Law firm website redesigns can be a challenge, here are a few tips to make your task easier.
In this four part guide we at Web explore some of the challenges facing a Law firm website redesign. We will help you with online strategy, emotional engagement, simple usability testing and how to measure your success with Google Analytics.
Part 1 of 4 Creating Persona, Tasks and Content.
First of all a few key points to remember, we know your users will be visiting your new website with a task in mind and don’t want to be made to think. Changing the corporate wallpaper will make a place feel less familiar and it takes visitors time to adjust when faced with a new website if it’s not targeted at them.
So where should you start?
Here are a few essential steps to get you started;
1. You should ask your customers and compare results with your Analytics.
To ensure high response rates and avoid misleading survey results, keep your survey short and ensure that your questions are well written and easy to answer. Then look back at your analytics and base everything on empirical evidence of what users do on your website – this includes both desktop and mobile. By finding out exactly what your customers want from your new website will remove internal opinion and for that matter guess work.
2. If you haven’t already done so create profiles of your customers or personas.
The reason we do this is if you know who they are we can also understand what tasks they want to perform. They don’t have to be 100% accurate and each persona can represent a customer group. The research and preparation done in this step sets the stage for the entire project and will be the foundation on which the structure and design is based on.
3. Understand the tasks your customers want to perform on your website.
Remember your persona groups will be visiting your website with a task in mind, so make it easy for them to do what they want to do. Create your website structure around the tasks they wish to perform.
To help you, create three tasks and then try completing them on your competitor websites. For example a customer is looking to make a property purchase as an investment – are investment properties clearly labelled on your website? What information would that persona need to make an enquiry and what other services could you upsell?
4. Create specific content for each journey or task
Once you understand what tasks your persona want to perform on your new website - make it easy for them by giving them all the content they need to make an informed decision. Then create a list of related services and upsell, these can be added at the end of a transaction or goal. When a customer gets to the “business end” of a task you may also want to consider a live chat application.
In part 2 of 4 we will take you through Emotional Engagement.