Practice Area Pages: What You Need to Know and How to Make Them Perfect
September 18th, 2020 / Kelly / Reading Time: 3minutes
Practice Area Pages
Your website is one of the most important aspects of your lawyer website design. It’s important to make sure each of the pages of your site is accomplishing your goals. If any of the pages, including the practice areas page, fall short, it’s costing you potential clients.
The overall goal of a practice area page is to show potential clients:
What you do
How you do it
Who you can help
Why they should hire you
The information needed to do this seems pretty straightforward. But when it comes to creating the page, questions tend to arise. For instance:
Should you make your firm’s unique features stand out from the competition?
Are there things I need to do to make the page ethically compliant?
How “sales-y” should I be?
Do I address frequently asked questions about practice areas on the page or should I direct potential clients elsewhere?
Truthfully, the so-called right answers to these questions vary from firm to firm. What works on a practice area page for one lawyer website design might not work for others.
The key to creating a successful practice areas page is to incorporate certain elements that are necessary for all firms and then tailor the page for your specific firm.
What Does Every Practice Area Page Need?
Start by focusing on a page that includes the two most important elements every practice area page should have. This includes:
List of Services Offered by Your Firm
A bulleted list of practice areas is an organized and concise way to give potential clients a lot of information in a short time. It’s an easy way to see your firm’s areas of practice.
You’ll want to limit the list to about five to seven items if possible and order them alphabetically to make them easier to process. It’s also a good idea to link each item on the list to a page that goes more in-depth on each area. These are practice area subpages. They’re your opportunity to really go into detail and show potential clients you’re an expert in your field.
Lawyer Website Design Options
Next, you can break down the practice area pages in a bit more detail. Do this by explaining what your firm has to offer.
For instance, if you’re a divorce attorney who offers mediation services for divorcing couples, include a paragraph on why couples consider mediation over litigation. If you handle drunk driving cases, offer information about license restoration, potential defenses, and expungement.
This section serves to further explain what your firm does, but doesn’t go into the extreme detail someone would find if they clicked the links to take them to the pages on your site that explain what you offer.
These brief descriptions should include a call to action that encourages a reader to learn more or to reach out to you.
Stand Out from the Competition
Now that you’ve got the basic components of a practice area page, you can tailor the page to fit into your lawyer website design. The goal here is to make your firm stand out from the competition and tell potential clients why you’re the best option. Just as you should do on your About Us page and other pages, make sure you tell clients why your firm is an expert in a given field.
The page should have a section that speaks directly to your ideal clients. It should address their concerns and tell them how your firm can put them at ease. This part of the page needs a personal touch and should demonstrate your understanding of the needs of your clients.
If you’re not clear on how to turn those needs into a welcome to readers, think about questions you hear in your initial meeting with clients. What are their greatest fears and concerns? Making them feel comfortable with your ability starts by letting them know you can ease these concerns.
Finally, like all of the pages on your site, the practice area page should close with a call to action. This doesn’t need to be a hard sales pitch. It just needs to let readers know what they should do next.
Lawyer Website Design Consultation
Designing a website that appeals to your ideal client takes a lot of work. Creating detailed practice area pages that ensure you are reaching the right audience is a great place to begin to make improvements. To learn more or to speak to someone who can help you with your lawyer website design, contact 888-480-3585 or sign up for a free consultation.
