Tag: websites

Posted on

Starting a Law Firm | Website “Call to Action”

In trying to build and start a law firm in the best way possible, I have obviously been thinking a lot about law firm websites optimization and how to get client to my website.  A recent post on Lawyerist about designining a website “call to action” is very relevant to my law firm website goals.

As many of you many know, the Lawyerist is an excellent lawyer blog that has quite a few contributors.  It is a good site with good content.  I suggest you check it out.  Today, there was a post about having a “call to action” on your website.  The call to action, as I understand it, is getting the client to click on what you want them to click on – your name, number, and contact information.

I’ve thought of this before, but I’ve realized that I need to me more diligent about it.  My idea was to offer a free consultation and get phone calls that way.  People always call more if they think they aren’t going to have to pay for the lawyer phone call.   Thus, the free consultation button.  I don’t intend on working for free, but I have found that I can usually consult with someone for ten to fifteen minutes about their problem over the phone.  If it is a case I think I can handle, the client and I get along, and I think the client will pay their bill, that is usually when I try and make the sale.

But, is that enough?  I don’t really think so.  I have realized that I need to have more on my website to get people to actually pick up the phone or shoot me an email.  I’m going to work on it.  My law firm website currently has a logo section.  That logo is something I’m going to focus more on.  I also intend to include more information in the footer of the website for people to contact me when they are seeking legal services.

From a practical, marketing perspective, starting a law firm is all about getting the phone to ring and getting people in the door.  Being a good attorney and practicing in an ethical fashion are equally important.  I don’t intend to wait and I want to call all my potential clients out there to call and seek my legal advice and skill.

Posted on

Starting a Law Firm | Law Firm Website Update

As an update to my effort to start a law firm, I wanted to let everyone know that my law firm’s website is up and running.  It’s located at flanderslawfirm.com.

I am not completely satisfied with it and I plan to make some much needed changes.  But, it is up and it isn’t too bad.  The best part?  I did it mainly by myself.  If anybody actually reads this and goes to my website I would appreciate any comments.

I ultimately got my law firm website up and running through a lot of trial and error.  To me, starting a law firm is all about trial and error.  Why should it be any different with a website?

The first trial was hosting.  As I explained in my law firm website hosting post, there are a lot of choices but I chose Winhost.com.  To this point, I have been very happy with Winhost and I have no complaints.  However, it is early and we shall see how it goes.  Through many hours and a lot of head-banging, I was able to read the help forum and “knowledge base” articles on Winhost and figure out how to set my law firm website up using these main, FREE ingredients:

(1) Webmatrix

(2) FileZilla FTP

(3) Internet Information Services (IIS 7)

(4) WordPress.org

The Winhost forums have moderators who answer many questions from all kinds of people with similar difficulties.  There are posts about how to use your hosting service for all of these free tools.  Again, creating a law firm website isn’t easy, but if you have the time and the gumption you can do it.  Those are the free tools and they are great.

Now, the non-free tools I used were:

(1) Winhost website hosting (Cost: $114 for a year of hosting)

(2) NameCheap domain names ($10.00 for a typical domain name)

(3) Elegant Themes templates ($39.00 a year).

That’s it.  Easy right?  I also think those prices are pretty darn reasonable and I did pay a web designer anything.

Once I figured out how to use  these tools, I was able to customize my law firm website. It takes some knowledge of html  coding and cascading style sheet (CSS) language, but I picked it all up on the fly.

If anybody needs any help out there on how to start a law firm website, post a comment.

Posted on

Starting a Law Firm | Creating a Law Firm Website

I wanted to share with everybody what I have learned about building a website for starting my own law firm.

As I posted previously, I have been doing a lot of searching and reading about law firm website hosting.  There are way too many web hosting options to list here.  Suffice it to say that I can’t recommend one or another.  Everybody wants to host your lawyer website.

So, where to begin?  Do a google search and you will find many choices.   I chose winhost.com.  I’m not making a plug, I am just letting your now what I chose.  I could have made a mistake, who knows.

I chose Winhost for two reasons:  (1) the price and (2) the functionality.  The price I chose was a monthly “Max” plan at $10.00 a month.  They have a cheaper plan, but I wanted a plan with enough functionality for me to expand and add things like more website content and email users.  The functionality compares with, if not better than, many website hosts out there.  The “Max” plan has quite a bit of hosting space and other options that I frankly don’t know how to use.  I will say this, I did quite a bit of research and I didn’t see this much functionality at places like Godaddy.com.  The price is the same, but I don’t think you get as much.  (Caveat, I’m a lawyer, not a web designer, and I really don’t know what I am doing.)

So, onto the lawyer stuff.  I have decided to develop a law firm website right now.  That way, I can build up links and get some traffic to the website before I officially open up my law firm doors in Minneapolis.  Also, since I have more free time on my hands than I am used to, I figure this is the best time to learn this stuff.

Now that I have chosen a host, I have to figure out how to get a website up.  This is where the real fun begins.  I have no website building experience and I just learned how to set up a blog.  I’ve put a lot of time into it, but there is a lot more to learn.  As I am on a budget when starting my law firm, I don’t want to pay for a web designer.  I’m trying to do it on my own.

Here are the tools I have used so far:

(1) Winhost.com (the website hosting service)

(2) Microsoft WebMatrix (a web development tool)

(3) WordPress.org (free blog and CMS website hosting)

(4) Various business and/or law firm templates.

Those are my current tools in more or less the order that I am using them.  Again, not a plug for any of them, but that it what I have found so far.

On Winhost, there is a control panel which allows you to set up a database and it also contains domain information like your server address, url address, etc.  This is all voodoo to me, but it is necessary to connect with the next step, WebMatrix.

Download WebMatrix and then learn to use it.  Did I mention that it is free?   There are plenty of tutorials on the Microsoft site.  It isn’t the most user friendly software, but, then again, it isn’t that difficult.  In WebMatrix you can choose a number of different website building options.  There are templates pre-installed, but I recommend either buying a template or finding a free law firm template and loading it into WebMatrix.  If you choose a pre-built template, you can load it into WebMatrix and then connect WebMatrix to your server (e.g.: WinHost).  This is where the voodoo comes in.  I struggled for hours to get WebMatrix to properly connect to and recognize WinHost.  But, in the end, I got it to work.  Again, instructions are all available via online tutorials and help forums.   Also, you can load WordPress.org through WebMatrix if you want to use a WordPress design for your law firm website.

If you do use WordPress, there are many different free templates that you can use for your law firm website, or you can pay for and install a law firm theme for WordPress.  I haven’t done this yet, but I am planning to go this route.  Wordpress’ functionality and SEO optimization tools are easy, free, and, best of all, they look good.

So, that is my hackneyed explanation on what I am doing to create a law firm website.  I’ll unveil the site on Solo in Minneapolis when it is ready.  Let me know if any of you have questions on this process.  I’d be happy to share what I have learned anybody wanting to build a website when the are starting a law firm.