The internet has drastically changed client marketing for law firms across the country. No longer will simply a good radio or yellow page advertisement suffice. The prospective client is now empowered to research a large number of firms rapidly and is able to investigate the lawyers within the firm before making first contact. With this said, an effective website and cohesive interactive strategy is a must.
Not only has the internet empowered the prospective client to find their firm of choice but it has turned them into self-driven legal providers and knowledge experts within the needs they have, all of which is making the profession of practicing law more and more complicated. The power of the internet along with the ever growing number of lawyers increases the importance of effective marketing and communications on the law firm. An effective website is critical for successful client acquisition, retention and cross selling of services.
After studying a large number of legal websites, it is clear that most law firm websites are built similar to a corporate site. We do not agree with that approach. We have found they tend to feature the firm but forget about what the firm is truly about and why a customer makes a decision to engage in legal services. The legal services tend to be a connection between 2 people, that being the customer and the lawyer. The lawyers, the practice areas and the firm all must get equal representation and focus on the website.
The home page should have less content but a more rapid and clear representation to what the firm and the team stands for and a very clear and equal representation to The Firm, The Lawyers and The Practice Areas. This will build immediate strength in the brand, a clear definition for what the firm is focused on, and instant respect for the legal team and their beliefs. It should clearly demonstrate that the firm is successful in what it does. The site must be designed to be effective on multiple devices including a computer, iPad, and cell phone. Platform319 has integrated proprietary device aware technology allowing the user to visit the site and have the site sense their device and deliver the defined representation best for that device. This is critical in the current state of devices connecting to the web.
The website must be architected correctly at the start to be excellent in SEO. Platform319 is excellent in delivering the highest SEO results possible because of the SEO controls resident to the content administrator and the structure by which it generates the website code. SEO excellence starts with in-depth investigation to the firm and its focus and goals along with a complete of investigation to the customers and the completion. Being top in the list for something that brings unqualified prospects is not good for the firm or the prospect. The goal is to build a solid brand and to drive highly qualified traffic to the site.
The next challenge is to capture the highly qualified traffic and process them to a closure. Platform319 comes complete with a fully reconfigurable and very powerful form engine. This also you to create any sets of data fields you want and plug them into any form or forms you want. These fields then will dynamically store the results of the form submission. This submission will be emailed to one to many people. Notification will also be send onto the dashboard of Platform319 Workstation and if desired notification for a specific result in the form can even be routed via SMS to a cell phone. The submissions are stored and presented to the person or people in the firm that will follow-up and manage this request. Notes can be added to the form submission and workflow can be applied if desired. This assures not only the request is processed but also builds a knowledge base for processing the same request. All of this builds a contact in Platform319 Workstation and surrounds the data around the contact. This also shows the user tracks. Tracks will display to the firm the locations on the website the user was on during their visit when they sent in the request. This information will provide critical knowledge when processing this request. You can process this request directly from Platform319 Workstation and respond back with a standard or custom email (again with tracking).
Analytics are another key ingredient to law firm site success. There are 2 sets of analytics that are important to a successful website. The 1st set is the analytics about the content and the base visitors to your site and the 2nd is analytics about people and a full view of all details about them. Platform319 integrates directly with Google Analytics. This provides real-time and complete data about the visitors to the site. Each page load and other functions such as videos are architected to send analytic data to Google Analytics.
Platform319 also has its own internal analytics engine that captures and reports on data that Google cannot report on:
- Page History: This shows a list of all pages delivered on the site and any data that we can capture alongside of that such as the user if we know who the user is. This is very important for portals and other key areas of the site.
- Search History: This shows the history of each query made in the search system and it also stores a record of who searched and when if that data is available inside the platform. Example: if a user fills out a form we then know who they are and can stamp that information onto the search results.
- New Contacts: The track what and when new contacts are created in the platform. Contacts are created by a number of methods, one being forms on the site.
- Login Report: This set of analytics shows who logged in, when and the tracks of where they visited while logged in. This is very good for portals or secured areas of the site.
- Form Analyzer: This provides the details on all forms on the site and the submissions of each of them long with the data of when, who and the details of the submission information. Forms can also be used as dynamic surveys to capture valuable information and can dynamically pop up on a page and track if the user has been presented with this survey to determine if to show it or not. This data provides additional valuable knowledge.
- Resource Center Report: If your site uses a resource center (especially in a secured area) we can track what items are viewed in the resource center, who viewed them and when they viewed them. This provides very valuable feedback all the way down to the contact.
- Voting Report: If your site uses polling we track the details of each poll.
- Learning Report: If your site implements our eLearning module it allows you to get analytics of what class, what student and the details of their score and much more.
- Email Marketing: This tracks what email went out to what person and when they opened it and what link they clicked on. Platform319 comes complete with an email marketing solution for your firm. All contacts, emails and communications reside in a single place turning the website into a very active business tool for you.
- File Locker: This set of analytics shows and stores what set of files that you or the client has added to their private and secured file locker. This set of data is only available if your site has implemented the Secured File Locker Module.
