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Avvo Lawyernomics: Website Best Practices

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Website Best Practices

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15 Years Ago

Germany To Ellis Island

Genealogy & Web Design

The Manifest & Anna

Hit a dead end for nearly 10+ yearsNO leads

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7 Stops, No Dice.

Hit a dead end for nearly 10+ yearsNO leads

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The Henkel

4x Grandmother Confirmed

Heres the point.

5 SECONDS

Many of your future clients, who have yet to solve what attorney they should hire, often find it too hard to figure out who you areits your duty to make sure your website connects the dots and makes the experience as easy as possible.

Typically, you have about 7 seconds (not 10 years) to win over a prospective client and your visitors arent patient.

Id like to share several best practices, research, and tools that will help you in stand out and make it easier to hire you and your firm..

Just like many of your future clients, who have yet to solve what attorney they should hire, its your duty to make sure your website connects the dots and makes the experience as easy as possible. Typically, you have ~5 seconds not 10 years and website users arent nearly as patient. Over the next few minutes, Id like to share several best practices, research, and tools that will help you in stand out and make it easier to hire you.

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I wanted this?

Start Story10

But got this.

Id like to share a story my dad recently recanted to me. I never could decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember fire man being on a paper. Ironic foreshadowing that manifested in a abstract way. I spent a summer of my life working here - it was hard work. I spent 9-10 hours a day cleaning these elevators, I found myself up to my chest at times shoveling dust from corn and grain into a manhole. 11

Little did I know I was also working one of the most dangerous jobs in America at 16 years old. The dust could become so dense that the slightest spark would cause an explosion. I was climbing ladders, sliding down poles, doing really hard work, so my childhood dream manifested in an indirect way I guess12

My point is, your home page has to have a purpose and know what it wants to be when it grows up. Design it poorly and your ROI will flounder.13

I want to be different.

Ive heard this rephrased about 200 different ways.

A talking audio website, a website that looks like a book, etc.

Before you can be different you have know what you wantor dont want

Being different for the wrong reasons 14

Dont be a Purple Cow.

NO.

Users get confused. Your site will not convert. Follow best practices from a layout perspectiveKeep things predictable, simple

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The NiftyBenchmark Study:

Best Practices

Here are some best practices to help you stay in line with top ranking websites

For better or worse youll find that top ranking sites arent doing EVERYTHING right by the book16

OnsiteTechnical Benchmarks

BenchMark Study of Top Ranking Sites

50 Cities4 Practice Areas

Correlation isnt Causation

But, if you can out tacticalize you can grab some victories.

In top ranking local results we did a study to across 4 practice areas and 100 of the biggest markets in the US. Im sharing this partly because there are a lot of weaknesses that Top ranking sites have and there is room for attorneys doing the right work to mix things up. Overall, these are all signals for local and you need to take these things into account as you design and market your website:

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Average of 945 words on ranking page

STUDY: Average Words on Ranking Page (Mostly Homepage): 945

Share best practices

No less than 500 wordsscan ableDont wiki - heavy diction, buzzwords19

90% used location in title tag

90% of firms had location in Title Tag

Ranking signalCharacter limits to 50-60 charactersOr Truncate 20

Truncate

Will lower CTR

Or Google will replace your chosen title for one of their choosing algorithmically21

54% used firm name in title tag

54% of firms had firm name in Title Tag

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46% NAP 5% reviews

46% had their NAP marked up in Schema

Only 5.5% had reviews on their site and marked up in schema

Schema Tells Search engines what certain data means23

Studies have shown that sites using schema markup rank 4 postiion HIGHER than ones that dont

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-started-using-schema/24

25% had a link to reviews

Huge for user experience

Social Proof

People want to do what other people do

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https://goo.gl/LudWWpMoz Onsite Grader

Only 5% of websites ranking scored A grade for onsite scoreNearly 50% scored C grade

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Only 5% of websites ranking scored A grade for onsite score

Nearly 45% scored C grade

Less than 5% had an A grade

Title Tag seals the deal for what the page should rank forBut the content of the page is MOST important

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-tag-critical-21499.html28

Visual Onsite: Best Practices

Remember Correlation isnt Causation

USER EXPERIENCE

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When it comes to User Experience and follow the best practices

Logo Top LeftPhone number top right Combine phone number with a call to action4. Strong Image with a strong headline5. Leave Body30

89% more likely to remember youhttps://www.nngroup.com/articles/logo-placement-brand-recall/

Than logos place on the right31

18% had no CTA

Prominent Trust Signals

36% had no trust signals

Badges, press mentions, local mentions, super lawyer, 30/30, 40/40, etc

User queues that you are authoritative and capable33

The NiftyBenchmark Study:

Low Adoption Trends

Lets go over some really simple best practices that if you arent following, you should consider implementing

