Why (and How) Your Law Firm Should Use Website Pop-ups

For a while there, it seemed as though every website was using pop-ups just for the sake of jumping onboard the trend. Now that the furor has died down, we’ve had a chance to learn about how website pop-ups best contribute to the user experience.

With fewer websites utilizing pop-up messaging, this is a great opportunity to take advantage of. It’s simply a matter of understanding why visitors want to see website pop-ups and knowing how to effectively design them for to meet that expectation.

Why Should Your Law Firm Use Website Pop-ups?

Pop-ups are primarily something used to communicate a special message to visitors of your website. Most commonly, these messages aim to seal the deal and convert visitors into paying clients (or, at the very least, get them part of the way there).

And they’re pretty darn effective in doing so, too.

According to a Sumo study of nearly 2 billion pop-ups, it found the average conversion rate of a website pop-up to be 3.09%.

On the other hand, it found that pop-ups that were especially done well had a conversion rate of nearly 10%.

Think about that for a second.

Let’s say you were to use a free WordPress plugin to add pop-ups to your website. Aside from the initial configuration of the plugin and the ongoing monitoring piece, there isn’t much of a time or monetary investment.

In exchange, three to ten visitors out of every 100 “convert”. This could mean they sign up for a consultation, subscribe to a newsletter, or become a paying client. But those are three to ten more people you wouldn’t have necessarily converted if it hadn’t been for the pop-up.

Tips for Using Website Pop-ups Effectively for Your Law Firm

Now, with a law firm website, you want to be careful about how you use pop-ups as your pages contain vital information for prospective clients and you don’t want them to get in the way of that.

Here are some tips for using website pop-ups effectively for your law firm.

Tip #1: Consider the Type

Typically, there are three styles of pop-ups:

• Modals -These are the traditional pop-ups that open in the middle of the screen.
• Interstitials -These take up the full screen and are usually encountered upon first entering a website or right before leaving.
• Banners – These are small strips that stick to the very top or bottom of the screen.

As screen sizes get smaller and visitors adopt pop-up blindness, banners are a smart choice. That said, there are some instances where a larger modal pop-up makes sense (like sharing a privacy statement or soliciting visitors to subscribe to a newsletter). Think about what you need to ask, where the ideal placement is, and then choose the right style.

Tip #2 Be Aware of Google’s Penalties

Google penalizes websites that improperly use pop-ups on mobile. Since Google now ranks websites based on their mobile versions, it’s important to abide by these guidelines.

Google has three rules it asks website owners to follow:

1. Never allow a pop-up to cover more than a quarter of the web page, effectively blocking out essential information behind it.
2. Never display a pop-up on the first page of a website and keep visitors from getting to the page they expected (unless it’s a privacy statement or age-related gate).
3. Never use pop-ups that confuse visitors in terms of interaction (e.g. pop-ups that take up a full page, but can’t be dismissed because they require a user to scroll).

Basically, if it confuses visitors or intrudes on their ability to quickly access information, don’t use it.

Tip #3: Add Value

Unlike something like an e-commerce site that can display pop-ups to advertise special deals, promote a free gift, or ask visitors not to abandon a shopping cart, a law firm’s options are a bit more limited in scope. When creating pop-ups, think about what sorts of messages would be relevant and add value.

Take, for example, this banner from Small Law.

It’s a brief news bulletin at the top of the website. When you click on it, you’re taken to a special page that announces their move to new offices (which is helpful for clients trying to find them).

With privacy an ongoing concern (especially in light of GDPR in Europe), more and more websites are displaying privacy notices in pop-ups as Springhouse Solicitors has done:

There’s the example of the triggered pop-up on the Arnold & Itkin LLP website:

The free case evaluation pop-up only opens after a visitor clicks on the pen-and-paper icon stuck to the right side of the screen.

Live chat is another way to wisely use website pop-ups that are relevant to the content of the site and will be well-received by visitors.

Tip #4: Time It Just Right

Obviously, throwing a pop-up onto the screen the second someone enters is a bad idea. As such, take some time to understand your client’s journey as he or she walks through the site, so you can deliver a pop-up when they actually want to see it.

Tip #5: Keep the Design Simple

Keep all aspects of a pop-up simple and attractive:

• Make the pop-up small, but darken the site behind it so as not to distract from the message.
• Use minimal messaging and images, but display a strong call-to-action button.
• Include a contact form, but make it quick and painless to fill out (no more than two or three fields).
• Have an easy way out (an “X” in the right corner), but make the offer in the pop-up so intriguing they can’t help but click on it.

 

Website Pop-ups Are Here to Stay

The style of website pop-ups and the abundance of them may have changed, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they continue to be a powerful marketing tool. If you’d like to explore ways in which you can use pop-ups on your law firm’s website, give us a shout and we’d be happy to discuss the possibilities.

Bad Reviews Are Bad for Business: What Will You Do with Them?

Online reviews are a crucial part of marketing for your law firm. They enable clients to provide a recommendation of your services while also providing others with insights into your process. It’s a great way to drum up business for your firm.

But, as you’re well aware, not every client is going to walk away satisfied.

As such, you can expect any grievances clients feel towards your law firm to eventually make their way to the online review platform of their choosing in the form of bad reviews. So, what do you do?

Lash out in anger?

Shrink away in denial?

Get defensive?

