5 Essentials Every Attorney Website Should Include Create the best possible attorney website

Attorneys face a common challenge: attracting new clients to their firm. Having a solid web presence and online business platform are the keys to success for many attorneys.

The internet drives business for both large law firms and individual attorneys in several ways: by building awareness among potential clients, allowing firms to better engage with current clients, and giving firms an opportunity to present their practice as professional and trustworthy.

In order to succeed at attracting new clients and building relationships with current ones, every attorney website should have these five essentials:

1) Mobile-Optimized, Professional Showcase

Your homepage and website should have a clean design, complete with attractive photos and sharp copy which present your firm in a professional light. The website's copy should be optimized for SEO, as well as across different browsers.

With an ever-growing number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, it's also critical that your site be mobile optimized, so it clearly appears when viewed on a mobile device.

2) Contact Management

Because gaining and keeping new clients is such an important challenge, it's also necessary to have a website with strong contact management features. Contact management will allow you to collect and store contact information from your clients, such as their names, email addresses, and telephone numbers. With this information you can keep track of communication with your contacts, and easily reach them when necessary.

3) CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

CRM takes contact management a step further, by giving you the power to follow customer interaction notes, track growth and demand, and analyze clients' communication or activity so you can target them with specific marketing campaigns or business offers. In short, CRM's value lies in allowing attorneys to better develop and maintain meaningful relationships with their clients.

4) Scheduling With Automatic Reminders and Payment Management

Attorneys can make it as simple as possible to attract clients to their office by offering them easy access to an online appointment scheduling tool. Your website should absolutely offer the ability to schedule appointments, plus send automatic appointment reminders to your clients. Missed or forgotten appointments can cost firms money, and this helps alleviate that threat.

Finally, the website ought to allow for payment processing, as well as digital signing of contracts -- a feature which can make the lives of attorneys much easier.

5) Advertising Optimization & B2B Co-Marketing

Having a website that includes powerful analytics tools will allow attorneys to measure the effectiveness of their advertising channels and efforts, making adjustments as needed.

Additionally, the website should offer built-in business-to-business co-marketing, which allows your firm to work with other local businesses and join marketing efforts, enabling referrals.

These five essentials will create a robust online platform for attorneys, helping attract and maintain clients. It's possible for attorneys or firms to build a website using a DIY tool, but that can be a costly road to take, and involve hiring a developer and designer to create the site.

There is an alternative: using a platform that specializes in attorney websites and help you build an online business platform that incorporates all of the necessary elements, like Ocoos Websites for Attorneys. Plus, Ocoos offers a concierge service which will handle building and launching the website for you, then give you complete access to the site to make changes or updates as needed going forward.