Secrets of a successful law firm website

Law firms and specialist boutique agencies today recognise the importance of quality websites in promoting or reinforcing their brand identities – presenting their message, capabilities and achievements to a worldwide audience that includes potential clients.
As a result, firms invest substantial sums into producing beautiful sites that aim impress to visitors but sometimes not only fail to impress but actually frustrate – and an irritated visitor is a potential lost business opportunity.

Why quality user experience matters
Attention to the user experience can make all the difference between a happy and a frustrated visitor. A frustrated user, whether a client, an important prospect or press contact, may never return – and all the sophisticated technology or corporate messaging will not erase their negative impression.
The problem is that despite their investments to produce impressive looking websites, firms or rather their web designers have often focused their attention more on flashy animation, fancy colours or technological wizardry than on user experience neglecting to consider that a user’s experience, site, not graphical or technological gimmicks, is what leaves the lasting impression.
To create a good user experience, firms must recognise that the typical website is ‘self service’ – i.e. it does not offer its user a user manual, training guide or service representative to guide the user through the site. What a firm’s site does to help the user get through the site – in terms of organisation, consistency and use of graphics as well as the quality of the design elements, format and language can determine whether a user has a positive or negative impression of the site – and the firm to whom the site belongs.

Organisation
Visitors to a firm’s website typically want information on the firm’s locations, practice areas, areas of expertise, background, or whom to contact for specific matters.
Not surprisingly, visitors appreciate websites that are laid out in a way that facilitates search activities – for example the websites of Morrison & Foerster, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati or Bird & Bird – are effectively laid out to allow rapid access to information, location of practice areas and professionals associated with particular practice areas.

Consistency
Visitors can be put off by inconsistency, particularly at a linguistic or functional level. For instance, visitors to the English language website of Beijing Beixin-Zhicheng Intellectual Property Agent Co, Ltd are first greeted by both an English website page and a popup with a message in Chinese. Visitors to Clifford Chance’s site may be surprised to find that though it is easy locate partners based in Europe who are associated with particular practice areas from the firm’s European home page, it’s difficult to do the same from an Asian Clifford Chance site (e.g. try to locate lawyers based in Singapore specialised in Corporate M&A from Clifford Chance’s Singapore page).

Graphics and animation
Dazzling graphics and technical wizardry are fine as long as users can get what they want, as quickly and effectively as possible. But firms would be better off eschewing fancy graphics in favour of a layout that makes a visitor’s job of locating information easy. For example, CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office’s website, while not particularly pretty, at least allows users to readily locate professionals specialised in particular areas.
Animation is another tricky area. While most visitors’ computers run browsers, support Flash animation and are connected to broadband networks, firms should keep in mind that some visitors may be using computers or mobile devices that run on slow networks, lack Flash support, or both.

Welcoming design
A firm’s website should also be welcoming, not forbidding but when users visit the site Nishith Desai Associates they are immediately confronted by rather foreboding ‘User’s Acknowledgement And Request To Continue’ page that features a lengthy disclaimer. While there may be sound reasons to put such a page up front, there are other, better ways to achieve the same effect.

Language
Given that some visitors may lack specialised legal or technical knowledge, the language used on a website should have as broad applicability as possible. Yet some firms have chosen to pepper their sites with technical language understood only be a minority of professionals. For instance Eagle IP Ltd’s site employs specialised American patent language that may not only befuddle laymen but even some lawyers as well.

Error checking
Every error a user encounters that can be attributed to poor site design potentially detracts from the user experience and creates – or reinforces negative impressions about the site that may translate to negative impressions about the firm. Users can pick up on the seemingly smallest of errors or oddities – for example visitors to Lovell’s site may be puzzled to find that they need to click on the Asian continent of the site’s world map, rather than the Middle East, to access information on the firm’s Dubai office (and if they try to click on the Middle East the European portion of the world map is highlighted).

How can a firm improve its website?
In improving its website, a firm should first consider what visitors, whether clients, prospects or media, want and help visitors find or do what they want quickly and easily bearing in mind that what the site does or fails to do in this regard directly impacts the user’s experience. Visitors differ greatly in their levels of technical expertise and comfort and a site should be able to cater to a variety of technical backgrounds.
Creating a good website need not be an expensive undertaking – if a firm spent a little time thinking about its potential web audience and focused on user experience – it could end up with a website that leave its visitors happy and satisfied and avoid paying exorbitant fees for design work that detracts rather than supports its business goals.

ron.yu@gilkron.com