

With the growth in the use of smartphones and tablets to locate professional expertise online, firms need to ensure that their websites are optimised for browsing on mobile devices.

In the UK alone, it is estimated that mobile phone web browsing will outstrip desktop usage by 2015. Yet surprisingly, many firms haven’t optimised their sites for a mobile-phone-specific browsing experience. A website that has been designed merely to be viewed on a desktop PC will
short circuit its own ROI.

4. Digital marketing

It surprises me how many legal websites have been built with little thought given to gaining high search-engine rankings, sitting passively on the internet, presumably awaiting a flood of prospective clients.

Your website must be optimised so that it achieves
a dominant position in Google
for relevant search terms, otherwise your firm has failed to monetise one of the key business generation opportunities that the internet presents.

Moreover, your firm’s website needs to be supporting a basket of different marketing strategies. Most notably, these should include LinkedIn for networking, thought-leadership features in relevant B2B publications, email marketing, search engine optimisation and pay-per-click marketing.

A regular appraisal of how
your website can support
‘offline’ marketing initiatives is also critical to the value that it adds to your business.

5. Performance indicators

A digital business strategy
that provides a long term ROI is one that is regularly monitored, analysed, realigned with corporate goals and adapted
to the emerging needs of your target audience.

It is essential to establish performance benchmarks
for your website and digital strategy in terms of client acquisition, cost savings and revenue opportunities.

Monitoring of website analytics is highly recommend to analyse the correlation between visitors, enquiries and revenue and to inform iterative tweaks to your digital business strategy. SJ

Rahul Katrak is a digital strategy consultant at Futura www.futuraservices.co.uk