You are a lawyer looking to build an amazing website for your law firm?
Perhaps your law firm already has a website and you are looking to modernize it or build a new one?
No matter the reason, how can you build a great website for law firms?
In this article, we will look at a step-by-step approach in building a great website for your law firm by looking at your domain name selection, web hosting services, installation of a website building platform all the way to publishing great content. This step-by-step approach will help pretty much anyone build their own law firm’s website from scratch!
Our article is divided in the following sections:
- Choose a good domain name
- Sign up for web hosting
- Install a good website building platform to build your site
- Make your website design looks professional
- Create the essential pages for your law firm website website
- Publish your website
- Create great content for your user
- Build great navigation menus
- Building a great website for law firms takeaways
Let’s get started…
1- Choose a good domain name
The first thing you need to think about when you are looking to build the best website for your law firm is your domain name.
Your domain name can be a potential cue as to who you are and what you offer.
What is a domain name?
The domain name is the address that a user will type in a browser to reach your site.
For example, www.google.com is the domain name for Google’s search engine. This is what you will type in your browser to access Google’s search site.
Domain names can have a generic extension like a .com, net. or .org if you are looking to attract visitors from around the world.
You can also have a more localized domain extension like .ca (Canada), .au (Australia) or .nz (New Zealand).
If your law firm has a registered brand name or trademark, then your domain should be the name of your law firm registered brand or trademark.
How much will a domain name cost?
A domain name can cost you as low as $10 or even thousands of dollars depending on what you are looking for.
In some cases, the domain name that you are interested in will be immediately available for purchase.
In some other cases, someone has already purchased your desired domain name but has put it up for auction willing to sell for the right price.
If you see that your domain host offers you the possibility to bid on a domain name that is already taken, you can consider buying the domain name this way as well.
You should consider this option only when that domain name is like the only domain name that you are willing to have.
There are billions of domain names available for the taken, with some imagination and creativity, you could find one that is suitable for you.
Finally, there are premium domain names that sell for thousands of dollars as they contain highly valuable keywords.
Buying premium domain names can be quite interesting but you will need to spend a significant amount of money to buy it, hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Do your research and see what domain name suits your law firm needs and purchase it.
Don’t over think this process.
With the right online marketing strategy, search engine optimization and law firm SEO, you can develop a great website and attract a lot of traffic with whatever domain name you are comfortable with.
Where do I purchase a domain name?
There are plenty of domain name hosting companies out there such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, Amazon or other.
It would be a good exercise to look up different domain name hosting companies and compare their prices for purchasing your desired domain name.
Make sure you are dealing with an established domain hosting company so you can benefit from good support services in case you need their help in the future.
2- Sign up for web hosting
The second step for building a great law firm website is to find a web hosting company offering you web hosting services.
Through a web hosting services company, you will be able to make your website available to the world.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting is quite simple.
You are essentially renting space on a secure server managed by a web hosting company where you upload all your website files, images, content, code and store your database.
The web hosting company will make sure that your website server remains secure at all time and is up and running pretty much all the time.
You want your website to be accessible 24 hours a day, every day. That’s what the web hosting company will commit to deliver to you. An uptime guarantee.
The web hosting company will also provide you with a dashboard or panel where you can access all the features and functionalities offered to you through the server so you can manage your website server.
What services are included as part of web hosting services?
Great web hosting companies will offer many services such as:
- Dashboard for you to manage your server and the backend of your website
- A free SSL security certificate where all communication between the user’s computer and your website is encrypted
- Email management services for you to create and manage emails
- Unlimited bandwidth should you have a lot of traffic to your site
- Customer support and chat services
How much will web hosting cost?
Depending on the web hosting company that you will choose, your web hosting costs should be anywhere between $10 per month up to $30 a month.
Your actual web hosting cost will depend on several factors.
Are you taking an entire server for yourself or will you share one server with others in a secure way?
Are you taking a small plan for a small website or will you have thousands or millions of visitors and therefore you’ll need enhanced support and functionalities.
Will you have a transactional website where you will have an online shopping cart and so on.
To start your law firm’s website, you’ll probably be paying something around $10 per month. More than that may not be necessary at first.
Who offers web hosting services?
There are many companies offering good web hosting services such as HostGater, BlueHost, HostPapa among others.
Compare different web hosting companies to get the best value.
To start a website, you don’t need to find something really sophisticated. Start with a base plan and move up.
Find the web hosting company that suits you and move to the next step.
3- Install a good website building platform to build your site
Once you’ve purchased your web hosting service, you should first install a website building platform for actually building your website.
What is a website building platform?
A website building platform or content management system (CMS) is a program or application that facilitates your website development.
One of the most widely used website building platforms is WordPress and you will not go wrong by using WordPress for your website.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system allowing you to build and maintain a website.
WordPress comes with lots of add-ons and plugins with which you can enhance your website features and functionalities.
Over 33% of the top 10 million websites of the world are built on a WordPress planform. That’s quite impressive!
So make sure you use it!
WordPress comes with many plugins and extensions, free or paid, giving you endless possibilities to build your law firm website.
How to install WordPress?
The major web hosting companies allow you to easily install WordPress on your server.
When you access your web hosting dashboard, you will typically find a WordPress installer or even a one-click installation of WordPress.
Once your WordPress is installed, you are now ready to build your amazing law firm website!!
4- Make your website design looks professional
Building an amazing website will strongly depend on how professional looking your website is.
Is your website look and feel professional?
