6 Drawbacks Of Using Rented Websites For Law Firms
4 min read
Law firm web design companies and marketing agencies offer a wide range of services to their clients. Various legal marketing tools being offered also include website services where websites are rented out to different law firms. We focus here on the website services only and how it compares with your own website.
Cost Implications
The websites are rented out to law firms on fixed annual fees or on a contract for a fixed period of time. These template sites may seem affordable, but if it fails to generate sufficient new business during a time frame, you may end up losing money as the monthly or annual fees have to be paid to keep the site running.If you have your own custom website, it will be an on-going project which continuously adjusts to meet your law firm’s specific needs. You can set up a timeline for your law firm’s website to coincide with its growth. You pay for only what you need and there is no unnecessary expense involved.
Need for good Content
A law firm website needs good content to appeal to the prospective customers.Law firm web design companies and website providers hire writers who produce content for diverse law firms. These content pieces are generic and may not always fit with the firm’s brand. They are also quite similar for a number of firms.
When content is produced for a customised website, it is so constructed that it appeals to the law firm’s ideal clients. It is written with your specific inputs and designed to coincide with your future clients’ terms when they search for lawyers.
Support Services
Building a website that represents the lawyers at your firm requires a design team that knows and understands your needs. Law firm website service providers try to sell as many sites as they can, to as many law firms as possible. Hence, when any of your lawyers need help in future and reach out for assistance, more likely than not it will be a different person providing the support than the one you originally dealt with. He may not be able to give the desired solution. In the case of your own custom website, a big part of designing is to get to know your law firm and its specific needs. The designers strive to build a good lasting relationship with the firm’s lawyers so that they can adapt your website to the dynamics of your business as it grows.
Building your law firm’s brand
How your website looks is a reflection of your law firm’s personality. It shouldn’t therefore be limited by some predefined designs, colours and font options. The rented sites offer a simple and easy way to implement design processes but the set parameters of the templates limits the scope for creativity. Layouts cannot be changed and adding or deleting any feature is not possible, which can affect the success of your business. In your own website you can have exactly what is needed for your law firm and your options are not restricted. You can always put in what you want and remove what you deem unnecessary and you can get the best law firm website design
Measuring your law firm’s Marketing Investments
In today’s internet driven business environment, data is the key driver of marketing decisions. Understanding your visitors’ behaviour and how to influence them is critical to the growth of your business.Basic reporting by the rented sites may appear adequate, but only till the time you are not aware of what you are missing out on. These sites fall short on telling you about where the visitors came from, were they from your partner sites, how many were from your market, how much time they spent at the site, etc.
Fortunately, there are many third parties, primarily Google, that offer different tracking tools for free which you can use in your own website. Tools like Google Analytics gives real data on your website like number of site visits, page views, bounce rates, etc. These data are really helpful in strategy formulations.
Mobile Experience of your Law Firm’s Website Most websites including the legal ones, witness about 50% of their traffic from mobile devices. It is therefore imperative to have a responsive website for your law firm. It attracts more traffic and increases your credibility with search engines like Google. The biggest drawback of rented websites is their inability to retain a website design on mobile devices. They are mobile friendly but not responsive. The user experience is remarkably different in mobile devices and desktops. Additionally, some features might also be excluded in the mobile version. It basically means that mobile users get below par experience as compared to desktop users.
Custom websites on the other hand, are built to perform just as effectively on a mobile device as it does on a desktop. Your law firm website development is done in a way that it is easy to navigate and is as appealing as on a desktop. The responsive design of the website easily adapts to the different screen sizes of the mobile devices without making any compromises in design or content.