Delete your business page on that platform and hope that shuts down the criticism?

This brief guide will teach you what to do with those bad reviews.

 

What to Do with Bad Reviews Online

Bad reviews happen to even the best of law firms. You see it all the time. They have near-perfect 5-star ratings, with the exception of a few bad reviews. While they might not be enough to destroy a law firm’s reputation, the way in which they’re handled could turn prospective clients’ scrutiny to complete distrust in no time at all.

So, here is what you need to do to handle bad reviews properly:

 

1. Read All of Them

There’s no point in trying to ignore bad reviews (or even online reviews altogether). Whether or not you publish a business page for your law firm on Google My Business, Facebook, or Yelp, your clients will find a way to have that page created so they can leave reviews for others to find.

That means you should take ownership of those key review platforms and, then, use an online review tool to seamlessly monitor and manage them all in one place.

2. Always Respond

Clients are leaving reviews online – especially in popular forums – because they want to be heard. If you stay quiet, it’s only going to stoke the fires even more.

Worse, if you leave a comment like this hanging with no reply, you’ll instill fear in prospective clients who use online reviews to vet the qualifications of law firms. Don’t give anyone a reason to think your law firm is unprofessional or uncaring, even if the case has long since closed. All feedback is worth your time.

3. Don’t Take It Personally

When it comes to engaging with bad reviews online, remember that it isn’t personal. There’s no need to make excuses for why one of your lawyers acted the way he or she did or to try to pass the buck for why you lost a case.

The client is upset about the outcome and is looking for a way to lash out. Don’t make the response be about you and do not, under any circumstances, reveal details of their case as a way to justify the complaint.

4. Verify That It’s a Legitimate Review

One of the problems with enabling consumers to leave feedback online is the anonymity of it. If someone held a personal grudge against your law firm, they could do so without having to submit any real proof they were ever a client.

In this example, the reviewer was indeed a client unhappy with their results. However, they decided to immaturely lash out while referencing a workshop they hadn’t taken part in. The firm’s partner did a good job of stepping forward to correct this inaccuracy so that readers of the review would understand the context from which it came.

5. Be Sincere

One of the things you should always do when responding to a bad review is to thank the reviewer for their input. Just remember that it needs to be sincere. If your response sounds canned or like you’re subtly giving them the brush off, you run the risk of increasing their attacks on your firm like this:

It’s also not a good sign when others “Like” the negative feedback they’ve left for you. Someone is clearly listening to the conversation, which means you’re losing business as a result.

6. Stay Calm

Another thing to keep in mind is that you want to keep things civil and never go on the offense. Stay calm, respond succinctly, and try to leave it on a positive note if you can’t work to resolve the issue.

7. Take It in Private

When a bad review hits the Internet, don’t continue the conversation in public. When possible, respond to their review online and try to move them to a phone call.

While it would be great if you could resolve their complaint and get them to change their review to a more positive one, that won’t always be the case. Even if they don’t change their mind, you’ve conducted yourself with decorum which may lessen the damage the review could’ve otherwise done.

8. Learn from Bad Reviews

Often, consumers look to reviews to sniff out common trends in complaints. So the last thing you want to do is receive bad review after bad review that says your lawyers were unresponsive or that your law firm charged exorbitant fees.

Use these bad reviews as a way to learn where your law firm falls short and repair your business accordingly so that no one has any reason to leave another bad review again.

Bad Reviews Are Bad for Business

The world wide web has given consumers a way to air their every thought, complaint, and desire in the public forum. Which means there’s no getting away from the fact that bad reviews abound online.

Online reputation management can be difficult for a law firm, especially when you’re busy tackling cases for current clients. Reach out to Trial Law Digital today and let’s talk about how we can help.

8 Best Online Review Tools for Law Firms

There are a number of reasons why online reviews are crucial for law firms [link to article]. In addition to reviews helping you quickly and effortlessly bolster your reputation online, they improve prospective clients’ ability to choose a law firm that will serve their needs best.

It might seem as though there isn’t much work to do in terms of generating online reviews. But once you start reviewing and managing reviews, you’ll see that there’s much more to it than meets the eye.

That’s because online review management is also about reputation management and relationship management.

Because there is so much that goes into managing online reviews, you don’t want to try to do this on your own. It’ll leave you feeling frustrated as you spend excessive amounts of time hunting down reviews left around the web. Or, worse, discovering that clients haven’t felt inclined to leave any reviews at all.

You need to take ownership of your online review channels and optimize the way they are managed. You can do this with online review tools.

 

8 Best Online Review Tools for Law Firms

Online review tools perform a number of functions. Your goal in choosing one is to find the tool that streamlines as much of the work involved in online review management as possible.

1. BirdEye

Highlights from BirdEye:

• Take control of all your online business listings and create a consistent message for your firm across each platform.
• The second a negative review is left somewhere, you will be notified so you can respond.
• Send review requests by email (or SMS) to clients after their cases have wrapped.
• BirdEye isn’t just an online review tool. It has other tools for reputation management, like social media sharing and search rank monitoring.

 

2. Grade.us

Highlights from Grade.us:

• Receive real-time updates whenever you receive a new online review.
• Create automated review campaigns and send to clients via email, text, or printed cards.
• Share review highlights directly to your website (which helps with SEO) or your social feeds.
• Respond to reviews left on Facebook or Google from your dashboard.

