Your law firm needs a great website, but you probably already know that, right?
What you probably don’t know is what actually makes a great family law website.
Here’s a hint: it’s not just how pretty it is.
If you asked ten different web designers what makes their creations effective, you’d likely get ten different responses. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all.
But what if there was a better metric to measure the effectiveness of your website?
At Local Sight, we know why our family law website design services work.
It’s simple: they make the phone ring.
Family Law Website Design that Consistently Wins Leads & Clients
[porto_blockquote footer_before=”Jesse Kemmerer,” footer_after=”a web designer who still builds beautiful websites.” view=”with-borders” skin=”primary” color=”#000000″]Here’s a dirty little secret no other website designer wants to tell you: how pretty your website is has very little to do with how much new business it can bring in.[/porto_blockquote]
That’s not to say your website shouldn’t professionally represent your brand.
It’s also not to say your website shouldn’t be drop-dead gorgeous.
There’s no reason you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
It’s just to say that for most law firms, font choices, color schemes, UI elements, and pretty graphics won’t do much to affect your bottom-line. After all, what difference does it make how pretty your family law website is if no one can find it?
When thinking about web design for your family law firm, start thinking past mere aesthetics.
Your prospective clients expect more from your family law firm’s website.
Start thinking about your overall family law marketing strategy.
To have a website that makes the phone ring, here’s what you need:
- Content. You need more than you think – and many different types. Ignore this at your peril.
- A large digital footprint. Would it really make sense to build the world’s best amusement park without any highway exits connecting to it? Who would find it?
- Keyword research. People generally find local services by typing keywords into Google. How would you know what to put on your website without knowing what people are searching for?
- True SEO. Optimizing your website happens at the domain and page level. You’d be amazed what your website can achieve with simple optimization – and lots of content.
- A lifelong partnership with consistent updates. Do you really want to go through the hassle of waiting a week for a simple update… or finding a new designer every 5 years?
Before we get to the 14 stunning family law web design examples, let’s delve into each of these aspects a little more to show you exactly what your law firm website needs.
The Top 5 Aspects of a Lead-Generating Family Law Attorney Website
Let’s assume your new law firm website is as beautiful as you imagine it in your head.
Your web designer has taken the time to understand your brand’s values, tone, personality, and uniqueness. They’ve built you a family law website that exceeds your expectations.
What now?
As we just discussed, good looks aren’t all it takes to generate leads for your business.
You know what you want – I’m here to tell you what you need.
If you want your law firm website to do more than look pretty – if you want it to consistently win you website traffic, leads, and new clientele – here are five aspects you need to focus on.
1. You need more content than you think.
People don’t visit websites to admire their good looks. They visit to find information they want.
If you give them that information, they’ll likely reward you.
Let’s take a quick look at an example. Here are two family law firm websites in the same large metropolitan area – Los Angeles, California:
According to Google, this website has 39 pages.
Here’s another family law website:
According to Google, this website has 357 pages.
Which would you rather have for your law firm?
Websites with more content get more traffic, show up more often in search engines, and convert visitors into leads and sales at a higher rate. It’s that simple.
Here are some examples of types of content your site visitors expect:
- Pages explaining each of your practice areas.
- Pages for family law concepts, laws, or statutes.
- Pages for each location within your service area.
- Pages for testimonials, reviews, family law cases, and more.
- Pages for each member of your team.
- Blog posts that answer commonly asked questions.
Your prospective clients expect this content and more. Your website should have at least 25-50 pages to generate any meaningful amount of traffic. More is better.
If you were searching for a family lawyer, which website would you choose?
- Website A: has a few pictures and a simple list of services they offer.
- Website B: has information about different practice areas, answers to common questions about family law matters, tells you the area they service, and has pictures and job titles of the attorney you will meet with.
I know which one I’d choose.
Your website visitors are savvy. Give them all the information you can, answer their most basic questions on your website, and show them the stellar work you can perform.
Do that, and they’ll choose you more often than not.
2. You need a large digital footprint.
It’s almost verboten to say this, but family law attorney websites by themselves will do little to nothing for your business. After all, what would it matter how great your website is if no one ever sees the darn thing? For your website to be effective, people actually have to find it.
Your digital footprint should include:
- A strong, optimized Google Business Profile.
- Listings on dozens (if not hundreds) of quality directory websites (Avvo, FindLaw, YellowPages, etc…)
- Social media profiles (all of them… even the ones you’ve never heard of)
- GPS listings (Google loves these)
- Press releases (easy to submit, and a great source of backlinks)
While incredibly time-consuming, all of these pieces of your footprint are free to build. Don’t skimp on this or put it off. If your digital footprint isn’t large enough, you’re not going to get the results from your website you’re hoping for – no matter how pretty it looks.
