Why Your Mobile Experience is Killing Your Firm's Caseload

Tanner Jones discusses topics related to the mobile experience that users are getting from your law firm’s website including:

• Mobile Friendly Websites for Law Firms
• Search Volume On Mobile Devices
• Responsive Design
• An Ideal Mobile Experience For Law Firm Websites
• Additional topics

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Mobile Friendly Websites for Law Firms

Mobile, mobile, mobile. We’ve all heard it. You’ve seen it on social media. You’ve seen it through email. You’ve seen it on blog articles. Everyone’s saying you need a mobile-friendly website.

Well, it’s true. We’re going to talk to you about why mobile friendly websites are important and how you can sign more cases through your site when visitors come from a mobile device.

Now, let’s start with what Google said. In early 2015, Google announced that it was going to be implementing an algorithm update that focused solely on mobile websites. So they want to be able to serve the best possible result out there for their users which provides good experiences.

And when someone is searching from a mobile device, if they land on a website that’s not mobile-friendly, oftentimes, they’re forced to scroll in and scroll out all over the website. It’s difficult to find the information they’re looking for and they go back to the search results.

Well, that’s not ideal for what Google’s looking for when delivering the best possible result. So that’s why this algorithm update is going to allow them to be able to deliver good results consistently no matter what device someone is using to find a search query.

Search Volume on Mobile Devices

There’s been a number of studies that look at the amount of search volume that’s coming through certain devices. Well, these studies have shown that nearly over 50% of visitors that are browsing online are using their mobile devices. That’s significant.

But Lawlytics came out with a study that’s more important to you. And that’s how many people are using the web when they’re looking for a law firm and what device they’re using. Lawlytics study suggests that 45% of users, when they’re actively seeking legal representation, use their mobile devices during that process. That’s important to you. Because if you don’t have a mobile friendly website, and nearly half of the people who are searching for a law firm come across your site and are not able to find the information they’re looking for, they likely bounce back in the search results and you lose your chance at being able to sign them as a client.

Responsive Design

You have to have Responsive Programming on your website to ensure that your site is displaying properly for all devices accessing it. Responsive Programming, in short, allows your site to respond depending on the device.

So if someone comes to your from a mobile device, your size of your screen should screen should shrink down so where it’s a clean version, providing that user with very minimal information as the first thing that they see versus if someone saw your site. The desktop version of your site on a mobile device which would try to fit a lot of elements in one small screen.

So that’s what Responsive Design Programming allows it to do. It’s going to adjust depending on the size and the resolution of that screen that someone is accessing your website with. If you’re not sure if your site is programmed responsively, you can visit responsivedesignchecker.com. Key in your web address and it’s going to show you all the devices that you can click on and see what your site looks like in those applicable devices.

If it doesn’t look clean, then you certainly want to contact your web developer to ensure that it’s properly programmed to look great on all devices regardless of who’s checking out your website. That’s going to help you convert more visitors into callers, help you sign more business from the internet.

An Ideal Mobile Experience For Law Firm Websites

The next piece I want to talk you about is “What is an ideal mobile experience?” Everyone has their own opinions of this. But we’ve tested it and we’ve found out what visitors are looking for when they come to a mobile device.

It starts with being able to ensure that your firm website on the mobile version is well-branded. So obviously, you want to have your logo, your firm name up there prominently displayed likely in the top left-hand corner of the screen.

Secondly, very important, if someone lands on the site from a mobile device, typically, they’re not going to be able to stay on there very long before they determine, “Is this the site I’m looking for?” And if it’s not, bounce back. So you want to be able to tell them, if they’re looking for a Personal Injury Lawyer, tell them that they’ve landed on the right spot or the right webpage.

So for example, if you’re in Maryland and you practice Personal Injury Law, have a tag line or direct message that implies what you’re doing and the location you’re serving. That’s going to keep the qualified visitors on the page beyond those six seconds and give you a better chance to convert them.

Next, you to be able to make sure that you have nice photography. Make sure it’s smiling photography. Make sure you’re welcoming these visitors when they land on this page. People like photography. They like faces and they’re eyes are naturally drawn there. So be able to welcome them with that from the mobile version.

Third, you want to ensure that you have directions and tap-to-call features. Those are really important. A lot of times, when someone is accessing your website from their mobile device, they’re either on the go and they’re looking for directions to find your office or they just want the convenience of being able to tap, pull up the right phone application, and ring your office.

If you don’t have the ability to tap and call your firm as soon as someone lands on your mobile-friendly website, again, you’re missing a lot of conversions and you’re likely missing out on a significant amount of case base because of that.

Next, I encourage you to consider what your top level pages are. What’s the most important pages on your website? There’s a number of ways of determining that. But the best way is to look in your Google Analytics over the last five to six months and determine what the most trafficked pages are on your site.

That’s going to give you a good idea as to the priority level of those pages. Once you identify maybe those five to ten top level pages, ensure that they’re prioritized down the screen. So as somebody is scrolling down the screen, give them those pages and the ability to click in deeper.

Again, you want to be able to offer this clean experience when someone lands there. You don’t want buttons close to one another or content jumbled up around each other, because that decreases the user experience and encourages someone to get frustrated and go back to the search results.

Now, we’ve given you a lot of information with regard to mobile experience and what it takes to be able to maximize your conversion rate when someone comes to your site from a mobile device. To turn these concepts into cases, you have to ACT!

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