Websites for Lawyers, Solicitors & Barristers

Website planning for lawyers

Just having a website is only the start.

  • Why? Because your website can do just as much harm to your practice if it hasn’t been planned and implemented correctly.
  • Since your website often gives potential clients their first impression of your practice, making sure it is designed and built correctly will play a major role in it’s success.
  • From experience we have detailed 5 common mistakes listed below, you should avoid with your existing website or if you are planning for a new site.

Website Design Mistakes For Lawyers

The vast majority of potential clients who visit your website will be looking for specific legal advice or a legal service – they will want to know whether your firm is able to provide these straight away. Time is so important as you only have a few seconds to let them know who you are and how you can help them.

Do not complicate your websites home page with lots of pointless information; doing this will deter potential clients and result in them bouncing back to the search engine and looking somewhere else. Keep things simple and allow visitors to quickly find the legal service they require.

Once you have a potential clients attention and they feel that you may be able to help, they will need to know how to contact you. So, make it easy for them to do so by having a clear calls to actions to get in touch.

The most obvious things which are often overlooked include:

Making sure your telephone number always visible on desktop and mobile devices however far down the page they scroll.

Your telephone number should be click to call on all devices, making it really easy for visitors to call you, especially on a mobile device.

Do not make it hard for your visitor to find your contact page, put a clear button that is always in view to launch a contact form or take them to your contact page.

If you don’t these simple tweaks, they’ll eventually head elsewhere, even if they may need your services. If they go elsewhere, they’re likely to end up with one of your competitors. These could have been your clients with just a few simple fixes.

Overlooking the importance of clearly displaying your legal firms contact information and allowing people to get in touch is vital.

Have you checked this on your current website?

Smartphones and tablets have changed how people browse the internet. It’s a fact. Today, more than 50% of people using to search will be doing so on a mobile device. However, not all website designs work well on a smartphone, and if yours does not, you stand to lose a lot of potential business.

Not only is a website that doesn’t work well on a mobile device difficult and frustrating to use, but it will also reflect poorly on your law firm – and is likely to put your website visitors off. Why? Because having a website that isn’t optimised for both mobile and desktop implies that you don’t care about your users experience.

Your website’s load speed can make or break your website success. Fast load time is vital – if your website loads slowly, it is highly likely that your potential clients won’t even wait around to see what you have to offer.

Back in 2010 Google confirmed that page speed was a ranking factor, so this is not new. Best practice is to try and ensure that your website loads within three seconds. Google spell this out in their video here.

You can test your own websites load time using Google’s page speed tool.

For your existing or a new website when is live, you can’t just forget about it. Legal firms who fail to update their website regularly with helpful and useful up to date information will end up coming across as careless.

Potential clients may even assume that your practice is not up to date and look elsewhere for the legal services they need. Of course, displaying out of date information can cause a whole host of additional problems too.

Make sure your legal website can easily be updated and you do not have to rely on the technical expertise of a web developer.

Do you need a website that gets found? Your mission is to have a website that attracts regular new business clients to your legal practice.

Don’t be fooled, many website companies are just designers. You will end up with a great-looking website but no one will find it. Is this what you want?

Law Firm Website Design That Works

Having a successful law firm website is not as simple as it looks.

A large percentage of law firms have learnt this first-hand, the hard way.

Your website should be a fantastic investment. It should pay for itself over and over again from the clients it generates.

Unfortunately, due to bad planning and strategy by many design agencies, most law firms see their website as just an expense and not an asset.

All websites should include basic search engine optimisation in the price.

Do you want your law firms website to be a profitable investment for your practice?

Make sure your website helps to achieve your objectives not your website designers. This could be attracting new clients to your practice or simply providing information to existing or potential clients wanting your legal expertise.

All websites should adopt defined technology to ensure they are built for a great customer experience including:

  • FAST LOADING
  • EASY NAVIGATION
  • USER FRIENDLY
  • EASY BROWSING

What Should You Included In Your Law Firm Website

Responsive website design allows for a perfect view on any device. It will automatically adjust anything from the font size to picture size, giving any user a great experience. Each view is designed individually to achieve this and not just left to chance.

This means that if required you or your staff can update the written content of the website without breaking the layout. Other options are available, although training may be required.  Or you could purchase a website management package.

Your web developer should set up a Google account on your behalf and install G4 Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager onto to your website. This will enable you to track the amount of visitors and how they found you. This is an essential tool especially when used in conjunction with search engine optimisation techniques.

Many existing websites are still using Google’s Universal Analytics which is being discontinued and replaced by G4 Google Analytics in June 2023. 

Make sure to get your Google Search Console set up. This has various tools included which are used to check that your website is indexed correctly.

It can also show if your website has been blocked or penalised by Google. This can also be used in association with Search Engine Optimisation.

As standard create a sitemap. This is an electronic file which lists all the pages that are on your website. This can be submitted to Google through your search console, helping Google to index your website correctly. This is also used to inform Google of any alterations to your website in the future.

