Building Your Law Firm’s Website: Do it Yourself vs. Local Designer vs. Legal Marketing Agency Whether you are just starting up a firm or have been running one for awhile, your firm needs a web presence. Today, when a new referral gets your business card, chances are they will do a bit of due diligence on your firm. They will try to look you up online. They will want to see if there are any red flags (e.g. Any Ripoff Report pages or negative-trending reviews). After all, hiring a lawyer is not usually cheap. And any new client will want to do at least as much due diligence as they’d do when picking a restaurant. So, having a professional web presence – one that highlights your experience and ability – is important. If your firm has been running for years without a site, building a website is many years past-due. Not having a website for your firm is suspicious to new referrals. Why doesn’t this firm have a website? One lawyer mentioned to me awhile back that he needed a website because, “A client was referred to my firm. But they never reached out to us. I’m pretty sure it was because we didn’t have a website and they couldn’t find us online.” So, when building your site there are a few options of who to work with. You can build your site yourself with a do-it-yourself builder like Squarespace, Wix, or with a Wordpress template. Or, you can hire a local web designer in your area. Or, you could hire a specialty legal-focused internet marketing agency. What are the pros and cons of each? Let’s dive in. Do-It-Yourself Website Builders Do-it-yourself (aka D-I-Y) website builders are a very economical option for law firms. Platforms like Squarespace and Wix and Wordpress offer pre-made templates and themes to help get you going. Pro: “Cost” They are the generally least expensive option in terms of hard upfront cost. Instead of paying a designer to build the site for you, you do it yourself. The biggest benefit is that you save money. If you can put together a good-looking site yourself, relatively quickly, that makes your firm look good, then that’s awesome. But, there are drawbacks. Con: Actual Cost I put cost in quotation marks as a “pro” item for a reason. I’ve seen this often – what you think you’re saving in cost by not hiring a designer is still a significant time investment. If you have ever built a website before, you know it can take hours upon hours to design the perfect layout that works with your content. The big opportunity cost here for lawyers is time that could be spent working / billing on client matters. An hour spent working on a website that could otherwise be spent working on client matters or networking is most often a net negative. So, while you may save hundreds to thousands of dollars on designers’ fees, eating up your time loses your firm potential revenue. Con: Templates are Not One-Size-Fits-All Many website templates look great in the sample model. SkipTrak skip hire software manages bookings and tracks skips at the click of a mouse. SkipTrak has now developed into the leading skip hire software. Drag and Drop Website Builder. Change fonts, colors, text and images without writing any code using our drag and drop interface. Design your subscription box website without hiring a developer! Cratejoy Designer. Designed for Subscriptions. Other themes are optimized for blogs or general ecommerce. Cratejoy themes. In the sample, their demo website has a ton of content and great pictures. Everything looks perfectly in place. Then, you get the template, and find that your text and pictures just don’t look as good in the pre-made template layout. So, you move some things around, and then the site has an awkward look to it. This happened to me with one of the first websites I ever built. The template looked great, but it didn’t look great with the content I had. The template was meant for three columns of content, but I only had enough content to fill two columns, and the site consequently had an “unfinished” look to it. Trying to squeeze what content you have into pre-existing templates and layouts can be an exercise that results in a finished Frankenstein-looking website project that has everything looking out-of-place. Con: You’re not a Web Designer If I ever need a personal injury or criminal defense lawyer, I will hire a lawyer. Though I am a licensed attorney, I would never try to do the lawyers’ work because I know there are people who are more skilled and have experience. Yet some lawyers try to design their own sites to save on cost. If you have some knowledge of graphic design or coding HTML, CSS, or PHP you can better customize your site. That’s great and all, but, most lawyers are not double-threat lawyer/designers. Many firms have come to us at after building their own site. Those site-builders were the cheap option at the time, but over time it became clear that the firm needed a serious web presence that stood up well against the rest of the legal community. Con: Your Site is Down – Now What? There is a famous commercial for an accounting firm a few years old. In the ad, a couple receives a letter that they are being audited by the IRS. The wife brings her husband their tax software box and says, “What are we going to do now? Let’s ask the box.” Similarly, what does your firm do if there are issues with your website? If it goes down, or needs to have plugins updated to keep it secure, who do you turn to? While many D-I-Y platforms have tech support, they’re often incredibly frustrating to deal with. Or, the support provided is minimal. We have worked with a few firms that were previously using GoDaddy hosting, but found that GoDaddy’s support was not all that helpful with some of the more technical aspects of their website. Do-It-Yourself vs. Hiring Any Web Designer Here’s a real quick sidebar. Compared to a do-it-yourself builder, hiring any web designer is going to have pros and cons. Before we dive into “local vs. Legal” developers, I wanted to take a second to talk pros and cons of hiring a designer over doing it yourself. Pro: Saving Time Having someone build the site for you saves time that you would otherwise have to spend doing the work yourself. And chances are, the site gets launched quicker than if you were to design it on your own. I know some lawyers who have taken months to over a year