Legal Website Design To Maximise Your Leads, New Clients & Revenue

What platforms do you use to build law firm websites?

Harnessing the power of open-source technology, our exceptional team is proficient in developing cutting-edge law firm websites across all key platforms. This includes WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Whatever you need, from a simple brochure solicitor website to a high-performing lead generation solicitor website, we can advise on the right platform for your law firm.

WordPress legal websites

WordPress is one of the simplest and most popular ways to create a website. Some law firms worry about the security aspects of using this platform, but WordPress is incredibly secure, as long as your site is built correctly by an agency that takes website security seriously and it is kept updated to the latest version (updating WordPress is a simple and inexpensive task). In fact, because WordPress is open source, it is maintained by a world-class security team that constantly monitors and shuts down vulnerabilities. And because it’s so easy to use, you can update your WordPress site with as little or as much involvement as you want from us.

Drupal legal websites

Drupal is more developer focused than WordPress. This means that it isn’t as easy to use if you don’t have any technical skills. But if your legal website has lots of content and a complicated structure, Drupal could be a better choice. Drupal is also exceptionally secure, so it is a popular platform for large security-conscious firms that need their sites to handle personal and sensitive data.

Joomla legal websites

Joomla strikes a good balance between WordPress and Drupal because it is more user-friendly than Drupal but can handle more complex forms of content than WordPress. It is comparable to Drupal in terms of security. Joomla also has an advanced user management system, which is helpful if multiple people will manage your website. But it is harder to make changes to a Joomla website than to WordPress one.

Most of our legal clients choose WordPress because of its inherent flexibility, scalability, and ease of management (and we never use off-the-shelf WordPress templates!). But, if there is another platform you prefer, or if you don’t want to use WordPress for whatever reason, that’s not a problem.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are critical factors that Google considers when assessing the overall user experience of a webpage. Google introduced Core Web Vitals to ensure that businesses pay attention to their website visitors’ experiences. 

To make sure your website meets the principles of Core Web Vitals, it should:

• Load quickly (loading)
• Rapidly respond quickly to clicks and taps (interactivity)
• Not jump around when it loads (visual stability). 

Google uses Core Web Vitals to give you a “page experience” score. And, when it comes to ensuring your law firm’s website is a success, you ignore Core Web Vitals at your peril! Because, if done right, a correctly built site will be rewarded by Google and receive increased web traffic. But if poorly done, Google will strike your site down.

At MagnifyLab, we make Core Vitals an essential consideration of every website we create. And we use a range of tactics, including lazy loading, code minification, image compression, and more to ensure you stay ahead of the game.

How much will a new law firm website cost?

This isn’t a straightforward question to answer. Every legal client and website is different, and we base our pricing on your needs, your wants, and how much work is involved in achieving your overriding objectives. But our prices are both competitive and fair.

To give you an idea of our costs, our law firm web design services start from around £2,500 and scale upwards for larger or more complex sites. Please do get in touch for an obligation-free quote. We’d be delighted to learn more about your requirements.

We might not be the cheapest legal website developer, but we won’t sell you short to win your business. Fanatical about delivering value and results, we strive to provide a positive return on investment for all our legal clients. So, in addition to quoting you a fair price for the site and services your firm does need, we’ll never try and sell you expensive add-ons that it doesn’t.

Are your law firm websites SEO-friendly?

If you invest in SEO, your firm will appear higher in the organic search results. But good SEO starts the second you begin planning your legal website. That’s why all our websites are 100% SEO-friendly and designed to increase your firm’s online visibility. Amongst other things, we’ll look at factors such as:

On-page optimisation

When creating your legal website, we consider a huge number of essential on-page factors such as website architecture, organising content into tight themes, page structures, and content length. These on-page measures, which we will make to your website, are all designed to improve your position in the search engine rankings.

Off-page optimisation

Off-page optimisation involves a vast range of measures, all taken outside of your legal website, to help create as many high-quality backlinks as possible. Link building plays an integral role in every successful SEO strategy. It is essential to improve the domain authority (DA) of your legal website and boost your organic search positions.

Technical optimisation

Google demands more from legal websites than ever before. And as part of our web build process, our technical experts will implement everything you need, including structuring your website correctly, content curation, micro-markup and website speed checks to put your law firm in the strongest possible position. After deployment, we will also submit the XML sitemap, which helps search engines crawl your website and rank webpages for related search terms.

Crucially, we avoid dark arts and outdated practices when it comes to SEO for law firms. Instead, we use everything we know about Google’s algorithm – including the 2022 helpful content update – to move your search results in the right direction.

How long will it take to redesign our legal website?

There’s no one answer to this question. How quickly we need to build or redesign your legal website depends on several factors, including your starting point, the platform you choose, your content requirements, and the functionality needed. 

For smaller legal websites, we could have you up and running in 4 to 6 weeks. Larger, more complex websites could take several months to design, develop and deploy. Our legal website design process involves the following key stages:

• Discovery. We immerse ourselves into your business so that we fully understand your website needs, vision, guidelines, and challenges.
• Wireframes & Design. We present clear visualisations for each page of your new website.
• Website Development. We code your website on the most suitable platform.
• Rigorous Testing. We ensure your website is fully responsive, easy to navigate, loads quickly and will lead to conversions. 
• Conversion Rate Optimisation. Once your website has launched, we will work with you to improve conversion rates. 