  • Professional Navigation Menus
  • Picture Galleries & Slide Shows
  • Video Embed & Background
  • Media Carousel including Pictures, Videos or Both
  • Testimonial Carousel
  • Accordions & Toggles (you are in a Accordion now)
  • Countdowns
  • Flip Boxes
  • Customised Email forms
  • Blogs
  • Social Media Integration, Including Share Buttons, Social Icons and Feeds
  • E-Commerce & Payment Options (on-line shops)
  • Google Maps To Show Your Office Location
  • Membership Sections and Private Pages (password protected)
  • Booking Widgets
  • Diary Widgets

Even if its not listed most requirements can be accommodated.

Top Website Design Tips For Lawyers

You need to plan exactly what you want a potential customer to do when they visit your website. Its imperative that you understand this as its the first and most important step to making your website a valuable asset to your law firm.

What do you want your website visitors to do?

Here is a list of what we think should be the most obvious:

  • MAKE A TELEPHONE CALL
  • MAKE AN EMAIL ENQUIRY
  • REQUEST A CALL BACK
  • JOIN YOUR MAILING LIST
  • BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
  • ENGAGE WITH YOUR SITE
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What is the main objective of your website, what do you want it to achieve?

Firstly you need to ask yourself if you are just going to use it as a brochure or do you need it to attract new business leads. Even if you just use it as a brochure it still needs to be designed to convert those visiting into clients. These could be referrals from existing clients who are just checking you out. So you still need a good call to action.
  • How do you want your law firm to be portrayed?
  • What is the most important message you would like to get across?
  • What are the most frequently asked questions from your customers?
  • What are your target legal sectors?
  • Are there any particular niche groups you would like to reach?
  • What is the most important part of your practice?
  • Do you have competitors you want to stand out against?
  • What makes your law firm unique?

Understanding the needs of your business will provide you with the tools to create a successful website.

There is a large number of badly designed websites from so-called design agencies, website designers, and digital marketing companies who do not even consider the importance of or the placement of your telephone number into consideration.

Many agencies simply buy a template and adapt it to fit your business image, add a bit of fancy design, and sell it to you for £1000’s when it only cost them £60 to buy. Many of these templates have a header section that does not include the telephone number, or it does but vanishes on a mobile device. It’s unlikely you will even know this, as these companies will not share this fact with you. Have a look at your own website now.

Here are telephone number top tips.

  • Make sure your telephone number is visible at the top of your page on all devices eg. desktops, tablets, and especially mobile phones.
  • Do not hide your telephone number in the footer or simply on your contact page, you do not want potential customers having to hunt for it. They may just give up and move on.
  • Do not use a clickable button instead of showing the actual number.  Showing your number builds trust and shows you have nothing to hide, it will also encourage more calls than a button.
  • Make sure your telephone number is clickable on all devices especially on mobile and tablet. There is no point in any potential callers having to write it down or flip between screens and then go back into their mobile keypad to type and dial you.
  • Why should your number be clickable on a desktop? Business owners are starting to use software that allows them to call you straight from their PC using VoIP systems and headsets now.


If this rings a bell with you then maybe you should consider a change of provider and good hard look at your website, if this simple fact is not dealt with what else has the company who built your website not done.


Ask yourself this question is your website actually getting found, and if it is are you getting regular leads from it?

There are many different screen sizes, such as desktops, tablets, mobile and widescreen large monitors. Modern websites are built with different breakpoints, meaning the website layout will change depending on the screen size. It’s also important to check this out yourself as you may not be aware of how bad your website looks on mobile for example.

This is so important as Google now ranks websites on a mobile-first basis, even if most views are on a desktop.

This happens a lot as many website designers do not consider or have the knowledge to research the important keywords and phrases to use on your site. All websites should include basic technical SEO to even have a chance. 

Google needs to understand what each of your pages is about to index it correctly.

Often websites are not ranking for the services law firms provide. You should know what keywords and phases your law firm ranks for on Google?

So often websites use words like we are, we can and we have, etc., and do not think of the customer. For example “We are local lawyers offering a superior service” could be replaced with “Are you looking for a local law firm with transparent pricing?“

Is your website getting lots of traffic?
Have you or are you paying for Marketing, SEO, Google Ads, FaceBook Ads?

That’s great, but are you getting conversions?

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the art of increasing your conversion rate by making more visitors take action.

Are you looking for a digital marketing company, with experience in offering both search engine optimisation and user experience-based website design optimised for customer conversions?

Get in touch maybe we can help.

User Experience Design Tips For Law Firms

Website design coupled with a great user experience is essential.
  • Give website visitors a reason to scroll down your page.
  • Tell them what you do and how this makes their life better.
  • And then tell them what to do to get started.
  • Use customer focused short benefit statements.
  • Promise a transformation if they use you.
  • Use sub headings to list your benefits.
  • Build authority by using numbers in headlines.
  • Make sure your telephone number is clickable on smart phones.
  • Divide your website into sections based on your products or services.
  • Keep your email forms short. No one likes filling in forms.
  • Give them something for FREE, some FREE TIPS like these.
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