 

3. Law Review

Highlights from Law Review:

• Use this to build a better balance of reviews on the platforms you want feedback left on (e.g. Google, Yelp, Avvo).
• Automate review requests and drive clients to your preferred landing page.
• Monitor your Net Promoter Score to see what all of these reviews and feedback translate to for your law firm.
• Convert the best online reviews into testimonials for your WordPress site.

 

4. Podium

Highlights from Podium:

• Podium provides review request templates you can then text or email to clients.
• Whenever new online reviews post, you’ll be notified right away, giving you a chance to respond in a timely manner.
• Gain insights into keywords that commonly show up in your reviews so you may infer what this says about your firm.
• Compare your online reviews and overall firm reputation with up to five competitors.

 

5. Pozative

Highlights from Pozative:

• It’s free to use.
• Sync your Facebook and Google online review pages to your account and drive clients directly to them with a text message.
• Before Pozative sends them to the review platform, it asks if they were satisfied. If they say “no”, it gives clients a chance to email you directly with the negative feedback instead of posting it online.
• Upload your recent client lists and automate these review requests.

 

6. ReviewPush

Highlights from ReviewPush:

• Receive instant email notifications when new reviews publish. You also have the option to respond to reviews from those emails.
• Use this to keep tabs on how each of your firm’s locations are performing and drill down into what’s working and what’s not.
• If you have more than one person in charge of managing online reviews—like an assistant at each location—grant them custom access to the dashboard.
• ReviewPush scans the web to make sure you have and own an online review page on all key channels.

 

7. ReviewTrackers

Highlights from ReviewTrackers:

• Choose from over 100 online review sources to connect to your ReviewTrackers dashboard.
• Connect with your most satisfied clients and ask them to leave you a review.
• Multi-location law firms can use this to monitor how each brand is doing in terms of client satisfaction.
• ReviewTrackers helps you manage review generation, monitoring, and responses. It’s also a full-scale reputation management platform so you can keep an eye on the competition as well as your individual firm’s performance.

 

8. Synup

Highlights from Synup:

• Includes a free listings and reputation scan to tell you what the current state of your firm’s review channels looks like.
• Synup doesn’t just monitor online reviews. It will also scour social media for mentions of your law firm.
• Use the review response templates to ensure you respond to feedback in a professional manner.
• Not only can you monitor all reviews and mentions from a single dashboard, but you can leave internal notes so you have a record of action taken on them.

 

Summary

By now, you have a good sense for how important online reviews are to your law firm. In addition to helping you win more clients, they also provide a great opportunity to learn more about what your firm is doing well and what it needs to improve upon.

With one of these review tools on your side, you can optimize your online review management efforts while still keeping your focus on running your law firm.

If you’re not feeling confident about managing your firm’s reviews and think an online review tool will only create more work for you, then it might be time to outsource to Trial Law Digital. Contact us today to schedule a quick discovery call.

Law Firm Facebook Ads to Inspire Your Own Paid Marketing Strategy

What began as a means for connecting college students to one another, and later became a way to stay in touch with friends, family, and colleagues, Facebook is now a key element in a business’s marketing strategy. And that includes law firms.

There’s much that can be said about the viability of Facebook as a social media marketing platform for lawyers. There’s even more to say about how law firms have to be prepared to put time and money into it in order for it to work in their favor.

Now, you’re no stranger to the idea of using Facebook ads to connect with prospective clients. You know why they must be part of your marketing strategy and you even know how to use Facebook ads effectively.

Today, we want to show you some real-life examples of law firms that are using Facebook ads to connect with new clients. Each of them plays to their unique strengths and should serve as inspiration as you work on writing and designing your own.

 

11 Examples of Law Firm Facebook Ads to Inspire Your Own

As Facebook says:

Be it Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger, placing your ads in front of prospective clients at the right time and in the right format could drive a significant amount of new business to your law firm.

But, first, you must have ads that grab attention in a meaningful way. This may mean:

• Promoting your law firm’s website and services in a relatable manner.
• Promoting a blog post that’s informative and valuable to your prospective clients.
• Sharing of recent news that strikes at the emotional core of clients and why they’d seek out your legal services in the first place.
• Offering free consultation services.
• And more.

Here are some inspiring examples from around Facebook that we’re particularly fond of (and why):

Arnold & Itkin

Arnold & Itkin is a Houston-based law firm that represents personal injury cases. As such, they promote related messages in their Facebook ads:

At first glance, this may seem totally self-promotional. However, the post itself discusses a specific type of injury and one that’s relevant to those living in the Gulf regions, too.

Video does extremely well on Facebook, so it’s a smart move on Arnold & Itkin’s part to include a playable video right within a sponsored post. Video is much easier and quicker to consume, so this helps appeal to prospects who might not take time to read the message.

One other example from Anold & Itkin that’s particularly rave-worthy is this blog post promotion. There’s a brief description of the accident paired with an eye-catching image and clearly written headline. It’s bound to get lots of attention.

 

Cellino & Barnes

Cellino & Barnes is a personal injury law firm based out of New York state. While this particular sponsored post is generic in nature, it has two things going for it:

Unique imagery sets an otherwise unforgettable ad apart from anything else in a targeted user’s news feed. Pair that with the free consultation offer, and they’ve given them something worth clicking on.

