Your Website Sucks!

I know that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones – believe me, I do. So I am going out on a limb when I say that your web site sucks.

I recently wrote a proposal outlining our strategy to manage a firm’s collection of web pages they used to market their involvement in various class actions. The ideas in the first part of the proposal appeared to me to be applicable to nearly every law firm I see out there on the web.

Don’t get me wrong, some sites are great, but those are pretty sparse on the ground.

I hope this reflection on the opportunities the web can offer to the class action firm can have value to your firm.

The internet has become the primary source for people looking to gather information. A person with questions about an injury they sustained will first go to the internet.

When they are searching it is vital that a firm’s web site be made available to them at or near the top of the search results. Most people do not go past the second or third page of search results and many don’t search past the first page of items.

Being on top will get their attention and draw them to your site.

A firm’s judicious use of a Google Ads budget will accomplish this goal.

Winning at search is only part of the quest to capture the hearts and minds of potential clients.

The internet tells potential clients about the firm, its reputation, its depth, its sophistication, its attitude about itself and its clients.

Most legal web sites don’t accurately reflect this message (or perhaps they do only too well). The web site is an after-thought, often a forgotten child left to languish after a momentary burst of enthusiasm and attention from the firm’s leaders. The inattention and indifference the firm shows towards its web site translates directly into the impression potential clients will get about how THEY will be treated by the firm.

No one wants to enter into a relationship that starts with a lot of fanfare and promises and quickly devolves to indifference and neglect.

But that is the primary message most legal web sites convey – ‘We have money to pay to have a web site developed, in the same way we have time and attention to get you signed up but we don’t care about the site once its built, we don’t keep it up to date and interesting and once we have you signed up we don’t have any interest in you either. We are off using our money to sign up more people – you are fodder for our mill, we don’t care.’

Why would ANYONE even want to have a web site if that was the message it was conveying? Most law firm sites are exactly this stupid.

Nurturing a web site? That sounds ridiculous.

What I mean is nurturing clients with the web site.

Potential clients will see what type of treatment they can expect from your firm by looking at the current actions, the information and updates on the site. You are your web site, your ‘personality’ is on display. Potential clients will DECIDE about you from your site, like it or not.

A class action is an event that most people will only participate in once in their lives. Since the ‘class’ is often large, the firm might have 10’s of thousands of people looking at their marketing material in connection with this single action.

This is very different from other kinds of legal work; more typically, 20 years of practice might have brought 100’s of clients but with a great deal of interaction. With class action work, a single action might give the firm thousands of clients with very little interaction. The interaction moves from high attention and high contact to low ‘individual’ attention and almost no contact.

Method of managing these new types of interactions must be developed or the firm will be bankrupted using the old high contact methods on these thousands of new clients.

Think of an ad in the newspaper… thousands of people might glance at it, it might make an impression, but there is no interaction, no participation by the person reading the ad. With thousands of potential client class members looking at your firm, their focus is great and their attention is squarely on your firm – they need to decide which firm will care for them best.

Once a potential client is converted into an actual client, their interaction with your firm – their actual experience with your firm – provides a UNIQUE opportunity to make your firm the ONLY law firm they trust for all of their legal requirements.

Your actual class member clients are by far and away your BEST source of potential new business, your BEST source of word of mouth advertising and, if handled poorly, they might well become your WORST NIGHTMARE.