- Related reading: The Ultimate Guide to Family Law Digital Marketing
- Related reading: 16 Effective Family Law Advertising Ideas
3. You need real keyword research.
[porto_blockquote footer_before=”Jesse Kemmerer,” footer_after=”a website designer who doesn’t cut corners.” view=”with-borders” skin=”primary” color=”#000000″]Building a website without keyword research is kind of like throwing darts in the dark: you might get lucky and hit the bull’s eye every once in a while, but you don’t really deserve to.[/porto_blockquote]
To understand this concept, we need to make a few assumptions:
- Likely, most of your website traffic will come from Google.
- People find local businesses by typing keywords into Google.
- To show up, pages on your website need to be optimized for those keywords.
We’ve just explained SEO for family law firms. It’s a simplified version, but not incorrect.
Your prospective clients will be searching for a family law firm website in many different ways.
Here’s the thing: very few family law website designers offer keyword research, but they all claim to do SEO. How can you know what to optimize for if you don’t know which keywords to target?
Keyword research will tell you what people are searching for, how many people are searching for them, and which pages you’ll need on your website to reach those people.
It looks something like this:
That’s a tiny sample of a list that could be hundreds of keywords long.
Why is this important?
This research will tell you exactly what pages you need on your website, as well as how much traffic you can expect to get from each keyword.
You can do this research right now, for free, using Google’s Keyword Planner.
4. You need true SEO.
Here’s the thing: every web designer under the sun offers “SEO.”
Few actually perform the service.
If you’re not sure which category your service provider falls into, ask for a keyword research list. We provide them for free during every consultation.
If you’re still not convinced, ask which pages are being built to target those keywords.
Finally, for the cherry on top, ask for a list of links built to those pages.
Because here’s the thing: SEO is fairly simple. The process looks like this:
- Find a list of keywords relevant to your business.
- Build and optimize pages for those keywords.
- Build links to those pages until they rank.
That’s really about it.
Remember when we talked about the keyword research we perform for each new website?
Remember when we talked about the importance of having more content ie. pages on your website to target those keywords and drive more traffic from search engines?
Remember when we talked about building a large digital footprint linking back to your website?
Well, there’s your search engine optimization (SEO).
Typically, a full SEO campaign is months-long because it takes time to create content and build links. We don’t replace those campaigns; we simply speed them up by providing a larger content foundation and digital footprint from the onset. Custom SEO campaigns are available, too.
[porto_blockquote footer_before=”Editor Jesse,” footer_after=”who forgot to add this crucial aspect when first writing this article.” view=”with-borders” skin=”primary” color=”#000000″]Part of SEO is providing a good user-experience to your website visitors. Google hates slow websites. See how quickly your website loads for free using Google PageSpeed Insights, right now. Hint: it should score at least 80%. We guarantee that for all our new website builds.[/porto_blockquote]
5. You need a true partner.
The family law industry has been inundated with web designers.
Websites were never designed to be static resources. In order to treat your website like the asset it was designed to be, it needs to be continuously updated.
That’s where a true website design partner comes into play.
Our hosting package includes 1 free hours of updates every month. We also schedule quarterly check-ins with each of our clients so they’re always up-to-date on the status of their website.
On top of that, we offer the following tracking for family law firms to show our worth:
- Google Analytics. The gold standard. Custom conversions help, too.
- Keyword tracking. We’re talking organic listings and local visibility.
- Phone call tracking. The best way to judge ROI for most local business websites.
For most local businesses, tracking these three metrics are all you really need.
If you want to see how your family law attorney website design currently stacks up, request a free analysis. We’ll build a custom, hand-curated breakdown of your current website and digital footprint, along with critiques and steps to take to make your online presence more effective.
It’s completely free.
Web Design for Your Family Law Firm Doesn’t Have to Be Rocket-Science
Seriously.
Think about the last time you searched for a local business or service online. Did you choose to give your business (ie. place a phone call or fill out a form) to one website over another because of the quality of the graphics, or was it because one website had the answers to your questions, loaded quickly, and made it easy for you to give them your business?
Or was is simply the fact that you chose the first one that popped up?
These days, web design for family lawyers or any other profession is as much about getting people in the door as it is making sure people like what they see once they’ve opened it. In fact, lets boil those previous five points down into what they really mean for your website.
- Be helpful.
- Be easy to find.
- Be where your customers already are.
- Be fast.