When a user comes to your website, through the look and feel of your website, you project an image and credibility that will entice a user to stay on your site or leave.
How to design a great website?
Luckly, you do not have to design everything from scratch when building a website for your law firm.
You can purchase a website theme!
Using a website theme is a much cheaper and greater alternative than having a web developer develop a custom website for you.
What is a website theme?
A website theme is an already built template that you buy for a very affordable price and use it as the foundation for your website’s design architecture.
Website themes come with a unique look and feel, font size, font types, colors and design.
A website theme comes with a unique design and aesthetics giving your website a unique personality right out-of-the-box.
How to purchase a website theme?
You can buy a theme online through many vendors.
You can look at ThemeForest for an amazing selection of themes that you can buy from them.
How much does a theme cost?
You can buy great themes between $30 and $100.
When you think about it, for such a price, you are getting a lot of value as the website comes with the entire design and foundation.
Upload the theme in WordPress
Once you’ve purchased a theme from an online theme vendor like ThemeForest, you must then upload your theme into your WordPress.
WordPress comes with built-in functionalities allowing you to easily import a theme so you can immediately start working on it.
Download and install the theme in your WordPress using your WordPress admin panel.
Customize your theme to reflect your law firm’s unique identity
Once your theme is installed in WordPress, you are ready to play around with it and customize it to your liking.
Add plugins, add-ons and extensions.
Your theme will come with its own administration panel where you can tweak and customize theme elements such as fonts, colors, layouts and design.
This is where you can have a lot of fun customizing the website theme to truly reflect your unique law firm’s identity, brand and persona.
Enjoy this process!!
Design a nice and professional logo
To make your website is truly professional, you’ll need a nice logo!
If your law firm already has a logo, then all you have to do is to add your law firm’s logo to your website.
If your law firm does not have a logo, you should make sure you have someone design one for you.
Your logo should convey a message, feeling or commitment.
Make sure you get yourself a nice custom-designed logo, this will stick with you for the long-term.
This is another super fun step in building a website for a law firm!!
5- Create the essential pages for your law firm website website
So far, you’ve done an amazing job.
You’ve got a powerful domain name, you got your amazing web hosting services, you designed an amazing looking website, now you need to create the best content ever for your website.
What pages should a law firm website have at a minimum?
Your law firm’s website should have some key pages for you to be successful.
Make sure you have:
- A Homepage
- An “About Us” page
- A “Contact Us” page
- A “Services” page
Without these four types of pages, your website will be fundamentally incomplete.
These pages will ensure that your website user learns about you, learns about your services and knows how to contact you.
What should be put on the Homepage?
Your home page should provide your user with a comprehensive overview of your entire law firm, what it’s about and what it does.
The homepage should be considered as the main hub leading a user to the entire content of your website through links and navigation menus.
What should be put on the About Us page?
The About Us should be a nice and compelling description of who you are, your law firm’s history, mission, values.
This is the page where you connect with your user and create a personal rapport with them.
Make your About Us page introduces you well.
What should be put on the Contact Us page?
The Contact Us page is simple, you should provide your user with the different channels they can use to get in touch with you.
Contact form, telephone number, toll-free number, fax, email, mailing address, office address, you name it.
Make sure your website user can easily figure out how to reach you.
What should be put on the Services page?
Then you have your Services page where you will describe the legal services that your law firm offers.
Be very clear about your law firm’s unique value-proposition.
What does your law firm do and how can you help your website user or client?
What are your legal service offerings, areas of practice and special areas of practice?
Write about your services in simple and easy to understand language. You are not writing a legal process, make sure the language you use is simple English!!
6- Publish your website
Now that you have carefully created the basic pages for your website, you are ready to publish your website and go live.
Publishing your website is essentially making your website available to the world!
After your website is published, you can leverage your website address in your marketing material, advertisements in print or online.
Your website is now accessible to the world.
7- Create great content for your user
Your website is accessible but how do you get visitors to come to your site? What should you do?
There are currently over 300 million websites in the world, so having a published website does not mean that people are going to find you.
In order to help get your website tracked and found by people, you will need to write great content and help your users with useful information.
Make sure that you put out FAQ’s or legal content, answer common questions or provide general guidance.
When people search the web, they are usually looking to find an answer to their question or solve a problem they have.
Put up content on your website that will help with that.
Answer people’s questions in your line of expertise and help them solve a problem.
With great content, search engines will more and more present your website as a relevant website to answer a user’s query.
Publish great content and publish regularly!
Check out our article on your law firm’s SEO strategy if you want to get better ranked in Google.
8- Build great navigation menus
With time, you will have more and more content on your website. Make sure that your visitor can easily navigate your entire website.
If your user can easily navigate your website to find relevant and useful information, signals will be sent to search engines that your website is appreciated by users.
They will give you a search engine rankings boost as they’ll recognize that your website is valuable to the users.
Having a great navigation bar on your website with simple and descriptive navigation tabs is very important.
As users navigate different pages of your website, make sure they can easily go back to where they were or find your key basic pages like Homepage, Services page, About Us and Contact Us.
9- Building a great website for law firms takeaways
There you have it.
A step-by-step description of the tasks you need to accomplish if you wonder how to build an awesome website for your law firm.
Having a professional looking and amazing website is a must for lawyers.
Your website visitors will judge your legal credibility based on the design and content of your website.
Now you know how to build the website for your law firm, go ahead and give it a try.
Did you build a law firm website before? What was your experience? We would love to hear your comments and get your feedback. Drop us a comment!
