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How to Measure the Success of Your Law Firm’s Website

Every attorney knows their website is absolutely key in generating clients. Still, most lawyers just put up a pretty website and ignore it.

A handful of intrepid attorneys believe they’re way ahead of the curve because they take an occasional look at how many people are visiting their website, or maybe even their website provider is telling them how many visitors.

Very few attorneys look at the only number that matters – how much business the website is actually generating.

A visitor does not equal a client. Most people will visit your website and never become clients, so simply counting visitors isn't what matters, when it comes down to it. It may be interesting, it may (or may not) be an indicator of how much business you're getting... but it's not the thing to focus on.

You need to know what the return on your website investment is. And more specifically, you need to know the cost per lead.

What Metrics Do Advanced Marketers Use?

Advanced marketers always calculate important metrics like cost per lead and cost per sale.

Just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean you get a free pass on understanding what these numbers are. If you remove yourself from this discussion, you’ll end up spending gobs of money on a marketing asset - your website - that doesn’t work as well as it can.

Related: Three Metrics Your Law Firm Must Track for Success

An image website - you know, the ones that are pretty brochures on the web - is too often a waste of money. Pretty doesn’t equal effective. (I should know. I'm not pretty to look at. But I'm effective.)

What looks good to you probably isn’t the most effective way to compel potential clients and referral partners to send business your way.

What Your Prospects Want... Isn't What You Want

As an attorney, you’re the expert. And for most of us, that's the rub. We know too much. Based on that expertise, most attorneys make assumptions about what other people know and what they think.

They assume that their visitor is like them. Is interested in what the attorney is interested in.

Prime example – in our marketing programs, the content we give to our members often seems a little simplistic when our members first read it. Initially, there's dubious, because they think that what prospective clients want to read is full of citations. Why? Because our members are the experts. They know the details.

They know the law. But your prospective clients don't know the law. In fact, that's the reason they want to hire you. What they want to know is "what fact pattern makes you relevant?"

In our case - once our (non-citation-laden) content is positioned correctly and put into action, it becomes incredibly effective. Prospective clients are educated on why you matter.

Now let's apply the same principle to you.

Look at your website and ask, “Who is this written for?”

Related: Want More Legal Clients? Fix These 5 Things on Your Website.

The answer shouldn’t be you. The answer should be the people who send you business.

Ask more questions.  "What's their frame of reference?"  "Do they really care about this text, or is it irrelevant to their problem?"

Once your marketing copy starts speaking to them - the ideal client, your website will be more than just a pretty face.

You’ll see your improvements in cost per lead, cost per sale (or as we lawyers say, cost per engagement). Which means better return on your investment.

How Do You Determine Website ROI?

Bonus round, here, for those who haven't done this before. To answer this question - how you determine cost per lead - you have to answer a few other questions:

  • How many visitors is your website getting?
  • Where are your visitors coming from?
  • Are they quality visitors? In other words, could they become ideal clients?
  • How many visitors are turning into appointments?
  • How many visitors are turning into clients?

Obviously, if you’re not attracting the right people to your website, you’ll end up with a client base that stinks. Or no client base at all.

Without measurement, it’s impossible to know where the problem lies.

Are you having trouble getting people to your website? Is your website not prompting visitors to take the right action so you get the appointment? Is your marketing process or website failing to drive engagement?

Your website might be working. And it might not. But...

If you don’t know the key metrics and what they mean, get help now before you re-design your website. Otherwise, you’ll end up throwing your money away.

Raj Jha