Paralax and Background VideoKeep Color Consistent

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Were Perfectly Normal

9.5% had parallax effect

1% had background video

If Im a competitor and Im looking for a way to standout and Im not number 1 or 2 or 3 etc, Im using this design effect to build credibility.37

No No #1

Atypical Navigation

Purple Cow No No #1: COMPLICATE YOUR NAVIGATIONDont use outside the box ideas that confuse USERS/ CLIENTS, KISS38

Predictable Navigation

Position Navigation at the top of the page but below the CTA / logo, not below the fold Bounce rates go downPages per visit go upConversion go up

Child pages

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Simplify Choices & Increase Engagement

NON STANDARD

Also dont separate your navigation into multiple areas on a site, its untraditional and difficult to predict for users.

Keep navigation simpleSpecificKeep the order of importance in check

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Dont Nest Your Nav

Generic labels and drop down menus

Typically, Bad for usability and SEO

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Home / BioPractice Areas Contact

PRIORITIZE your NAVIGATION

Most important first and last, stuff in the middle not as important

Home/Bio

Practice area /blog

Testimonials / Contact us43

No No #2

Using a Slider

Purple Cow No No #2: COMPLICATE YOUR NAVIGATIONDont use outside the box ideas that confuse USERS/ CLIENTS, KISSSeveral things to consider before going this route:

1. Low Click Through44

"Does Siemens have any special deals on washing machines?https://www.nngroup.com/articles/auto-forwarding/

PICTURES -

Users couldnt find the offer

Otherwise disregarded the slider, making it ineffective45

1%

Notre Dame Study

1% of users clicked feature (slider)

Of the 30k that did click 84% are clicked the first slide

The other 4 sliders made the rest

Takeaway: users ignore these and majority will click the first one

BANNER BLINDNESS

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A Slider =

PredictableBetter for SEOBetter for Mobile LayoutsIncreases Conversion

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61% didnt use a image of themselves

Gets into philosophy of the site which well talk more about later

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Reinforce Header & Footer

Keep an embedded map, and contact info in Footer (NAP, Important links, FORM)

If youre interested in knowing how many visitors make it to the bottom of a page here are a few resources

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scrolldepth.parsnip.io

Plugin that integrates with GA and creates goals to understand scrolling behavior of visitors51

No No #3

Poor Mobile Design & Performance

NONO #3

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goo.gl/ozWFB8Google Page Speed Insights

Purple Cow No-No #3: HAVE A POORLY DESIGNED MOBILE SITE (OR NONE)

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10% werent responsive vs. 82% 2 years ago

10% of TOP ranking websites in local werent responsive.

We did this study 2 years ago, only 28% were responsive.Make sure your site is mobile friendly (responsive)At least 3 anchor pointsMobile phone, Tablet, Laptop, and Desktop

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Benchmark Data: Study on Top Ranking Sites Mobile Speed

Huge HUGE Opportunity as Google makes a huge push to increase importance of mobile friendly56

HIGH USER Experience scores for top ranking sites, there were a few outliers but overall this was around 96%

Few issues affecting how a user engages with the site OR how indexing/search engine issues57

USERSWEBSITE

Your website and users need to get along.

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Oh crap.

The only thing worse than being a purple cow is being a dead cow.

Certain things

IGNORED

CRUSH your site

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Dead Cow No-No #1:

Lack of Accountability

Dead Cow No-No #1: Not using a call tracking service

NINJA TACTICS60

You dont know what you dont know ENTER CALL TRACKING 61

You have to understand that consumers want to be able to call a business, this says 41% of the time, most of our clients are well over 9:1 ratio phone call / form fills62

Most of our clients are well over 9:1 ratio phone call / form fills63

Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.- Tommy Monson

WHAT CHANNELS ARE WORKING

Tell me if youve ever wondered What has my marketing company done for me lately? Or even Have they done anything at all?What marketing channels are working? Billboard? PPC? Print? SEO? How much does it cost me to get a new client?

CALL TRACKING isnt the only answer, but its a good place to start if you dont have it.

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Thirty Of These

----- Meeting Notes (4/5/16 16:50) -----Block their names / numbers65

GETS ME THIS?

ESTABLISH BASELINESM/MQ/QY/Y

USE IN CONNECTION W/ REAL OFFICE #PUT THIS IN THE CTA ABOVE NAV and REAL # IN FOOTER w/ SCHEMA MARKUPYoull know:Baseline: M/M - Q/Q - Y/YWhat channels are working? Quality control (record calls) Keyword tracking (what else can I use)

Your business thrives on phone calls, so track them and understand what your clients are experiencing:

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CALL RAIL FOR SOMETHING MORE SPECIFIC, SAY IF YOU HAVE A PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION ALREADY IN PLACE

IF YOU HAVE NOTHING IN PLACE FROM A PRACTICE MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE, ID POINT YOU TOWARDS AVVO IGNITE70

Dead Cow No-No #2:

POOR INTAKE TRAINING

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LAW OFFICES.