Ultimately, as your law firm website design agency, we use all our digital and marketing expertise to get you live as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. And, because we understand the importance of regular communication, we keep updated throughout the process. 

Do your legal websites load fast?

Absolutely. All our legal websites comply with Google’s best practices, including page-load speed. This is vital as how quickly a site loads is one of Google’s Core Web Vitals. Put simply, if your site is fast, you will climb the search rankings. But, if it’s slow, Google will punish you accordingly. People leave low-loading sites quickly, and Google hates high bounce rates! 

Using all our technical expertise, we deploy various tactics to speed up your site. From compressing images to using a content delivery network (CDN), deploying mini-JavaScript code to avoiding unnecessary plugins. We also ensure your website is hosted on a fast and secure server.

Once built, we rigorously test your site using Google’s Page Speed Insights tool. And we don’t accept anything less than perfect. To ensure a “good” user experience (according to Google), the largest visible element above the fold (the part of the web page shown before scrolling) must load in less than 2.5 seconds for more than 75% of your visitors. Just a couple more seconds could be all it takes to frustrate your visitors and upset Google. So, every second counts, and we count every second.

Will we be able to edit content on the website ourselves? 

Yes, we develop our legal websites using the latest and most user-friendly options. This is one of the reasons why WordPress is so popular with our legal clients.

While many of our clients put us on a monthly retainer to update their website, our involvement is usually limited to development and security upgrades. Because, when it comes to our law firm websites, making simple content changes such as editing a page or creating a new one is easy. 

Empowering you at all times, we design sites that are simple to update. So you can easily change text, swap out images, and edit on-page elements in real-time (and preview these changes before sending them live). And, because we want to ensure that you have all the control you need, we can also deliver training to your team, so they are comfortable making any changes. Of course, if you’d rather we just look after everything for you, we can do that too.

How long does it take to rank a legal website?

The time it takes for your legal website to climb the search engine rankings depends on your starting point, competition levels, domain authority score (DA), and the extent of work carried out on your site.

Getting indexed into Google’s database is an excellent first step, and we can do that for you in a matter of days, but actually getting to page one can take many months of hard work. Let’s face it, whatever legal services your law firm offers, there is likely to be a fair amount of competition standing in your way. So you need an aggressive SEO approach if you want to beat the rest and secure a coveted page one position.

When you appoint us as your legal web design agency, we use all our technical, marketing, and digital expertise to get you onto Google’s first page for your key search terms as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.

Do you provide content marketing services?

Yes, content marketing can help law firms generate brand awareness, build credibility and trust, and educate and inform their target audiences. So great content has become a key component in any successful digital marketing strategy. It doesn’t hurt that Google loves good-quality content too (this is reflected in its 2022 helpful content update).

Creating compelling assets for our law firm clients, our legal copywriters and content creators turn complex and technical subjects into accessible resources that engage and convert. This includes (but is not limited to):

• Legal blogs that help your firm to demonstrate expertise
• eBooks, whitepapers, and guides to further educate website visitors and appeal directly to search engines.
• Service page content that lets search engines and web visitors know exactly what you do, and how you can help clients .
• Visual content such as infographics and videos

Importantly, because we have extensive experience across the legal sector, everything we deliver is well-researched, well-written and factually correct.

Will we own the new law firm website?

We understand that some incumbent legal web design agencies have built their client’s sites using proprietary systems. And this can prove frustrating because, should you decide that your current agency is underperforming, or if you want to shake things up with a fresh approach, you could find that you don’t own your own site.

At MagnifyLab, everything we build for you is owned by you. And, if you have an existing site on another agency’s platform, we can help you migrate it to an open-sourced content management system (CMS) such as WordPress. Our motivation is simple – to support your law firm through effective digital marketing. The last thing we want to do is make things difficult.

Do you build landing pages for PPC campaigns?

Yes, with an eye on the entire user journey, we use all the popular digital channels – including PPC, SEO, and social media – to create holistic digital marketing strategies for UK law firms. And we have produced impactful PPC campaigns across many practice areas – including commercial law, dispute resolution, family and divorce, industrial disease, personal injury, and more.

Put simply; we know our stuff. And with the legal industry one of the most competitive for cost-per-clicks (CPCs) on Google Ads, you need an agency with experience. Because if you are going to invest your valuable budget into paid campaigns, you have to spend it wisely.

As an official Google Partner, we’ll help you create successful online ads and PPC landing pages to help your law firm acquire more customers online. And, because we know what it takes to deliver ultra-targeted campaigns on Google Ads, Bing Ads, and paid social, we ensure that your campaigns outperform the competition.

Do you offer hosting & maintenance services?  

Yes. Once your site is up and running, we can help update plugins, ensure regular backups, carry out security checks, make edits, and more. 

We are delighted that many of our legal clients continue our relationship this way. But once we have delivered your legal website, you get full ownership of it. So, you are not tied into using our services when it comes to updating, maintaining, and improving. You only have to stay with us if you want to.

After deployment, we can also host your new legal website on our fast UK server. And because we provide the highest levels of reliability and security, we ensure that your web presence never lets you down. What’s more, if you want to invest in other digital marketing services such as SEO and paid advertising, we can take care of everything for you.