How effective your law firm website is in generating leads and nurturing those leads to become clients depends on how successful you are at identifying and speaking to your prospects’ “point of pain” — i.e., the problem they need your help in solving.

You don’t have much time to engage them — a few seconds is all it takes for someone to visit your site, find nothing immediately relevant and move on. So you need to grab them from that first moment they land on your home page.

Here are four things those prospects want to know — and what you need to ensure they see — when they visit your website home page:

#1: You practice the kind of law I need.  Whatever type of law you practice should be spelled out clearly and be one of the first things a visitor to your website sees.

#2: You understand my problem.  Get all the lawyer words off your site and speak to your prospect in their language so that they understand that you understand.  This builds trust.  And if they don’t trust you, they won’t do business with you.

#3: You have the knowledge I need to solve my problem.  Lots of law firm websites have information that clients want to know hidden under a “Reference” or “Resources” tab.  This is important stuff to prospects; don’t make them hunt for it.

#4: I understand the benefits and value I will receive if I work with you.  This is a tough one for most lawyers because they don’t really understand the benefits of working with their firm, so you have to spend some time really giving this some thought.  Look at the testimonials you have gathered and glean from those what really means something to your clients.  Using terms like, “We care” is both trite and commonplace.  Get to the meat of the matter.

In addition, check your site for these features — having them incorporated into your site can double your Internet and website leads:

Onsite optimization. If you don’t know SEO, then this is definitely something you need to farm out. Your title tags should reflect what each page’s content is about and each one should be unique to the content on that page. Have page headers (i.e., “Phoenix Car Accident Attorney”) that represent each page’s content, as Google will pull that up in search results. Have meta descriptions that motivate prospects to click on your link in search results. Be sure your images are titled for search. Pay attention to your URL structure and be sure the terms in the URL represent the focus of each page on your website.

Strong content.   When it comes to content, more is better and better is better. So what is good quality content? It all depends on your user. What is your prospective client going online to find? Probably not a laundry list of your accomplishments (although you do want that too). They are looking for usable information that is relevant to their situation. FAQs are a great way to accomplish this, with quick links to even more detailed content on that particular subject. For example, if you are a personal injury attorney, you will want to have content for every type of accident your prospects are likely to encounter — car, truck, bicycle, motorcycle, pedestrian, etc.

Market like a news publisher. Did you know that you could hang just about everything you do on the Internet (marketing-wise) to a great blog? A blog is the best way for lawyers to establish their credibility and build an online reputation that will help draw potential clients to you. Here’s how it works:

• Create a blog on your website

• Post to it 3-5 times per week with relevant, original content

• Link your blog posts to your social media profiles and pages

• Watch your traffic and search results improve

Great mobile experience. Mobile platforms have now surpassed desktop computers in terms of where consumers access online content. And if you do not have a website that is optimized for mobile, then you are letting leads fall through your fingers. Consumer attorneys especially need to have mobile websites, since it is far more likely your services will be needed when a mobile device is the only convenient one at hand.  Research shows that 40% of mobile searches are local, and 81% of those searches lead to action — a phone call or email to your firm.

Local search. Local search is becoming increasingly important when trying to improve the ranking for your law firm website on Google and other search engines. After all, someone searching for an attorney in Scottsdale will not care about a lawyer in Scarsdale…and Google knows that. Google is all about delivering relevant search results to its users…hence, the importance of doing whatever you can to rank well for local search.

Updated photography and bios. Every attorney on your website should have a current photo; to make the quality consistent, you should have custom photography taken. Consider making it unique by having more casual shots taken outdoors at local landmarks people will recognize.   Make your bio a narrative, not a resume. Frankly, your prospect doesn’t care where you want to law school or that you were on the rowing team — leave that for the end of the bio. And always include videos on your site! This gives prospects a true feel for what it’s like to do business with you.

Easy to contact. On every page of your website you should have three ways for people to contact you: your phone number prominently displayed at the top of your site (in the header), a contact form that people can fill out that asks for their name, email or phone and a Comments box, and a Live Chat function that allows a prospect to chat online with someone immediately. Our clients tell us some of their best and hottest leads are chat leads and many are converting into good cases.