NO MATTER HOW AWESOME YOUR SITE IS, IF YOUR INTAKE SUCKS EVERYTHING LOSES72

http://www.lawtechnologytoday.org/2016/02/benchmark-law-firm-intake-part-2/

Conrad Saam, our friend over at Mockingbird Marketing did a large study involving 70k phone calls and heres the major takeaways:

42% of the time, law firms take three or more days to reply to a voicemail or web-generated form fill from a prospective client.

----- Meeting Notes (4/5/16 16:50) -----

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http://www.lawtechnologytoday.org/2016/02/benchmark-law-firm-intake-part-2/

goo.gl/65H5O0ABA Benchmark Study on Law Firm Intake Process

Dead Cow No-No #3:

Looking / Sounding Like Everyone Else

Going back to my story of North Dakota and finding my Grandmonther?

Remember the first principle as it applies to building a solid website: know who you are and lead with that, no matter what.

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Justice is Served.

Some of you have probably used pictures like this on your site:

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Ill fight for you.

One Call Thats All

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35% more likely to contact when seeing real people

These types of stock photography, IN PLACE OF YOU, make you look boring, stereotypical and position you to be a total commodity. They can kill conversion:

MARKETING EXPERIMENTS A blog Ive followed for years:tested a real photo of their client against their top performing stock photo

Nearly 35% of visitors would be more likely to sign up when they saw the real deal. (http://conversionxl.com/stock-photography-vs-real-photos-cant-use/)

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PHILOSOPHY BEHIND THE WEBSITE

COMMODITY

THE NIFTY PHILOSOPHY

ATTORNEYS ARE THE PRODUCTWHEN YOU USE FAKE PHOTOS YOU CHEAPEN THE PRODUCTTHERE ARE TONS OF ATTORNEYS WHO DO WHAT YOU DOLEADING WITH YOU, IS HOW YOU CAN STANDOUT84

Farhan was concerned that because of his ethnicity people may not like or want to work with him- so he always steered away from using his name or associating his face with the site.

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CONTINUITY

BETWEEN ALL MARKETING MATERIALS, LETTERHEAD, BILLBOARD, WEBSITE, RADIO, ETC

BUT WHEN YOU WALK IN HIS OFFICE, THE EXPERIENCE IS THE SAMESCENT SPECIALISTSTAINLESS SKULLS ON SCALESLEATHER FLOORS IN HIS OFFICEMODERN STYLE THROUGHOUT

IT FITS VEGAS86

Empathy.

Details.

Get a photog, lead with your face, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT, get a professional, stop it with the Canon handheld and bad lighting. Invest in yourself and stand out.

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But how do you know, know?

Dont let this guy get his way.

Loudest voice in the room gets their way?91

Speak, Data. Good Boy.

photofeeler.com

Usabilityhub.com

First impression 5 secondsQuestionsClick testNavigation testPreference test94

Post Launch

Visual Website Optimizer

Heat Map

A/B Testing

Dead Cow No-No #4:

Lack of Focus

Too often we can forget what purpose the home page and website serve

This also leads us to Dead Cow no-no #498

3-headed monster Another issue that will negatively affect your conversion rate is taking the 3-headed monster homepage out for a walk:

Peers (Fellow attorneys and/or judges)Your reputation, success, networking abilityPotential Clients (Those who dont know you)Your website!!!Current Clients (Those who do know you)Your customer service

Your homepage has to have a priority to it.99

Its important to remember that none of this information relates to how the website looks.

Practical info to quickly assess if a business meets their needs this is especially true in

criminal defense and personal injury.

Where time may be of the essence.

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LESS IMPORTANT not equal NOT IMPORTANT

This just simply means that in general this isnt the first things a local pot. Client is looking for

So how do you balance the needs of your home page? How do you create local content? 101

WHAT LOCAL CLIENTS WANT TO SEE TO HIRE YOU

YOU MAKE IT HARD IF YOU DONT HAVE BASICS102

Dead Cow NO-NO #5:

LACK OF LOCALIZATION

All of you can certainly write a very technical page on the website but this will most likely kill your conversion. From a general perspective follow these best practices:

Dont wiki'ize your top navigation contentkeep it simple but informative1000 words is bestLess than 500 better300 words = Not good enough Recommend checking the reading level and prioritize the content level according to the types of clients you want to attract

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Content Best Practices:Dont wiki'ize your top navigation contentkeep it simple but informative1000 words is bestLess than 500 better300 words = Not good enough Recommend checking the reading level and prioritize the content level according to the types of clients you want to attract

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TEST TEST TEST

In fact, thats what most business and academic writers still do: they get verbose and pack their work with buzzwords and heavy diction in order to appear trustworthy.

