Avoiding website mistakes that send clients away
Many months ago we spent time with Garrett McNally from Omnizant, a digital marketing agency that builds websites, runs SEO, and manages ads for law firms. They pulled up real law firm sites live and walked us through the mistakes that push clients away before they ever call you. Here’s some interesting tidbits from the conversation (watch the full thing here):
Build for phones first, because that’s where most of your visitors are. If people have to pinch and zoom, they leave, and Google ranks you lower. Watch for tiny text, buttons too small to tap, and layouts that don’t shrink to fit. Garrett showed a new client site where the fonts and menu adjust on a phone and a call button stays pinned to the bottom of the screen.
Tell visitors what to do on every page. One site Garrett found listed a phone number and nothing else: no buttons, no form, no prompt. People won’t hunt for a way to reach you. Add a visible button with plain language like “Get a Free Case Evaluation” or “Schedule a Consultation,” and keep your forms short. Slate Stern Law does this well, with click-to-call in the header, consultation buttons down the homepage, and a contact form on each practice area page.
Write your bio like a sales page, not a resume. Cover your background, your practice focus, what sets you apart, how you work with clients, and one personal detail. Garrett pointed to Robin Davis of Probiz Law, whose bio mentions she mentors female-owned businesses and sits on her local YMCA board. And get a professional headshot.
Put reviews on your site and you give nervous clients a reason to trust you. After each good outcome, ask the client for a review and send them a link to your Google Business Profile or Avvo page. Garrett showed a New York City employment firm with pages of Google reviews plus a case results page listing recent wins.
Run the free audits before you pay anyone to rebuild. Google PageSpeed Insights tells you how fast your site loads and flags what’s slowing it down. A mobile test shows you what visitors see on a phone. Both take minutes and often turn up fixes you can make yourself.
Fix your site first and you’ll get more from every other marketing dollar. Ads, referrals, directory listings, and LinkedIn posts all send people to your website. If the site doesn’t convert them, you paid for that traffic and lost it. Garrett called these fixes the highest-leverage marketing work most small firms can do.
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💛 HeyCounsel in real life: Three HeyCounsel OGs met up in real life! Check out who it was :) Thread →
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