Your digital hub deserves devotion—right now, agree?

One of our attorneys logged 131,000 unique sessions last year. A session is defined as activity that a user with a unique IP address spends on a website during a specified period of time—and in web-speak that’s a lot of traffic.

But our client didn’t get stats like these by turning the other cheek; this law firm gave its website the attention and nurturing required in a constantly changing environment.

Perhaps this makes you wonder how effective your website is.

• Does your strategy drive people to this key conversion point?
• Do you track how people use your website?
• Do you understand the data you have?

Technology has advanced in warp-speed. No longer is a slick, eye-catching website design and compelling content enough go live with pride. No one makes a move without consulting Google, and to make things more challenging, the search engine giant keeps changing how it ranks websites altogether.

Keywords used to be key. Now original content rules. We must weigh the importance of page titles, meta tags, URL structure, anchor text, image optimization, heading tags, crawlers and so much more. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an ever-moving target, but you have to have the know-how to take an accurate shot.

Today, law firms are tasked with monitoring all types of traffic stats and staying on top of industry changes. The overwhelming prospect often leads to lawyers to turning it all over to a digital marketing agency. Working with professionals whose jobs are dedicated to keeping up with digital shifts, while positioning websites in the smartest ways possible to drive people to them, can pay off in stress relief alone.

What do I give my attention to?

If your website is a year old, it’s already time to start thinking about a refresh, which should include design and content updates, but also strategic methods for leveraging the brand equity you’ve already built through your website. It’s time to let your web presence move front-and-center and treat it with the respect it deserves. After all, if it converts one big case, it has more than paid for itself.

Start by considering your own web habits. Think about how you use the Internet to look someone up, check a restaurant’s reputation or dig deeper on a topic. If what you heard about is not what checks out through a Google search, you quickly move on to the next person, the next dinner joint or the next topic.

Your legal website is no different. If your web presence isn’t better than the vehicle that drives people there, it may drive them away. If your firm’s website doesn’t pay off your TV commercial or even word of mouth, people will instantly move on to the next attorney.

The competition is fierce. If you don’t stay abreast of what’s happening in the digital marketplace, you might miss out on a new client, a lucrative case or a better chance to represent the brand you’ve worked so hard to establish. Look at things such as:

1. The first impression your website really makes
2. How you are driving people to your website
3. What visitors do when they get there—and how much you’re actually giving them to do
4. Analytics shows where your site is “off”—so you can fix those broken areas
5. How (and how well) you’re converting the people who initiative unique sessions to begin with

So as you ponder your next web steps, start by treating your website more like your baby. Give it love, attention and respect. You’ve got to nurse it along to perfection.

You spend thousands of TV advertising dollars every month to drive people to your website. But what happens when they get there? Do you even know? Here are some questions to consider:

• Do they leave too soon, leaving your law firm with a missed opportunity?
• Does your website’s look and feel match that of your TV ad campaign, creating cohesion and establishing instant brand integrity?
• Is there compelling content to keep visitors engaged and interested in learning more about your attorneys and legal work?
• Can users easily navigate your site and find written and video content that completes the story you started to tell on TV?

If you don’t know, there’s no better time to start making sure your TV and online efforts match up. Don’t neglect the TV’s small-screen sister if you want to see real ROI in 2015.

How to get your legal website up to speed:

It’s not uncommon for law firms, and most advertisers, to spend big for a big splash on TV but skimp on an online presence that ultimately pays off that first impression. A smarter strategy is to start making the messages on both platforms work hand in hand. For many legal firms that may require building a better website or enhancing the existing online “user experience.”

If you like your current website design and it pays off the brand image you’ve presented through your TV advertising, then focus first on content. (If not, get your TV and Web visuals in sync ASAP.) These days content comes in many forms, but the most competitive companies are producing it regularly, creating timely, informative assets on their websites weekly, if not daily.

Here are three quick ways to get your website up to speed with your TV efforts and ensure that once you’ve sent people to your website they stay there—at least long enough to prompt a call or an email, and ideally convert to a case.

Leverage video content: You’ve already got great TV creative (or perhaps are about to produce a new spot), why not leverage that asset on your website, especially given that two years from now video is expected to account for nearly 70% of all consumer Internet traffic, according to Cisco. Talk to your agency about repurposing a portion of your TV commercial with interactive or shareable elements appropriate for Web viewing, and start to build a bank of short videos that introduce your firm, position your attorneys as knowledgeable leaders and ultimately help you rise above competitors in your space.

Create a content strategy: One big push to update website content to match your impact on TV isn’t sustainable. A creative burst will likely die out, along with your online leads, if you don’t have a long-term strategy for Web content. That starts with assessing the existing tone of your website copy and overhauling it if it’s outdated or doesn’t complement how you’ve positioned your firm on TV. What follows is even more critical:

1. Create a content calendar for distributing content regularly on a blog, news section or video storehouse, for example.
2. Depending on the size of your law firm, consider hiring or designating a content manager, or outsourcing production to your ad agency or a content marketing expert.
3. Each month monitor how your new content is performing via Google Analytics and other data measures your agency can recommend.

Track & compare marketing efforts: Keeping abreast of statistics such as what pages people are visiting on your website, where they stay, what they read the longest and what content they share most will build the intelligence you need to tweak and hone content in the future. The second part of gauging performance, and therefore better understanding how your audiences digest content, is comparing the success of your TV campaigns alongside your Internet marketing efforts. By measuring TV and online video against each other, you will start to see how the two work in concert and will be able adjust your cross-media mix in a way that makes sense for your advertising budget.

So as you start to evaluate your television advertising this year and strive for constant improvement, think big picture—yet outside the big screen. If your website doesn’t measure up to and pay off your TV campaign, it’s time to spend some quality time online.

