Integrity Marketing

Testimonials Speak to Law Firm Performance and Character

Testimonials are powerful messages. For building trust, establishing authority to visitors and reminding current clients of why they made the right decision when they chose your law firm, testimonials are terrific. But like any other part of your website, testimonials have to be deployed strategically to have the desired impact: getting visitors to become clients.

Four to six testimonials are great. Twenty five are not so great. A library of detailed testimonials of how you solved a family’s pain points becomes your “Success Stories” section, if that is appropriate for your law firm. Too many testimonials on your home page, and you risk numbing the reader. Remember how short today’s attention spans are?

For the same reason, short testimonials will work better on your website than long, detailed pieces. The longer pieces can be used as success stories or, with the client’s permission, incorporated into press releases to highlight estate planning problems and solutions for the media. A few sentences is all you need.

There are good testimonials, and there are not so good testimonials. One that is convoluted, poorly written and laden with spelling errors should not make it intact to your website. Here’s the issue: you don’t want to edit a testimonial if you don’t have to. You want to let the reader see a genuine expression of gratitude for the help that your firm has provided. You want their voice to be authentic. Choose testimonials wisely.

Don’t ever, ever create your own testimonials. Besides, if you’re as good at estate planning and Elder Law as we say you are, you should have plenty of comments from clients who are raving fans!

Let testimonial topics vary. If one client has given you a testimonial about how you handled a complex estate matter involving trusts and blended family, make sure that others address different areas of estate planning and Elder Law.

Specifics count. It’s easy to use general “they’re great” testimonials, but a client with a special needs child will be more moved to action by a testimonial about a special needs family and the planning you did to protect their child and the family’s future.

Freshen it up every now and then. New visitors to your website won’t notice, but repeat visitors will. Not sure how often you need to make the changes? Submit a support ticket and we’ll review the client testimonials and let you know exactly what, if anything, needs to be done.

Consider video testimonials for maximum impact. For all the reasons that lawyer videos have a major impact on SEO and engaging clients, the same holds true for clients who are willing to go on camera, tell their story and explain how you helped them.

Let’s Keep Your Law Firm Marketing Working Like a Great Highway

When we design a website for an estate planning and Elder Law firm, we have very specific goals: first, to drive visitors to the website, next, to engage visitors and take them on a journey through the website and lastly, to get those visitors to convert, either filling out a Contact Us form, picking up the phone, or, entering into an automated intake system that includes sharing information and making an appointment. Our goals are pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Think of it as building a great interstate highway system.

Plenty of good signage. People who take a lot of road trips know that certain states are just better than others when it comes to signage. Websites are the same way. Visitors need clear directions, signs that tell them where the information they want can be found and ramps to get them from a busy landing page to interior pages that have the information they are looking for. They expect to find themselves on a website that features easy navigation to take them to the pages that have the information they need and always, with a small amount of encouragement, easy ways to contact you.

Clear away overhanging foliage. Overgrown brushes blocking the view of oncoming lanes or tree limbs dangling over electrical wires present a danger to motorists. That same goes for websites. If there’s too much clutter, your visitors can’t find their way and you risk losing them. Remember that the tolerance for poorly designed, overly busy websites decreases every year. Get out those pruning shears!

Construction delays, speed bumps and endless delays. Navigation around the website needs to be easy and the site needs to load swiftly. A lot of added bells and whistles can slow down a website, and that goes double for mobile, when website visitors want things to be lightning quick. If you make it harder for visitors, don’t expect them to stick around for the conversion.

Billboards convey the message without requiring too much thought. One of the things we do in a strategic planning meeting is help you create a new tagline, or refine an existing tagline. Prospects need to be able to understand the firm’s identity and mission in a sentence. It should appear in multiple places on your website, so that the message is clear and repeated. No need to be stingy with your tagline, or hide it under a bushel.

Not sure your website is bringing prospects up to speed on your estate planning law firm? Call James at 877-352-2021 ext. 80 to learn how your website can get turbo charged!

Can Emotions Be Engaged in Law Firm Marketing Without Being Cheesy?

Stock photos seen on law firm websites that intend to deliver a visual punch make marketers like us cringe. The sobbing child standing by the side of a car crash, implying no guardianship plan has been put in place, or a group of family members glaring at each other to shows visitors what happens when mom cuts everyone but the youngest child out of the will. We don’t think you need the drama to reach qualified prospects; in fact, we think a heavy reliance on overly dramatic photos detracts from your law firm’s capabilities.

Our focus is to provide estate planning and Elder Law firm attorneys with a strategic marketing approach that conveys a high degree of professionalism, credibility and authority, where all of your design elements work together in a way that is respectful of your firm and of your clients.

We are very careful about the photos we select when crafting your law firm’s digital identity. It’s an important part of your marketing message.