working on building their website as a side-project. Instead of it being a side-project, it’s the main project for a web designer. Pro: It’ll Be Better More likely than not, the web designer is going to put something together that looks much better than what you would have been able to on your own. Just like you would most likely draft a will or defend them in court better than they would on their own. Since web design is what they do, they’ll probably do a better job. Con: Cost Web designers don’t work for free, unfortunately. Though we may love the work we do, we still have bills to pay. Okay – now that we’ve touched upon this, let’s talk more about local designers and legal-focused designers. Local Web Designers Many firms local hire web designers that are in the firm’s city through referrals, colleagues, or networking groups. These web design shops often work with all types of small businesses, ranging from restaurants to professionals to caterers to salons to spas, and more. Their pitch is typically, “Hire us because we’re local, physically accessible, and we know your market.” One thing that local designers have over other designers is that they are there for the pitch in-person. A sales pitch is generally much more compelling in-person than over the phone. So, local designers can say how they know your city and may have a reference of a person you know. With that kind of reference, it seems like this would be the right fit for your firm. But, there are a few pros and cons to working with a local designer. Let’s see what they are. Pro: Face Time That initial meeting where you brainstorm what your website is going to look like can be an exciting experience. You’ll want to have your input and make sure the designer hears what you’re going for. And, if something goes wrong, you might like the idea that you know where they live and you can hunt them down. Pro: A Local Reference If you are hiring a local designer, it’s probably because you know someone who used them in the past. A local reference is comforting in that you do not feel like you are working with a complete stranger. A reference from someone you know means you can hold them accountable if it doesn’t work out. Though, not sure if that would make you feel better if you are unhappy with how the project turns out. Pro/Con: Cost Sometimes, local developers can be a relatively inexpensive option. Some small shops can charge $500 for a website based on a template they make tweaks to. Other small shops charge $8,000 as a starting point. It varies from shop to shop to be sure. Con: Relevant Experience If you hire a local web designer, they probably do not just do lawyer marketing. They probably work with all types of small businesses. But building a website to appeal to a lawyer’s target audience is nothing like a restaurant or even a CPA firm. Lawyer websites need to appeal to potential clients and colleagues with unique needs. And, building a search optimization or online advertising campaign requires specific knowledge of the types of clients you’re trying to attract. Someone doing their first lawyer website, as opposed to their hundredth, simply will not have as much success in a marketing campaign because that local developer would be figuring out things as they go. They would be getting data and learning what works and doesn’t work, compared with an agency that has done this exact type of campaign before. While a local designer may “know” your market in terms of area town names, that is not a significant advantage over any agency that knows how to market a law firm. An agency that can market a firm in Atlanta, Georgia can market a firm in Sacramento, California. Your website must comply with your state’s ethics rules. Does your web designer know the ethics rules? Does your web designer know that, if you are in Texas, your website needs approval from the lawyer ad board? Does your web designer know that, if you are in New York, your website needs an “Attorney Advertising” disclaimer? While you are ultimately responsible for the content on your website, it helps to work with someone who knows what you can and cannot say on your firm’s website. Legal Marketing Agencies Last one in the list is the legal marketing agency. Legal marketing agencies are web design shops that specifically focus on law firms. Just like your firm may have a main practice area in estate planning or criminal defense, these agencies just do marketing for lawyers because they have specific expertise. Working with a legal marketing agency has some pros and cons though. Pro: Relevant Experience A legal marketing agency knows how to build a law firm website. They know what types of designs appeal to your colleagues, referrals, current clients, and potential clients. If they are providing content for your site, hopefully they also have in place a content writing team with legal writing experience. Pro: Ethics They know how to make sure your site complies with ethics rules. Legal marketing agencies know what you can and can’t say on your website. Some of us, [insert self-promotion here]. Pro: Results If they are running a marketing campaign for the website, they should be taking advantage of the experience they have from previous law firm marketing campaigns to help your firm get better results. With an advertising campaign, for example, a legal marketing agency should have data from past and current campaigns know what types of ads, keywords, and landing page layouts are more likely to generate new business. Con: Cost Working with a legal marketing agency is always going to be more expensive than a do-it-yourself option. Sometimes, legal marketing agencies are more expensive than local design shops as well. Legal marketing agencies are charging for their experience. If all they do is law firm websites and marketing, they should be pretty good at what they do. They won’t waste your time asking you rudimentary questions about your practice, because they’ve probably built sites and campaigns for similar practices. Conclusion Hopefully this breakdown helps you better evaluate the options when building your law firm’s website. If you have any questions about different D-I-Y platforms or marketing agencies, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
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