- Be able to measure your success (or failure) in the previous four areas.
We build websites that make the phone ring, and we’d love a crack at your business. But no matter who builds your family law website (or if you build it yourself!), make sure you’re keeping these five points at the forefront of your digital strategy.
14 Stunning Examples of the Best Family Law Websites We Could Find
Okay, lets get down to the meat and potatoes. The whole reason you clicked on this website was to see some examples of web design for family lawyer done the right way.
Here are 14 of the best family law firm websites we could find, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, which we’ll discuss after each example.
1. Kirker | Davis
This is clearly a group of experienced family law attorneys. They’ve put a ton of work into this website – and it shows! A simple, sleek logo with easy-to-navigate top-level pages… not to mention that stunning hero image! It’s a real lesson in effective branding, highlighting what presumably are the two family attorneys you would work with on your case. Not to mention a lesson in effective SEO – they were the first to show up for a very competitive term. This is an A+ if there ever was one.
2. Vaught Law Firm, P.C.
https://austindivorcelawyer.com
One of the best family law websites we found. This one has a great backdrop of what is presumably the Austin, Texas city skyline. Also, it features a strong logo and has the phone number prominently displayed – something every local business should have. It’s also no coincidence that they’re doing some good SEO work – clearly these family law attorneys have spent some time on optimizing for keywords, evident by the first text appearing on the website. Great work. Web design for family lawyers done right.
3. Coker, Robb, Cannon
A somewhat different style that the two above, but really well done. I love the banner with the overlaid logo, and the menu function is really well defined. Again, we see what are presumably the attorneys one would work with, which really makes sense for this industry. For something so personal as family law, I imagine branding is a big priority for family law firms. This website is doing it well.
4. Lopez Law Firm PLLC
https://www.lopezlawfirmdc.com
Great example of a family law firm website. I picked this one primarily for the use of trust-building signals right at the forefront. For these family law attorneys, showing the great Google review star rating and the amount recovered in child support payments is a great way to build trust with a completely cold audience. Other than that, it’s a simple, beautiful design that does exactly what it sets out to. Nice work.
5. Cumo Law Firm
Family law website designs come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, less is more. Such is the case for this family law website. With a strong logo and incredible image right off the bat, you don’t need to muddy the waters with fancy, flashing text or other graphics. Sometimes, you have to give your visitors a little bit of credit, which is clearly what this website is doing. They know you’re a family law firm – they clicked on the listing! I love this example of the “less is more” approach.
6. Law Office of Hasson D. Barnes, LLC
You have to be very, very careful with using stock images (I’m assuming that’s what this is; I could be wrong), but sometimes they work. This family law group has a great-looking website, which is why we picked it. Along with a prominently displayed phone number and strong logo, the immediate view of this website works really, really well to show off their legal expertise. And did you see that live chat option on the left? Great customer service.
7. Rolle DeLorenzo
This website is optimized for their target audience, showing up prominently for keywords like “maryland attorney” and more. That’s great if they serve clients state-wide, which I’m assuming they do. You should consider your content strategy for reaching cities and towns outside of the one you’re located in if you’d like to get traffic from those locations. Often all it takes is building pages for those locations, which is what they seem to have done for this website.
8. Shakhan & Wilkerson Law
https://www.shakhanandwilkersonlaw.com
This family law lawyer knows what they’re doing. A website visitor will see trust-building signals right off the bat, which really does wonders for cold traffic. Clearly, they have a lot to be proud of with such good reviews – so why not show them off? This website is also really leaning into their content, with more than 70 pages indexed by Google. Remember when we said bigger is better when it comes to family law websites? You need more than just a few words. Potential clients expect more. This attorney understands.
9. Brodie Law Group
Simple, sleek, and clean – those are the first words that come to mind for this website. Logo, menu, banner image, heading… they’re keeping things simple and sweet, and it completely works. Also, take a look at that menu: under “Areas We Serve,” they have pages dedicated to other locations, getting them traffic from a wide range of locations and increasing their digital footprint. Many other law firm websites don’t have this, and potential clients love to see it. Great work.
10. Sutton & Janelle
https://www.suttonandjanelle.com
This is a strong website from our neck of the woods. Everything about this website screams “professional,” from the strong logo to the dressed-up photo right off the bat. Clean, clear navigation and a prominently displayed phone number round out the image, making this a winner for potential clients.
