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Is Your Law Firm Website Client-Focused or YOU-Focused?

2 mins

Law Firm Marketing, ALL, law firm website

Imagine walking into a car dealership. You’re excited to get a new car, but you’re dreading the inevitable.

Maybe you’ve discovered car dealership utopia. Maybe you’ll get the salesperson who helps you talk through what you want from your car so you make a good decision.

The more likely scenario is that you’ll end up with the guy who says you have to buy a certain car. And why that car? So he can send his kids to college. That's what he actually tells you.

Regardless of how you feel about shopping for a car, wouldn’t you rather deal with the first salesperson than the second? The person who’s more interested in you than himself?

A law firm website is no different.

What’s in It for the Client?

The more you tell a (potential) client that they need to care about you and your needs, the more you drive them away. The client only cares about what’s in it for them.

Related: Your Website Is Chasing Away Clients

A client gets excited when you preview the results you can deliver. Your resume could help to support that outcome indirectly, but most clients couldn’t care less about where you went to law school and what you did while you were there.

Take This Quick Test

Pull out a piece of paper and guess how many times the following words appear on your website: I, we, our.

After you read this article, go to your website and see if you’re right. Then ask yourself how you can replace each of those first person pronouns with “you.”

Every time you talk about yourself instead of focusing on the needs of the client, you increase the risk of that person bouncing away from your website.

About Us or About You?

Everybody has an About Us page that’s usually filled with boastful, irrelevant or tedious information.

How about replacing the About Us page with an About You page?

Use this page to educate prospective clients about whom you help and how you help. Set an expectation of what it’s like to work with you and the outcome you deliver.

That would be a lot more effective than a generic marketing cliché like, “We offer big-firm quality at small-firm prices.”

Kill me now. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. Please stop that tagline already. It doesn't work.

Related: What Prospects Really See When They Search For Your Law Firm

How Do You Measure Up With Other Law Firm Websites?

Pull up your website and the sites of three competitors. Show them to someone who fits the profile of a prospective client – ideally a friend, for the purpose of this exercise – and ask them how those sites make them feel about the lawyers behind the sites.

If your site doesn’t stand out from the other three, you’re probably focusing too much on yourself. You’re not distinguishing yourself from your competition, which means you’re giving visitors a reason to leave your site and research another law firm.

If that’s the case, it’s time to think through your website content a little more carefully.

Raj Jha