Turns out, thats counter-productive.

-Shane Snow, renowned author / designer

No one wants to read your wiki content or the bylaws - they want to understand how you can help them.

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But to help them you need to be where they are!

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From a strategy perspective too many websites are thinking about ranking for Texas Personal Injury Lawyer or California Criminal Defense LawyerThis content strategy is broken if you indeed want to rank in markets that are important to your practice. Let me introduce you to the most misunderstood animal in the animal kingdom:

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Im referring to GOogle Pigeon of course:In June 2014, Googles Pigeon rolled out to make 3 things very clear:Radius is smaller

SERPs are based on location of device

Traditional signals (LINKS/CONTENT)

TOO MANY FIRMS ARE OPTIMIZING FLORIDA ATTORNEY OR CALIFORNIA

PAINTS INTO CORNER

Pigeon is a learning algo and bases results on where the machine is located...so if you live in Sugarland (suburb) and search for Houston DUI attorney youll probably get a Houston page.however if you search for dui attorney...youll most likely get a Sugarland attorney page.too many attorneys do not understand this. This is why you cant put all the eggs in the State, Metro or Suburb basket.Radius for local maps results have shrunk.not to mention the number reduction of local results (from 7 to 3) more recently.Traditional signals like (Links and Content) are now part of this local algoAll of these things point towards attorneys/lawyers needing to understand local content and localizing their content:

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LOCAL CONTENT BEST PRACTICES

PREPARE YOUR NAV:

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PRIMARY LOCATION

Main Nav tab practice area needs to be Primary location focused, weve seen a bump in rankings when following this from 3rd to 2nd page and 2nd to 1st page:

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SUB MARKET CONTENT

What if you have multiple offices or markets of focus?

Recommend nesting in contact us area

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LINKS TO NJ LOCAL LANDING PAGES

Ability to navigate to practice areas for each location on local landing page

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LOCALIZED PRACTICE AREASPAGES

Practice areasx Local Markets = OODLES of Pages

If you want to rank in a town, suburb, or metro organically you have to produce content (AND LINKS)10 practice areas and 20 markets: 200 pieces of content, minimum

*this doesnt include other supporting practice area content and/or hyper local blogs

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PRIORITIZE: Focus on what matters most: where you have a physical location; dominate your own backyard first

Then branch out into other areas.

Consider ROI by doing quick keyword research; some pages will be easier to rank for and have less traffic potential; others opposite

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Boiling The Ocean

ROI GOES DOWN AND EFFECTS NEVER SEEN

HEREs HOW IT TRANSLATES INTO REAL LIFE118

Googles City Center For The Search Criminal Defense Attorney Houston

HOUSTON IN RED

HOUSTON CRIM DEF ATTORNEY IS SOOOOO SMALL119

RARENO ChanceNO ChanceROCK MEET HARD PLACEPossible

WORSE CASE SCENARIO AND HOW TO BEAT THE PIGEON120

Get Tactical.

Get tactical and pick your battles (THINK ROI)122

Ranks for BELLAIRE

NO CHANCE FOR LOCAL EVEN THOUGH CLOSE TO THE CITY CENTER 123

#5ORGANIC HOUSTON

Local Landing PageWIN

Dead Cow No-No #5:

IGNORE USER EXPERIENCE

Dead Cow No-NO #5: IGNORE USER EXPERIENCE

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As a sophomore I learned an important experience that Ive carried with me when I consult others on website conversion best practices. I attended a football camp at Boise State University. The first day was awesome. Someone reminded me to bring baby powder and I didnt and I paid dearly for the remaining 5 days. The heat was over 120% on the SMURF turf and that + football pants + running - caused some friction. I dont have a picture but this will suffice.

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Reduce Friction

Getting more out of your site is all about eliminating friction. Here are some takeaways from our study on some visual and quantitative aspects of conversion that will impact your sites conversion rate:16% of sites didnt have a click to call functionality Make this easier by creating clickable buttonsRun your site through Googles mobile friendly test18% HAD NO CTA? How is this possible?128

18% didnt have a call to action

DONT Forget about the client who may not be able to call!130

First off, consider achieving optimal conversion rate of your form by evaluating the number of form fields:11% USED CAPTCHA14% HAD TOO MANY FORMS FIELDS

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11% used CAPTCHA for spam

HONEY POT133

Design an awesome site that reflects you

Be you, avoid being the purple cow of awkwardness.

Create Local Content, implement ROI best practices, and track success.

Crush it in 2016

Thank you.134

Chad Henkel

Follow Me on Twitter @ChadHenkelVisit Niftylaw.com