We don’t believe that a good law firm needs to rely on dramatic photos to appeal to clients. We also prefer to use original photos and videos, taken at your office or when you visit our IMS video studios. The reason is simple: when the photo on your website is really you and when the picture of the office building is really where your office is located, you are building trust and recognition with new and returning clients.

Imaging your clients seeing an office building photo on your website that isn’t your office building. They’re asking themselves: did the firm move? Is this photo a mistake? Did they move and not tell me? All those questions, just from one image.

Next, imagine a stock photo of a staff meeting. Who are those people? We never met them when we were at the office. Did they hire a bunch of new people? Or worse, did they fire all the nice people we’ve met over the years and bring in a group of strangers?

In other words, your photos need to reflect your real staff, your real office and your real practice.

Not able to swing a photo shoot? We understand. That’s where careful selection of stock photos takes place. First, we start with stock photo suppliers that use only high resolution, high quality photography. Images are carefully curated to reflect your firm’s sensibility. We may chose images that reflect your community, like a New York City skyline or the Golden Gate Bridge, depending on where your office is located. Elderly couples with families may be included, but they will happy, positive images. If we select classic images, like a gavel or a law book, it’s to convey the long tradition of the law. Every image serves a purpose and is selected only after careful consideration.

Unexpected Elements in Law Firm Website Designs

Your team at IMS hopes that the first time you see your new estate planning and Elder Law firm website, you’ll be delighted. You may notice the absence of some features that you see on other websites—sliders, popups and autoplay—and wonder why they’re not on your IMS website. We don’t use them, for a number of reasons.

Popups: the little boxes that open up while visitors are on a website. We find them a bit annoying when we are on websites, and the last thing you want to do is annoy your visitors. Popups are used to gather email addresses, in exchange for a coupon or discount or a white paper. Your website is designed to serve as a means of engaging visitors with useful information, not merely gather email addresses. We pass on popups!

Sliders eat page loading time, which can harm performance and SEO rankings. Sliders do look cool, and on some websites they are a necessary feature, but for our purposes, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. They take a while to load, and those few additional seconds may send your visitors off to another estate planning law firm website. Some sliders move in ways that are challenging for older eyes, and others, where the sliders move one way and the backgrounds move another, can create a real visual hardship. Our goal is to create a positive experience for your visitors and keep the Google bots happy. 

Autoplay is exactly that: a video that begins playing when the user opens your website. Is this not the most annoying thing in the web world? We think so. For users who keep their monitor volume on all the time, a video that opens automatically and starts playing loudly is a massive distraction. If you are looking at your phone in the office, do you want your colleagues to hear a message about estate planning?

Just because a website can do something does not mean it works. Every year brings more features and functionality to websites, all of which are carefully evaluated for our clients. Remember that we base our decisions on what to use and what not to use on hard data, not what’s cool or trending. That supports our ultimate goal: building websites that grows estate planning and Elder Law practices.

Law Firm Websites and the Importance of Good Design

Law firm websites work best when they balance form with function. An attractive, contemporary appearance is critical to ensure that visitors don’t leave two seconds after they land on your website. But the site has to meet performance standards also. That includes navigation around the site, engagement on an intellectual and emotional level, and design, including but certainly not limited to the logo, that reflects the firm’s identity. What else makes for a well-designed website?

Graphic details that make you, well, you. When we start working with a law firm, it’s our job to learn as much as we can about the firm, from the color preferences of the firm leadership to the atmosphere of the office reception area. Our goal is to take your law firm and translate it into an online presence. Sometimes we may surprise you with elements that you didn’t even know were part of your firm. It’s our job to distill the essence of your law firm. A big part of that is figuring out what makes your firm different from any other firm in your market.

Navigation that works for your visitors. Notice the “for your visitors” phrase. We have clients who spend a lot of time on their websites while we are in the design stage, and they don’t realize that after three visits, navigation to any website is a snap. It’s the ease of use for the first time visitor that is so important to building a level of comfort between your firm and your clients. For some practices, this means oversized fonts, or the ability to switch to and from “normal” fonts and larger fonts for older clients with vision issues.

Building trust and deepening relationships with prospects and clients. This is a key part of a website’s performance. Visitors to your website need to come away from their visit with a strong sense of comfort and the feeling that you will be able to take care of their problems and not become a source of problems for them. That means all of your links are working and there are no dead ends. The fonts are easy to read, and not too small. The site doesn’t take too long to load, whether they are opening it on a desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone. In short, there should be nothing on your website that causes anyone any degree of frustration. After all, if your website is difficult, then your firm may be difficult too.

Is your website in need of a design update or overhaul? You know how important it can be for a will to be updated. We can tell you if your website needs a design update or if it’s time for a complete overhaul. Not sure? Submit a support ticket and we’ll give you our honest opinion.

