What makes a legal website good?
In preparing to speak to a number of marketing managers and directors from professional services firms (law firms, accountants and insolvency practitioners) I carried out an interesting piece of research into the homepages of the UK’s top 25 law firms.
I collected data on each site’s features and layout as well as scoring their design and use of photography. The chart below shows as a percentage the number of legal websites that have each feature:
Top Features:
- Keyword Search – 88% of law firms have this on their website
- Latest News – 85% like to tell you what they’re are upto
- Publications/Features – 74% have either a featured area or publication to view
- Logo (top left) – 74% of firms have their logo in the top left corner meaning 26% have it elsewhere
- Introductory Text – 68% of firms have some introductory text, the quality of which was typically poor
Lowest Scoring Features:
- Events – Only 3% of law firms feature their events on the homepage
- Feedback Mechanism – 3% of the firms want feedback on their website
- Contact Details – lawyers obviously enjoy keeping people at arms length as only 12% of the firms had some contact details on the homepage
- Industry Sectors – 85% of the firms don’t bother showing you which sectors they work in
- Text Version – Given the advent of mobile browsing it was surprising that only 15% of the surveyed firms have a text version of their website
Next Steps:
- To get hold of the full audit or to discuss the results contact David Sealey
- Follow Quba on Twitter