 

Cordell & Cordell

Cordell & Cordell is a domestic litigation firm for men. That highly targeted specialty, in and of itself, gives their marketing strategy an edge. But the ads they share with their prospective male audience are quite unique too:

We have another great example here of video used in Facebook ads. However, take a closer look at the message and link. They’re not promoting a client testimonial or blatantly trying to sell their legal services. This ad promotes an upcoming webinar.

This ad makes it a little more obvious that a webinar is being promoted. But check out the title beside the webinar details: “The 10 Stupidest Mistakes Men Make When Facing Divorce (and How to Avoid Them)”. If that’s not a killer hook, I don’t know what is.

 

Greenberg & Bederman, LLC

Greenberg & Bederman, LLC is a law firm that focuses on personal injury cases. A number of their specialties revolve around harm caused by the medical or pharmaceutical industries, and they’re using Facebook ads to get the message out:

This is a good example of how to offer value without going straight to the sell. The image isn’t necessarily pretty to look at, but it does get the message across:

DANGER.

Here’s another example of how this law firm uses a sense of risk and urgency to pique curiosity and draw attention to their ads:

Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton

The personal injury law firm of Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton boasts the claim that they “are committed to helping individuals from every walk of life stand up for their rights and fight for the justice they deserve.”

Being a law firm with a wide range of specialties falling under personal injury, you might think they’d go the boring route and just promote their page… which they did:

But take a closer look at that message. They’re not just asking for meaningless Likes to drive up the number of followers on Facebook. They promise safety tips in return.

They’ve also run ads that promote a specialty, but do so by promoting a blog post on the site, which gives this particular message more value:

What makes their Facebook advertising efforts even more special is that they aren’t just zeroing in on their areas of specialty. They’ve used ads like this one to reach a particular kind of client:

Because this kind of legal case is so specific, it’s much easier for the firm to target ads to artists, writers, developers, musicians, and others who have had their work stolen.

 

Wrap-Up

With a little bit of creativity, a well-chosen image or video, and a value-driven message, your Facebook ad campaigns can be a highly effective way to gain more clients. But it does take some work and research to get this formula right, which is why you should work with a Facebook Ads professional [link to Facebook Ads page on TLD… when it’s ready] who can handle it all for you. And ensure you maximize results from this investment.

Get in touch with Trial Law Digital today and let us know what we can do for you.

The post Law Firm Facebook Ads to Inspire Your Own Paid Marketing Strategy appeared first on Trial Law Digital.

Facebook Ads — A How-To for Attorneys

You’ve probably wondered at some point if Facebook would be a worthwhile investment in terms of adding it to your social media strategy. The answer to that is “yes”… but it comes with a major caveat.

Facebook is a must-have in an attorney’s social media strategy, but it must be handled with care. Because Facebook regularly changes its algorithms, and it’s more and more growing in favor of those willing to pay to play, it’s important to adjust your strategy to align with Facebook’s “rules”.

Facebook may not officially be a pay-to-play platform, but there’s no way to make any progress with its audience if you don’t. At least to start. Facebook isn’t the only one doing this either. Google has given more of its precious real estate to those willing to pay for ad placements. Amazon has now begun to do the same. This is the marketing landscape nowadays.

That said, just because the system seems to favor those with money to spend, doesn’t mean you have to be a big spender in order to win. Facebook advertising can be both cost-efficient and effective. You just have to do it right.

How to Set up Facebook Ads the Right Way

Facebook advertising isn’t one of those things you can throw money at and it will instantly work in your favor. Some time and consideration should be put into strategizing a Facebook ad campaign.

Here is what you need to know about how to set up Facebook ads the right way:

1. Understand Why It’s So Effective

Facebook ads are unique within the context of marketing. Think about it like this:

This is typically what a Google ad looks like. It’s not too exciting. Just a page title, a brief description, and maybe some extra details regarding the business. It’s effective in reaching more people simply because it sits at the top of search results pages… but is it enough to set your law firm apart from the sea of others?

Now, here is an example of a Facebook ad:

 

Your company name sits at the top of the dedicated block in which your ad is encased. There is a custom-written message that’s short and to the point directly below it. There’s a visual element included, too. This one happens to use a mouth-watering video. And, below that, you have an opportunity to share a compelling call-to-action.

Oh, and targeting an audience with Facebook ads can go much deeper than other platforms, as you might imagine. Facebook gathers a lot of data on its users. Demographics. Geography. Interests. Behaviors. Search history. And more. Reaching prospective clients with ads of real interest to them could greatly improve your chances of success.

2. Create Your First Ad

If you have a Facebook Business page, you are now eligible to start running ads from it. To do this, go to your business page on Facebook and locate the Ad Center tab.

Click on Create a Promotion to view the available options for advertising on Facebook. These include:

• Boosting a post that already exists.
• Promoting your Facebook Business page.
• Promoting a call-to-action on your Business page (like “Message Us” or “Visit Us”).
• Promoting your website.
• Creating a custom ad.

Your goal here isn’t just to get a bunch of eyes on your ad. You want real engagement. People should be compelled to comment on or share the post with others. They should also want to click on the link to find out more about your offer. Learn more about your law firm. Sign up for a free consultation. Submit your questions on Messenger. Follow us for news related to workers’ compensation litigation. And so on.

Whatever sort of post you decide to put money behind, be sure it’s something prospective clients will find value in.

