How Mobile Website Experience Impacts Law Firm Leads

A poor mobile website experience can have a negative impact on law firm leads by causing clients to quickly move away from the hard-to-navigate site. When people are searching for legal help, they are often in stressful situations that cause them to prefer instant answers and simple ways to take action. 

Dealing with slow-loading pages and other mobile website challenges is often too much for a prospective client to have patience for at the time. If a competitor has a website that they easily access on their mobile device, then your law firm could be losing clients to them. Paying attention to the most common ways mobile website experiences impact law firm leads helps your company make the best decisions for your law firm marketing plans. 

Consider How Mobile-Friendly Websites Shape First Impressions 

With more people using mobile searches today, your law firm can reasonably expect that this might be the first point of contact with potential clients. As you likely know, first impressions are a major factor in whether or not a person feels safe trusting your firm to handle their case. If a prospective client discovers an outdated or difficult-to-use website, then they might view it as a reflection of how your firm’s attorneys conduct business. 

Since the legal field is always changing, prospective clients prefer firms that demonstrate a desire to stay current. Making sure that your firm’s website has good speed, a responsive design and intuitive navigation on mobile devices gives the impression that the lawyers care about quality and establishing an up-to-date stance in every area of their legal practice. 

Mobile-friendly websites also serve some practical purposes regarding making a strong first impression. For example, making key information such as your firm’s practice areas, location, lawyer credentials and contact details easy to find means that prospective clients can make the next step while they have a positive impression in mind. Alternatively, making it unclear how they should follow up could lead someone to falsely believe that your firm isn’t interested in taking on new clients. 

Understand How Page Speed and Overall Performance Impact Lead Conversions 

Law firm marketing teams look at high bounce rates as likely missed conversion opportunities. Slow-loading pages are one of the biggest causes of people quickly moving away from a website. Mobile users tend to expect pages to load quickly, since they are often conducting their searches in small pockets of time that they have available. When someone is searching for legal information, the sense of urgency is often higher compared to a person who is simply doing some pre-holiday shopping. 

Technical factors are typically behind website performance issues that are easily correctable by working with professionals who know how to optimize for mobile users. Removing overly large images, excessive scripts and other poorly optimized elements of a website can dramatically reduce page load times to improve the user experience. 

Once you reduce frustration for prospective clients, you can begin looking forward to more completed forms and lower bounce rates. Making it easy to access essential information that clients need to make informed decisions can also generate more phone calls and requests for consultations. Since many of the changes a website needs to be mobile-friendly impact the final stages of the customer journey, law firms often find that seeing results happens quickly. For instance, simply speeding up the page load for a contact request form can lead to higher conversion rates within hours or days. 

Improve Local Search Visibility and Lead Quality With Better Mobile Experiences 

The majority of people who conduct legal searches are looking for local firms that can manage their cases, especially when they are browsing on mobile devices. When someone searches for a lawyer in their area, you want to make sure that your firm is at the top of the search results list. Mobile-friendly websites are also easier for search engines to browse, which allows them to identify essential information that they can use in the results listings and maps. 

Mobile-friendly landing pages are faster to load for search engines that might only spend fractions of a second searching for information before they move on. When you update the law firm’s website, you’ll want to make sure that the business information is consistent across all of the pages. Additionally, you’ll need to ensure that all pages have updated information for any lawyers who have recently joined the firm or new locations. 

Once a mobile-friendly website advances to the top of search lists and is included in answer boxes, visitors are more likely to trust the information they find. Using tracking tools and metrics can help your law firm evaluate the website’s performance to identify where the changes you make work the best, especially once more visitors begin landing on the pages. 

Generate More Quality Leads With Positive Mobile Website Experiences 

Having a professional website design helps to reinforce your law firm’s credibility. Including clear, informational attorney profiles can help anxious clients feel confident in your firm’s professionalism. Adding case results and other statistical information where it is appropriate can further help clients learn more about how your firm can have an impact on the success of their cases. 

Since mobile users may be conducting their searches while they are doing other activities, it also helps to minimize friction between them deciding to reach out and actually performing the steps necessary to make a call or submit a form. Creating obvious calls to action with easy-to-click buttons and links that navigate to fast-loading pages helps turn quality leads into conversions. 

Mobile website design involves more than just making landing pages look pretty. Instead, you’ll need to carefully consider how each element can have a dramatic impact on the leads the website helps to generate. 

Focusing on website usability and performance helps to establish trust that goes beyond simply impressing visitors by also improving search visibility that could attract more local clients. As a law firm, take a few moments to evaluate the website from the perspective of a prospective client. If you notice hangups from slow-loading pages, missing call-to-action buttons and other issues, then focusing on improving the user experience could be all it takes to see more leads turning into established clients. For more information on how to attract more clients, speaking with a digital marketing agency like GAVL that works with law firms and only law firms may be a good idea.