Little things can make a big difference. As marketers, we all know this to be true for anything we produce that our clients and prospects will see or touch. We also all know that standards and expectations change over time, especially on the web, where technology and innovation produce sweeping changes in the standards of style and function over short periods of time.
To help you keep up with the change, here are 5 great ideas used on 3 different law firm websites. Each concept is the result careful consideration to ensure simple and usable experiences for website visitors, and to improve website traffic, stickiness, and conversion.
Widgets
Widgets are graphical call-outs on a website that point to featured content. Featured content could be upcoming events, new publications or alerts, press releases, or anything else a firm might want to direct a visitor's attention to. Widgets are used to grab the attention of the visitor in a way that standard text links don't. Widgets are 2-10 times more likely to be clicked on than standard text links in the same area of the page.
Cooley Godward uses widgets throughout their website (www.Cooley.com) to feature important, timely content.
Result: For the most important or timely content, Widgets attract the attention of visitors much more than text links and receive more click-though traffic.
Suggested Content
Hey! Your visitors are telling you all sorts of things about who they are and what they want. Listen to them. They search for specific words, click various links, and read specific pages of your website. Everything they do can be examined in order to serve them better.
Faegre & Benson's website (www.Faegre.com) can suggest content to each visitor based on their interests. If a visitor reads an article about "I-9 Compliance", Faegre.com can also suggest other articles about the same topic. It does this at the end of an article, as the visitor scrolls down the page, in a small pop-out.
This simple feature helps visitors find information relative to their search, and better demonstrates the firm's experience across a variety of topics. The feature is especially good at keeping the attention of visitors who arrive via web searches.
Result: Visitors will read more Faegre articles, and stay on the website longer.
Instant search
Most of us have seen and use Google's new instant search daily. Type into Google and results begin appearing immediately. Nice. But there is more than one way to use instant search, and a few firms are doing so.
Preti Flaherty's website (www.Preti.com) uses instant search in a few places. Most notably, their attorney search enables visitors to see instant search results by area, industry, keyword search, etc.
Result: Visitors find attorneys faster, and have a better overall experience using the website.
Simple Subscription Forms
Overall, law firms fail when it comes to online subscription. Few visitors sign up for publications and alerts on law firm websites, for a variety of reasons. The biggest problem is the subscription form itself.
Most firms ask for a great deal of information on their subscription forms. The result is an unfriendly wall of form fields that intimidates visitors and causes most to drop out of the process altogether. This means losing many would-be subscribers and potential business opportunities.
To solve this problem, Preti Flaherty opted to use a simplified form based on the concept of Gradual Engagement. Gradual engagement is what it sounds like – engaging the user and coaxing them into a process gradually, in simple and easy-to-follow steps.
The Preti.com subscription process is presented in 3 parts, in a step-by-step process: 1) ask for email address, 2) ask what publications they user wants to receive, and 3) confirm the subscription.
Subscription Screen 1
Subscription Screen 2
Subscription Screen 3
Result: More website visitors begin the subscription process, and more complete the process in its entirety.
Mega Menus
Sometimes a good idea just keeps getting better. Pull-down navigation menus are standard fare on many websites these days because they provide a useful function. Mega Menus are a much improved version of the older pull-down menu.
Mega Menus take advantage of today's larger screen sizes to provide more information within the navigation itself, helping visitors to arrive at the content they are looking for with greater ease. Mega Menus are large enough to accommodate the use of text links and supporting images within the navigation.
Preti Flaherty uses Mega Menus to include graphics and text together in their navigation.
Preti.com also incorporates Instant Search into its Mega Menus. In this case an instant attorney search is included in the pull-down Mega Menus - an excellent, very useful combination of new web features.
Result: Visitors find information faster, more easily.