• Choose the right offer.
• Write an accurate, succinct, and engaging message for it.
• Use a custom and eye-catching image or video.
• Decide where you want them to go: stay on Facebook or visit your website?

Then, create it.

3. Focus on Targeting

As I said, there’s a whole lot of data to tap into within Facebook’s network of users. Make sure to put it to work for you as you target the ad.

As you can see, Facebook allows you to drill down based on characteristics such as:

• Gender
• Age
• Location – you can get much more specific than country or state if your firm serves a smaller geographic region

Facebook also lets you use more detailed targeting pertaining to interests, employment, behavior, and so on. Just be careful with this as too narrow of a targeted group will prevent you from achieving positive results with your ad placement. Thankfully, Facebook will tell you when this is likely to happen:

Be practical in your selection here, but also don’t be afraid to branch out a bit too. You know your client base well, but you may learn something new about who they are and what their user profile looks like on Facebook by running ads.

4. Set Your Budget

The final question Facebook asks is about your budget and timeframe. While it might seem like a good idea to run an ad indefinitely (after all, won’t a longer campaign lead to more views?), it’s not—especially if this is your first ad.

Tread lightly in this first go-round with Facebook. Set a small budget to start and run it for a week. Give the ad some time to stretch its legs and monitor it daily to see what sort of impact it’s having. At the end of the campaign, you can assess the results and use them to make future decisions regarding Facebook ad spend.

Wrap-Up

With the right setup, Facebook ads will get you in front of the right audience and will, in turn, help you land more clients. But this requires a lot of work.

Facebook may make the setup of ads seem simple enough, but there’s a lot of research, configuration, tweaking, and analysis that goes into succeeding with Facebook ads. Plus, if your Facebook Business page or WordPress website aren’t ready for the limelight, you’ll need to give them a professional polish before opening your wallet.

Trial Law Digital can help you create a killer Facebook ad campaign and fix up your site in anticipation of it. Learn how now.

The post Facebook Ads — A How-To for Attorneys appeared first on Trial Law Digital.

Best Caching Plugins to Speed Up Your Law Firm Website

When your website takes a while to load, there are a few thoughts that may cross your visitors’ minds:

“Am I even on the right site? Maybe I’ll give it a couple more seconds.”

“What’s taking so long? I only wanted to schedule a consultation with someone.”

“I’m not waiting for this. I’ll contact another law firm.”

According to Kissmetrics research, the longer it takes a web page to load (even just by a second), the more people your law firm website will lose.

Obviously, you want to avoid that outcome at all costs. You want your website to load as quickly as possible, so that potential (and current) clients can get the information they seek right away.

One of the performance optimization tricks you can use to speed up your website is a caching plugin. Below, we’ll talk a little bit about what caching is and give some recommendations on the best caching plugins for your WordPress site.

What Is Caching?

There are a number of ways you can test your site’s page speed and diagnose the underlying problems with it. Google has a free PageSpeed Insights tool you should start with:

After you run your domain name through the tool, Google will present you with a Page Speed (the number of seconds it takes to load the site) and an Optimization score (how much work is required to fix it).

There are a few things to make note of in this assessment:

• Desktop/Mobile: There are two tabs at the top of this assessment. Be sure to review both so you know how the desktop and mobile experiences perform.
• Page Stats: This tells you how many resources (e.g. pages, files, scripts, images, etc.) your server has to round up and send to every visitor that arrives on the site.
• Optimization Suggestions: These are tips on how to speed up your website. Notice how “Leverage browser caching” is included.

As you can see, there are a number of things you can do to get your website speed in good working order. But today we’re focused on caching.

Think about it like this:

The Takeout Order

You go to the counter of your favorite takeout restaurant and order food for the people in your party. This amounts to 7 burgers, 8 fries, 1 salad, 3 ice cream cones, and 6 soft drinks. The kitchen receives your order and starts preparing each of those items from-scratch, one by-one. Not everything is finished being prepared at once, so it takes 3 total trips for the cashier to get your entire order to you at the counter.

This is similar to what happens when someone tries to access your website.

Visitors enter your URL in their browser. This then asks your server to retrieve the website files and bring them to the browser window. Your server assesses the load, aggregates all of your files, scripts, images, and so on. The larger the files and the greater quantity of them, the longer it takes to get them over to the user’s browser. This is why some websites take so long to load.

Back to the takeout order analogy:

Think about what would have happened if the kitchen had been able to anticipate your order (or, at the very least, the general demand for certain food items). With beef patties on the grill, fresh fries cooking in the fryer, and salad ingredients already chopped, the preparation of your order could be done in no time at all, with your food being served to you quickly and freshly in one fell swoop.

This is similar to what caching enables your server to do.

Caching is a process by which your server saves a copy of your website as a single static file. When someone visits your website, and there have been no changes since that copy was created, your server can deliver the static file to the browser window immediately. When changes are made to the site, the cache clears and the process starts all over again.

In general, web page caching significantly lightens the load on your server and gets content to your visitors in no time at all. To say it’s a really handy tool to have for speeding up websites would be an understatement. However, implementation needs to take place at the server and browser level, which means you can’t do it on your own.

What Are the Best Caching Plugins for WordPress?

Because you’ve built your website in WordPress, there’s an easy solution to this: caching plugins. In essence, these plugins take care of creating this cached copy on your behalf. Depending on which one you use, you can also enjoy other performance optimization privileges.