Optimizing Websites, Law Office Teams and Clients

An “erosion of demand for legal services” and “Decreasing demand for legal services,” were just two issues facing the legal profession described in Altman Weil’s “Law Firms in Transition Survey,” as reported by the ABA Journal last week. The survey of law firm leaders echoes many of the points that we discuss on a regular basis in this blog.

The problems are real, but there are solutions. That’s what we do.

We write a lot about the changes that estate planning and Elder Law firms need to make in order to stay profitable. Among those changes are investments in technology in all aspects of the firm, from websites integrated with automated intake to fully integrated document management and billing systems.

Law firms with a culture that embraces change and the use of technology in providing superior client service will be ones that not only survive, but flourish and grow. Will that be your law firm?

Through our own investment in leading technology, IMS clients have adopted the now mainstream use of lawyer videos. We took websites to another level with the addition of E2-CRM, a proprietary Client Relationship Management system that was designed for estate planning and Elder Law firms. More recently, we launched CLIP^SM to give law firms the ability to make the intake process automated and seamless.

All of these systems tie back to a website that engages your prospective clients with content that is relevant to their concerns—also known as their pain points. We know today that lawyer websites must connect to your clients in an emotional and intellectual manner, hence the successful impact of lawyer videos. They must also provide many different ways to interact with you, with invitations to connect strategically placed throughout the website.

Integrating your website with the E2-CRM will improve your law firm’s ability to transform prospects into clients and to respond swiftly when the firm is contacted. Remember that today’s legal services consumer expects to hear back from you fast—and the faster they hear from you, the more likely they will retain your services.

When follow up is quick and service levels are high, you are likely to transform your clients into raving fans. Client satisfaction leads to testimonials, in the form of videos or content that become part of your website. Raving fans who post positive reviews on sites like Avvo or Google present an opportunity to bring even more visitors to your website.

When it works together, staff isn’t bogged down in repetitive tasks, your clients experience a well-run practice and their intellect tells their emotions that they have made the right decision to entrust their estate planning to you.

Are You Sending Website Visitors to Landing Pages that Matter?

You’d expect it has to have great content, but making a landing page sticky is a real art. Best practices for estate planning and Elder Law firms are creating a landing page that brings visitors who have specific interests to pages that are tailored to their own specific interests. After all, if your blog is all about using trusts for estate planning and you link to a page on your website, your visitor will expect to see more information about—guess what?—trusts. Sending visitors to your home page or an unrelated page will cause confusion and frustration.

Here are some other pointers to make your landing pages sticky:

Remember the goal: fill out a contact us form or pick up the phone to make an appointment. Make sure that your landing pages include a CTA: call to action. Decide what you want that action to be, and include several points in an obvious manner. If your page has more than one screen (below the “fold”), make sure there’s another CTA on the lower half of the page. Make it as easy as possible for visitors so they are not struggling to figure out where they can reach you.

Keep the content clear, use plain English, and make sure it’s useful. Remember that every page of content on your website serves a dual purpose: engaging human visitors and enticing Google bots. The content should emphasize whatever topic brought them to the page. Don’t use landing pages for general information about the firm. All information should be geared to move clients to interact with you.

Make sure the landing pages feature several ways for visitors to interact with you. One link at the top of the page to a contact us form just isn’t enough today. You’ll want to make it easy for visitors to become clients. That means incorporating our CLIP^SM system, so that you can easily lead them into engaging with an online, automated intake process.

Lawyer videos on landing pages? You bet! A lengthy page of text (especially if it’s in big blocks of text) may be fine for your colleagues, but the average website visitor is going to be put off by a wall of content. Instead, break up content into a series of smaller paragraphs with leading subheads and incorporate lawyer videos.

Landing pages need great visuals too. Graphics and images perform several functions on a landing page. If they are photos of people, they should be aspirational photos—happy seniors and families that reflect your client base at its best. If they are graphics, they should be aspirational also: what does the landscape of a happy retirement or happy elder years look like? That’s why you see many tropical scenes, sailboats and photos of national parks on estate planning law firms and financial advisor websites. Show your visitors the goal of your efforts: a safe, secure and well-planned life.

Are you Driving an Edsel in a World of Flying Cars?

Keeping up with technology is not every lawyer’s top priority, but not staying up-to-date can have a negative impact on your estate planning and Elder Law firm’s profitability and growth. One part of the puzzle: making sure that your devices are compatible with those being used by your clients.

Chances are your email is integrated into a law firm management program that also coordinates your court and/or appointment calendar, billing and document management. Simple question: does your email arrive at its destination and do your clients ever complain about either not receiving emails or emails arriving in their junk mail folders?

You may have a compatibility issue. As your client base becomes younger, your clients will be less and less tolerant of any technology issues. If they have to go through hoops to receive emails and documents, you may risk losing them to a law office that is easier to deal with.