11. Bottner & Associates
https://www.bottnerskillman.com
Again, sometimes less is more. This family attorney website embraces that by keeping things simple and clean. The splashes of color really brighten this image, but it’s not overdone. With a simple navigation menu and prominently displayed phone number, this website makes it easy for people to find what they’re looking for or make a quick phone call. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
12. Gibson Law Office, LLC
https://www.gibson-lawoffice.com
An interesting web design style. Most family law website designs nowadays are wide – it’s not often you see a boxed website like this one anymore. Still, they can look great, which is why we included this one. Instead of making people click through, they title their navigation after their services, which is a great way to avoid making your visitors jump through hoops to find what they’re looking for. Also, the image boxes give information on subset services, and the heading tells you exactly what this family lawyer does. Old-school, but well done.
13. Law Offices of Sandra Guzman-Salvado
https://www.guzmansalvadolaw.com
What a great-looking law firm website design. Branding is clearly important to this family attorney, as its right at the forefront of the website. And are those links to videos and podcasts I see? Potential clients love those. And wait a minute… can you view this website in Spanish? Clearly, this attorney knows about legal marketing and how to showcase their legal services to new clients. Another A+ if there ever was one.
14. McCabe Russell
Family lawyer website designs that rock… this time with video! Video is one of the best ways to impress new clients. This family attorney leans into their video, making it the centerpiece of their homepage. With a strong logo, live chat feature, and easily navigable menu, they also make it easy on their visitors to see who they are and how they can help. Great work.
7 Frequently Asked Questions About Web Design for Family Lawyers
Now that you know what it takes to make a great website for your family law practice and you’ve seen some examples of design, lets talk a little bit more about what you should expect when looking for a web designer. Of course, each service provider is different, but there are certainly some commonalities, and we’ll try to detail those below.
Note: I’m going to make some generalities throughout these answers, but after a decade of being in this industry, I have a good grasp on price points, common service features, and more.
1. How much does a new website for my family law practice cost?
This is a tough question to answer, but I know everyone wants to know. As far as I can tell, a family lawyer looking for web design will generally have the following three options, each with their own strengths and weaknesses:
You can do it all yourself for a nominal fee: $100-$300/year.
Website builders like Squarespace or Wix allow you to build a website with no real technical knowledge. They work fine, as far as I can tell, and your finished product will essentially look as good as you’re able to make it. Of course, you’ll have to write all of your own content, select your own pictures, build your own menu structure, try your hand at SEO optimization, and build a digital footprint by yourself, and that can be a daunting task. Our blog should help.
You can buy from a big-box provider: $200-$800/month.
These websites are typically paste-and-play, and they look like it (in my opinion). These companies will typically give you a handful of pages with an acceptable amount of content, pages for a photo gallery and contact form, and some links to your social profiles. They’ll usually configure their pre-built templates around your brand and logo, using your company colors where possible. You’ll usually get up and running within a week or two. The downside? You’ll rarely (if ever) own the final product, so if you stop paying, you lose your asset. Ouch.
You can buy from a competent website provider: $5,000 – $15,000 (give or take).
There are about a million and a half options for this. We think we’re one of the best, but whomever you choose, make sure your new website will have the following:
- Lots of pages, with an easy, cost-effective option to add more
- An optimized Google Business Profile
- Directory listings, social media profiles, GPS listings, and more
- SCHEMA markup
- Website caching, with a guaranteed website speed benchmark
- An active blog with real content
- Project portfolios, team member biographies, and more
- Reliable website hosting
2. How long will it take to build my website?
This will depend on the provider you’ve chosen, but in general, you should be prepared for at least a 4-6 week turnaround time, all the way up to 12 weeks for an in-demand provider.
3. Will my new family law web design include SEO?
Short answer: no.
But it’s complicated. Let me explain.
Look. Every single website provider says they offer SEO. They say your website will be optimized for keywords and search engines and everything else. Is it true? Kinda.
To understand, you have to know what SEO for family law really is.
Simple put, it’s the process of optimizing a website page for a keyword so that it appears first on search engines when someone searches for that keyword.
Here’s what the process typically looks like:
- Find keywords
- Build pages targeting those keywords
- Build backlinks to those pages until they rank #1.
That’s highly simplistic, but let’s run with it for now.
Let’s say your family law practice is located in Chicago. You’ve just had a new website built.
Your web designer performs SEO. They optimize your home page for the following keyword: “family law attorney in Chicago.”
It sounds like a reasonable keyword, right?
Let’s go a step further and say that your family law web designer know what they’re doing. Your website is really, really optimized for the keyword – so much so that it ranks number #1.
Time to celebrate, right?
Here’s the problem.
Hardly anyone even searches for that keyword!
But wait. Let’s analyze this example even further.