These are the three best caching plugins for WordPress:

W3 Total Cache

Highlights:

• Caches all content: pages, posts, scripts, feeds, search results, and database objects
• Minifies all files and code
• Includes server and browser caching

This is one of the most comprehensive caching plugin.

WP Fastest Cache

Highlights:

• Uses server and browser caching
• Includes other performance optimization tricks like file minification, code combination, and Gzip compression
• More control over which pages are cached and for how long

This caching plugin gives you a greater degree of control over caching.

WP Super Cache

Highlights:

• Offers three options for website caching: simple, expert, and a custom caching mechanism
• Incredibly easy to configure
• It’s made by the parent company of WordPress so it’s well-supported and safe to use

This is the easiest of the best caching plugins to use.

Summary

With one of the best caching plugins installed on your WordPress site, you can enjoy a host of benefits:

• Improved server performance which leaves it free to handle other important tasks
• More visitors as well as engagement with those visitors
• Improved SEO (Google rewards fast sites with higher rankings)

There are, of course, other things to do to keep your WordPress site fully optimized for the user experience as well as for search. If you’re struggling to stay on top of it all, reach out to Trial Law Digital today and let’s see what we can do to help.

The post Best Caching Plugins to Speed Up Your Law Firm Website appeared first on Trial Law Digital.

Why You Should Never Buy a FindLaw Website

You’re likely reading this article because your law firm needs a new website and you’re weighing your options. You need something that looks good, ranks well, and doesn’t cost too much. But you also don’t know if you or your team have the time or skills to handle something like this in-house.

So, you do a search in Google and hear about this law firm website design service from FindLaw.

In general, the company seems like a trustworthy resource for people researching legal matters or looking to hire an attorney. It also has a hub dedicated to legal professionals. It appears that this company knows its stuff when it comes to law. Plus, it’s owned by Thomson Reuters.

Then, you discover that it offers marketing and website design services to law firms. It sounds like a fantastic deal: legal resources and done-for-you marketing by a self-proclaimed “award-winning” team.

Can you trust it? Is this a service worth paying for? Well, you’ve already seen the title of this article, so you know what our answer is:

No, you cannot trust it and, no, it’s not worth paying for.

Buying a FindLaw website or investing in its SEO and marketing services is never a good idea.

You might be thinking that’s just bias since we want to sell you on our website design and marketing services. But you don’t have to take our word for it. There are hundreds of complaints online from former employees and clients—not to mention the plethora of clients who have fled FindLaw and shared their story as they moved over to Trial Law Digital.

So, if you’re currently mulling the decision to buy a FindLaw website, let’s present you with the facts so you can see why we (and many, many others) don’t believe this is a good idea.

What They Want You to Think About a FindLaw Website

According to FindLaw, its lawyer directory and website receives 8 million visitors every month. That number is absolutely nothing to scoff at, which is why so many law firms are probably lured into paying for a FindLaw website that also comes with a companion directory listing.

FindLaw says that it has designed over 17,000 mobile-friendly websites for law firms. Each website is said to be:

• Mobile-friendly
• Custom-fitted to the law firm (note that it doesn’t say “custom-designed”)
• Created by award-winning designers (though no proof of those awards are given)
• Written by experts
• Optimized for search

One additional point that’s made about these websites over and over is the inclusion of click-to-call phone numbers. It’s an odd selling point, but it’s something to take note of as we move on in our discussion regarding FindLaw.

Of course, the FindLaw website is only the tip of the iceberg. FindLaw also sells marketing services—PPC, content marketing, social media, web chat services, client intake forms, and what they refer to as “integrated marketing solutions”.

When you’re looking for a quick, painless, and relatively affordable solution, this might seem perfect. FindLaw has a plethora of resources on law and they seem to be a leading expert on the matter, so they must understand how to build websites and handle marketing for this niche.

Right?

Well, the truth about what you get isn’t quite like the picture it paints.

What Real People Have to Say About FindLaw Websites

Before we break down everything that’s wrong with a FindLaw website, we want you to first hear from real people that have either worked for FindLaw or who have hired the company to build their website.

Let’s start with some employee reviews from GlassDoor:

50% Satisfaction Rate

“Bottom line is the products don’t work a lot of the time. They work great for a few firms but many had issues. Over 50% of my sales resulted in unhappy customers. I left because I could no longer look clients in the eye and tell them to buy.”

Fulfillment Issues

“-More angry clients than happy ones. Dealing with customer satisfaction issues does NOT MAKE YOU MONEY
-Products don’t work well overall
-Overpriced
-Gaining a negative reputation…
-Issues with billing
-Issues with fulfillment (building sites, social media, blogs)…”

Overpriced Services

“Findlaw has an awful reputation among quite a few of its clients, many of whom are overpaying for a poor overall service and looking to cancel. The companies [sic] SEO and Website Design are behind the competition and overpriced for the return most customers will receive over the term of their contract.”

SiteJabber doesn’t give FindLaw as abysmal of a score as some review sites, but still continues the same line of logic when it comes to complaints:

Poor Customer Service

“This is a company that is known for selling products on several year contracts and then leaving the client in the wind. Service is terrible and don’t expect them to do anything with your account once set up. Even if your [sic] spending thousand [sick] of dollars with Findlaw every month, it is not important enough for them to follow through on what they sold to my Firm.”