Are your clients getting emails and reviewing documents on PCs, Macs or tablets? For the most part, today’s documents and files function across all platforms, but if you are using a quirky product or if your clients are using odd devices, pay attention if they tell you their systems are not working with your documents.

How new (or old) are the devices in use at your firm? Include cell phones, tablets, laptops as well as desktop computers and servers, if you are still hosting your own network on site. Conduct an inventory, including the date that the systems were put into place, if a support contract or warranty is in place, and have a conversation with your IT team to the life span of all of these devices.

And while we’re talking about staying up-to-date, what browsers are being used at your firm? Browsers are your entry point to the internet and are often the point of entry for malware threats.

For years the world used Internet Explorer, but today others are more popular, for reasons of security and speed: Chrome (Google), Firefox (Mozilla), Internet Explorer (Microsoft) are the most popular. Chrome is widely considered to be the most secure and the fastest. Firefox is used by many millennials, and IE is still used by many law firms.

Whichever browser you are using, make sure to keep your browser and your system updated at all times.

Still Using Parchment Paper and Quill Pens?

Of course you’re not–but are you using today’s equivalent of parchment paper in your estate planning and Elder Law firm? Profitability and productivity demands the use of the most time efficient tools possible. Luckily for today’s practitioner, there are a number of excellent offerings available. The biggest challenge you may face is deciding which one is best for your practice and getting your team on board with change.

Document management and templates are the most widely used programs in this practice area. It just makes sense, as so many documents and the required processing are repetitive. But when choosing a program, or making a change to a new program, do your homework.

Does the product integrate seamlessly with other software that your office depends on? Not all applications work well and play with others. Before you make a commitment and a change, go through a checklist of every system that is critical to the firm’s operation.

Remember that change takes time and there are always a few bumps on the way, as long as they are small bumps. Budget the time needed for your admin staff or outside vendor to do the conversion, and don’t do it when you are in crazy busy mode. Expecting issues and building in solutions for issues that may arise can make it a less painful process.

Do you need to be the first kid on the block with a new application? Volunteering to be a beta test site for a team of excited software engineers is very exciting but fraught with challenges. If your practice can withstand the process of working out any bugs and what the tech calls “unintended feature enhancements”—i.e., problems—that’s great. But make sure your staff is on board for the ride.

Don’t ignore tried and true applications, as long as they are kept up-to-date. Intuit, the creator of Quicken and QuickBooks, was founded in 1983—that’s prehistoric in software years—but the company has continued to develop its programs. In the meantime, hundreds, if not thousands of other software companies and applications have fallen by the wayside.

Remember security is a key element in automating any law firm processes. Larger software companies recognize the importance of this and build it into their products.

Going with an “off-brand” application may appeal to your budget but be cautious about putting your practice in the hands of a complete start up.

Cybersecurity and your Estate Planning and Elder Law Practice

If your practice is part of a large firm that works with financial institutions, you likely have already undergone at least one security audit in the last year. Regardless of the size of your firm, a growing number of state bar associations now require law firms to keep abreast of changes in technology. The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct requires lawyers to “keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.”

Protecting your client’s information is more than an ethical requirement, it’s also good business. Yes, big retailers and government sites are hacked all the time. Without the seemingly limitless budgets of a big law firm, what are your options?

Talk with your IT provider and then, talk to another IT provider. Educate yourself on the fundamentals of cybersecurity so that you can make informed decisions. You may need some upgrades, and some investment in infrastructure, but it is better to be proactive than to fix a system after digital assets have been stolen or tampered with.

Identify cybersecurity priorities. Maybe you can’t do everything, but you can take reasonable steps.

People are often the weakest link in office cybersecurity. If an associate or team member leaves in a huff, do you know what they have taken with them? Are they still accessing files through the network, or through Dropbox? Or did they take the entire office with them on a memory stick before they left? These are vulnerabilities that must be considered when formulating employee policies and cybersecurity processes.

Do you have a “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policy, where attorneys are able to access the firm’s network and download client information on their own devices? Millennials love this, but this policy puts your firm at risk. What if your biggest client’s entire file is on someone’s laptop and the laptop is stolen? If the laptop cannot have all of its data cleaned remotely as soon as the loss is discovered, you’ve got a big problem.

Have you begun using a secure portal for client documents? All you need to do is read the news to know that emails are not secure. Sensitive client data must be transmitted and stored in a safe and secure manner.

Are you still running a practice on servers located in your office? If your practice is in the cloud and you are working with a reputable company, your documents are secure; you have data redundancy and data recovery options that an office-based server does not offer.

Even if you are in a firm that refuses to give up its own data center (which we hope is more than a dedicated closet with a rack and a door that’s never shut because it’s too hot), your backup should be in the cloud.