Let’s say your family law web designer knows a little bit about keyword research. Instead of optimizing for that keyword, they optimize your website for some of the following keywords:
Woo-hoo! Now that’s some volume! Now, all we have to do is optimize, right?
Hold on.
These keywords are competitive. Why? They’re extremely valuable.
Just because your website is optimized for these keywords – the technical aspects of website speed, title tags, headings, semantic keyword use, meta desciptions, ALT image tags, SCHEMA and more – doesn’t mean you’re going to rank for the terms. I promise, all the websites that show up for these keywords are already optimized to one degree or another. This different between the top-ranking website and everyone else? Backlinks.
And good backlinks are hard to get. Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.
So sure. Your website designer can optimize for these keywords, but it’s not going to do you any good if you’re not on the front page – and quite high up, to boot.
And optimization is only half the battle.
Typically, SEO campaigns will last at a minimum of 12 months, because:
1. It takes time for website pages to move up or down in search engines rankings.
2. It takes time for Google to crawl (ie. discover) website pages and backlinks.
3. It takes time to build backlinks that will actually move the needle.
To make a long story short: sure, most web designer will optimize your website for search engines to one degree or another, but those who actually get results will do so to a much higher degree – and at a much higher cost.
Quick caveat: this example is for Chicago, a major city with a large population and tons of competition. Typically, areas with lower population and lower competition will be much easier to rank for – but they’ll have much lower keyword volume, as well.
4. What about the monthly fee?
Most website providers will charge you a monthly fee to host, maintain, and update your website on a regular basis. Websites built on WordPress need their plugins, themes, and WordPress core updated regularly. There is an extremely wide range of price points for this type of fee, but anything in the $50-$200/month range is reasonable – so long as the maintenance is done.
5. What about ongoing updates? How often should I be adding new content?
Most providers will assist with ongoing changes for a fee – ours is built into our monthly package. As for how often you should update your website, it boils down to a couple things.
1. You should always be adding new portfolio, project, or before/after pictures.
2. You should always be adding blog posts that add value in the forms of building your authority in your industry or solving common problems for patients and visitors.
3. You should only go out of your way to add additional content when it aligns with a specific SEO strategy. Remember the keyword lesson from before? It’s fine to throw spaghetti at a wall, but it would be nice to know what you’re even trying to hit before you do it.
6. What about a mobile version of my website?
Most website built today are responsive. However, it’s important to keep in mind that over 50% of your website traffic will likely come from a mobile device, and responsive design doesn’t always solve the problem of looking good on a mobile viewport. Make sure your website designer is as focused on the mobile appearance of your website as they are on the desktop one.
7. What about website speed?
Firstly, realize that the difference between your mobile speed and desktop speed can be wildly different (and that’s especially important since most of your traffic will come from a mobile device). Let’s look at example #2 from the previous list, by example: austindivorcelawyer.com (we had to skip example #1 – their website was too fast to illustrate our example!)
Now, you can see that this website isn’t particularly fast to begin with, but just look at the difference between their mobile and desktop versions.
In general, your “first contentful paint” speed should be 2 seconds or fewer. Your “time to interactive” metric should be less than 3.8 seconds.
Always test this, as it’s not something many family law website providers will mention unless they’re specifically asked how fast the site they provide will be.
Web Design for Family Lawyer: What Do You Want Out of Your Website?
You want the best family lawyer website you can get.
It should look great. Of course.
But is that all you need to succeed?
Of course not.
The previous 14 examples should show you plenty of ways your website can be structured, from strong, bold images to sleek, clean, and simple design. But don’t just stop there – take a closer look at these websites, and you’ll notice that they’ve also focused on aspects outside of their aesthetics.
Some have dozens and dozens of helpful pages of content.
Some feature live chat features, making it easy to speak to someone.
Some feature videos.
Some feature their attorneys, making their branding the focal point of their websites.
Some focus on location-specific content.
Some blog consistently – some even do podcasts!
Those are the reasons those websites are great – not just because they’re pretty.
When thinking about web design for your family law practice, think past the graphics and colors. Think about what you can actually do for your visitors.
- Be helpful.
- Be easy to find.
- Be where your customers already are.
- Be fast.
- Be able to measure your success (or failure) in the previous four areas.
If you do all of that with your website, there’s no way you’ll lose.
Remember: this isn’t rocket science.
You’ve Googled enough and visited enough websites to know what makes one better than the other. You can have the better option; it just takes a little more effort.
We offer web design for family lawyers that makes the phone ring.
Get in touch with us today for a free website analysis, or call us for a free consultation.