No Results

“Lots of promises at the beginning and several phone conferences before website is off and running. Then 5 minutes of social media advice and you are on your own. Awful company. Virtually no new cases, and we are competing with our competition within their Findlaw sub directory.

“Worst and most dishonest scam artists I’ve ever dealt with.”

0 Inquiries

“I signed up for a year to the tune of $18,000 on the representation that they would design a ‘state of the art’ website that would ‘drive business’ to my firm. They designed what looked like a pre-packaged, canned site. Pretty much looked like something that sold cleaning supplies. After a year of ‘optimization’, I got NOT ONE inquiry. Not one. Not one phone call. Not one e-mail. Not one client. Not one.”

The High Price of a FindLaw Website

We’d also like to point you to a post in the Law Firm subreddit called, “Findlaw. Worth it?” The question, of course, is whether or not they should talk to the FindLaw representative who keeps calling about their directory and website design services.

One of the most interesting answers comes from Sam Glover, the Editor-in-Chief of Lawyerist.com:

“FindLaw can produce good-quality websites, and can do better-than average SEO work if you are willing to sign a multi-year contract for ~10x the going rate for those services and give up the right to your content.”

While many of the complaints above focus on the various faults they’ve encountered with FindLaw, Glover aptly sums up everything that is wrong with this service by acknowledging that a good website is possible… but that it comes at a steep cost.

In this next section, we’re going to dive a bit deeper into why it’s never worth it to buy a FindLaw website. At any price.

What You Really Need to Know About a FindLaw Website

Look, we get it. You’re busy. You want an expert designer or marketer to name a price, so you can pay them to take care of your law firm website for you. But a FindLaw website is not the solution.

Here are 9 reasons why FindLaw is to be avoided at all costs.

1. It’s Expensive

A FindLaw website is not cheap. In fact, you’re likely to pay more to rent a FindLaw website (more on that below) than you are to buy a website that a professional web design agency custom-builds for you.

Many FindLaw customers who have jumped ship and come to Trial Law Digital have told us they were paying anywhere between $1,400 and $5,000 every month to rent a website.

The true cost of building a website for your law firm? If you use WordPress and do it yourself, it will maybe cost $150 a month (with some upfront costs like a premium WordPress theme and copywriting services). If you pay an agency or designer, upfront costs will be more, but the cost to maintain will remain the same.

2. It’s Temporary

A major difference between a FindLaw website and, say, one you’ve built on your own or through another web design service is the matter of ownership.

Think of it like renting a home. FindLaw says, “Don’t worry. We’ve taken care of building the structure for you. It’s sturdy and well-made. All you have to do now is live in it.”

So, you set up shop within your new FindLaw digs. Your logo and firm name are on the site. The content is personalized with your messaging. And look! There’s beautiful imagery, a boatload of blog content, and SEO already done for you. Might as well kick back and enjoy your law firm’s new digital home.

But what happens when you decide to move from that home? You might be able to take the domain name with you (if you purchased one on your own), but that design and content aren’t going anywhere if you didn’t pay the high price of having a custom-built website made.

This is FindLaw’s ownership clause:

It has been updated in recent years in response to a number of news outlets blowing the whistle on its unfair and unclear ownership terms. That said, there’s still some much to be concerned about. In other words, if you move your website away from FindLaw:

• You lose access to stock photos, call-tracking numbers, live chat modules, and so on.
• You lose access to source code and files used to build your website.
• Your ability to license the website created for you exists while you pay for services with FindLaw.

This is not to mention the fact that trying to move a website from FindLaw’s proprietary platform to any other (e.g. WordPress, Wix, Joomla, etc.) is near-impossible.

So, if you’re not able to commit to this for the long-term, think about the costs you’ll have to deal with down the line to have a completely new site built. Also, consider how important it is to you to have full ownership and control over your site.

3. The Contract Is Lengthy

On a related note, FindLaw’s website services contract is iron-clad and lengthy. And, by lengthy, we’re talking a three-year term, on average.

4. Maintenance Is Difficult

FindLaw websites are notoriously difficult to manage and maintain.

Websites are built on FindLaw’s proprietary and highly antiquated ASP.net content management system framework. When changes are needed, you have to rely on the assistance of FindLaw and, of course, it comes at a price. Even then, getting those changes implemented or getting any support from them at all isn’t a given.

5. There’s No Exclusivity

Once you’re signed up, FindLaw’s representatives are constantly going to hound you to buy more products in order to make your website better. Some will even bully you into buying more with the threat that, if you don’t use it, they’ll sell it to the competitor. It’s this constant worry about the competition that can drive law firms to make bad purchasing decisions as it relates to their website and marketing.

There’s also the fact that FindLaw has no issue working for a high quantity of competing law firms within an area. When designing low-quality, lookalike websites for law firms, this can become especially problematic as all websites end up resembling one another.

6. Many Websites Are Pre-Built

As Lawyerist’s Glover explained, law firms that pay top dollar for a FindLaw website can end up with something custom-built and truly optimized for search. But how many law firms are willing to shell out 10 times the standard rate of a website to do that? For those of you considering the compromise, consider what a pre-built website actually is.

There are two ways FindLaw likely sells these:

The first is by custom-fitting a pre-designed template to a law firm’s website. The template is designed well enough and seems to work on all mobile devices. FindLaw assures the law firm that it’s filled with optimized content, though that it’s probably boilerplate (meaningless) copy, too.