Does the website matter anymore? Do people still use, or even care about, websites? With the proliferation of social platforms and mobile obsessions, these are legitimate questions.

The short answer is an emphatic “Yes” to both.

And in the legal world, the website is still one of the most important segments of your owned media dominion. The reason?

Control.

Your website is under complete control of your law firm – everything from the look and feel to the messaging and the content.

The most effective sites today are living and breathing communication hubs that exist as a central brand platform and conversion point. And, not coincidentally, they cost more to create. However, you’ll see the value of that investment comes back 7-fold—and more.

Think of your website as your law firm’s:

• Digital Storefront
• Brand Building Block
• 24/7/365 Employee
• First Impression Maker
• Lead Generating Machine
• Information Hub
• Thought Leadership Platform

It’s Your Digital Storefront

Let’s start with the basics. When someone is searching for a law firm in relation to a location or specific type of legal case, you want your law firm’s website to come up, right? Online leads are still prized by your business, correct?

Without a modern, highly optimized website filled with original content and all the organic search triggers Google loves, you are undiscoverable to the majority of potential clients who begin a legal search online.

In the digital “mall” of lawyers, your storefront didn’t get a corner spot. If your website is not updated, positioned and tracked for performance, it’s like you don’t exist. And that’s no way to win cases.

It’s Your Brand Building Block

Creating consistency in your legal brand—your signature selling points—is critical to your reputation. Whether potential clients understand it or not, they are looking for a dependable set of messages that prove your firm reliable, trustworthy and the best firm for their specific case.

Your website is that one quality-controlled digital presence, integrated with other owned-media channels, that users can count on. Unlike a social platform, where in effect you “rent” the message space, on your website you control the entire experience. You can give visitors everything they need to know to make an informed decision about your practice.

It’s Your First Impression Maker

The Web is the first place people go for information. Because it’s easy, and because you can poke around for facts and figures without ever having to talk to someone. So when someone searches Google for a law firm in your state, and your website pops up, that might be your first (and only) chance to impress them.

If your site looks shoddy, doesn’t have enough information, can’t be viewed across different browsers and devices, and doesn’t allow people to connect when they’re ready to reach out, you might have lost a chance at a highly lucrative case… and not even know it.

It’s Your 24/7/365 Employee

In the old days, the look and feel of a law office was mission critical. People strolling past might come in for a chat. Most initial meetings took place in person. Today, the reception desk has moved online. When people come to your web “office,” you need to have an official “receptionist” ready to meet and greet in the most professional and courteous way possible in the digital space.

In fact, you might consider your website your hardest working employee. It’s on the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Why wouldn’t you invest in a tool that welcomes new clients and sets expectations—and appointments—helping you convert window shoppers to paying customers?

It’s Your Lead Generating Machine

When connected in all the crucial ways to your online audiences, websites are lead-generating machines. Ads and email campaigns send people directly to your site; your database can be linked to your site and mined for targeted marketing strategies, and your live chat or digital points of contact create another lifeline for clients.

Your website is the nucleus of your Internet intake strategy, and it must generate leads – in the form of phone calls, contact forms, live chats, or even social follows.

It’s Your Information Hub

Once people get to your law firm’s website, either through a search or through a digital ad campaign, they need enough well organized and clearly presented information to make an educated decision about whether or not your firm can help their specific situation.

Your website is a concentrated storehouse of real-time information—firm facts, brand boasts, actionable intelligence, video assets, news, linked reviews, and more. It’s where people will go, and perhaps return, to learn more or to contact you.

It’s Your Thought Leadership Platform

For the set of potential clients, partners or other interested parties who want to dig deeper or validate your legal expertise, your website is a platform for demonstrating thought leadership and positioning your firm as a knowledgeable go-to resource.

There are endless opportunities to show your legal capabilities through regular blog contributions from your legal experts, informative videos set in your office environment, through white papers on specific legal topics, and as an online guide to more information.

By leveraging your website—and your brand—as an intelligence tool, you build a reputation as a trusted source and industry thought leader. And if you don’t invest in your website, you’ll lose out on an untold number of potentially high-value cases.

When you walk into a store, are you more encouraged to buy if someone greets you with a smile and a simple “let me know how I can help you”? You might not have even thought about it, but the answer is most likely yes. The truth is customer service and customer experience matters in every business interaction.

The same applies to law firms. If you operate your organization like a business—which you should—then the first contact you have with a potential client is critical. These days that initial communication doesn’t typically take place in an office. Instead, it starts on the Internet.

Since people start by shopping around the “mall” of lawyers on the Web, your website needs to make an impact and engage customers. It’s your storefront. Your greeter is your live chat feature. If you don’t have a chat feature, now’s the time to incorporate one into your website. We know that this communication tool can increase intake conversions up to 30%.

One smart way to approach live chat is to revisit the store model. Don’t think of online communication as an impersonal robot that’s automated to answer generic questions. Treat your online greeter as a human. Give her a name. Task her with asking pointed questions that will not only help pre-qualify a case, but make the person on the other end feel valued and confident in his or her decision to reach out in the first place.

However, a smiling greeter with a friendly message and ability to answers questions is not enough to acquire cases. The key to converting is what your firm does with each individual Internet lead. Remember, every online lead is a potential relationship . Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

•     If your greeter is offline overnight, how fast do you get in touch the next morning?
•     How do you capture enough information without going too far and scaring people off?
•     How do you follow up once a lead qualifies—and where do you send customers who are not a fit for the firm?

These are just some of the questions worth answering when building a quality Internet intake strategy. Remember, even a 2% increase in conversions can have a huge impact on your bottom line!