Now, think about how many other law firms are considering this option. If FindLaw’s estimates are correct, how many of those 17,000+ law firms compete within your market and niche? And how many do you think would choose a similar-looking design as the one you’ve opted for?

The second way FindLaw can sell cheaper website designs is by flipping websites they can prove do well in search.

It’s like flipping a house. Basically, they design a generic website for a specific legal niche (e.g. divorce, accident settlements, family law, etc.) It’s optimized for the kinds of search terms people use to find local lawyers (e.g. “Chicago divorce lawyer”). And, because it’s been live for some time, it does well in search rankings… though that doesn’t say anything about conversion rates of visitors to clients (especially since there’s been no real business behind the site!)

They customize the logo and law firm name, add some custom information about lawyers and location, and hand it over to the highest bidder.

These options are risky because it takes away the personalization that’s needed to make a true connection with clients. Also, pre-built sites can lead to issues in search if duplicate content (content copied across a number of sites) is detected by Google.

7. Designs Are Lacking

We had a designer take a look at a dozen websites FindLaw currently powers. Templating aside, we wanted to know what they thought of the results of this expensive website design service.

Here are some of the commonalities found across these websites:

Oversized Headers: The top headers are too big, especially for mobile device users. While having a clickable phone number may be important, a user shouldn’t have to scroll in order to find the actual content.

Overly Long Home Pages: Many home pages are poorly written. Modern design dictates that home pages should be short and to the point. These tend to be mindless brain dumps with too much copy.

Identical Design Elements: Although designs and images differ from site to site, the basic layouts and key elements are the same (even things like live chat look identical). This can seriously hurt brand identity if a direct competitor uses the same service.

Poor Planning: The pages themselves don’t seem to be very well-thought-out. They often contain an excess of content (probably for the purposes of keyword stuffing) and there’s an overwhelming amount of calls-to-action for users to consider.

Outdated Designs: Some of the websites look outdated in design. If templates provided to clients are a few years older, and there’s no one to steer them away from those choices, law firms could unintentionally end up with something that looks like it was designed five years ago.

A website that’s designed for a modern-day audience is a critical part of every business’s SEO strategy. Knowing that this part is lacking, let’s take a look at what else is going on with FindLaw’s SEO tactics.

8. SEO Tactics Are Shady

There was a time in the early ‘00s when it was revealed that FindLaw was utilizing a black hat (bad) SEO tactic known as a link scheme. Basically, it goes like this:

Marketers are aware that Google rewards websites with high-quality internal links and backlinks. This is usually a signal that a website is an authoritative source and one that deserves to rank highly in search. However, many agencies (including FindLaw) took advantage of this and tried to game the system by selling text links in their websites.

It appears that this has since been resolved, but that doesn’t mean FindLaw is using white hat (good) SEO practices now.

Here is what we know about current-day tactics:

• Keyword research for custom websites aren’t great and there’s no strategy done outside the initial call with clients.
• Many of the blog posts written for these websites are poorly composed. They’re too short, have little to no structure, are stuffed full of unrelated or nonsensical keywords, and contain no images.
• Blog posts are almost always lacking compelling stories, too. There’s not much worth reading. It’s more about adding new pages to the site rather than adding value for visitors.

For the most part, attempts to optimize content for search are relatively shallow. While blog posts will contain links to high-authority sources, many of them go directly to FindLaw properties. If anything, SEO tactics on these sites are working to benefit the FindLaw in establishing authority since 17,000+ websites link to it (in the blog as well as in every footer…)

9. Poor Quality of Leads

Here’s the thing: many FindLaw websites will come out looking professionally designed and will rank at the top of search results due to link-building and content generation efforts. However, if the actual quality of content fails to connect with visitors, the site won’t actually be able to do what it needs to do. And that is to get you new clients.

This is ultimately the main failing of FindLaw’s website services. Yes, they’re expensive. Yes, they may do shady things to acquire top rankings in Google. But the worst offender is the fact that these websites do not get law firms any clients.

It doesn’t matter how optimized for search a website is, at the end of the day, the website needs to be optimized for your audience which means accurately reflecting who you are and what makes you different from other law firms. And this is something that FindLaw does not do.

The Bottom Line: Avoid a FindLaw Website at All Costs

Previously, we talked about why you should never let Google set up your AdWords account. While the configuration itself would be fine and it would check off all the necessary boxes to get your pay-per-click campaign running, Google doesn’t have your best interests at heart. It’s the same thing with FindLaw.

Remember: FindLaw is a website that began as a legal resource. Providing law firm website design services is a way to monetize that business model… but it’s, unfortunately, being handled poorly.

You deserve a website that is:

• All yours and the property of no one else
• Affordable
• Easy to manage
• Modernly designed
• Personalized to your law firm
• Ethically and correctly optimized for search
• Effective in converting visitors into clients

We recognize that the cost and time that goes into building a website—not to mention coding knowledge—is intimidating. You want an easy solution, but a FindLaw website is not it. You deserve to own and control your own website, and to not have to be charged an arm and a leg for lackluster results.

If you’d like help getting your law firm website up and running (or you want help moving away from FindLaw), get in touch with us today. We’d be happy to help!

The post Why You Should Never Buy a FindLaw Website appeared first on Trial Law Digital.