Law Office Website Review and Optimization Case Study [Video]

A website is often the first impression that a person has of your company. If a user is looking for a resolution to a product or service need, is your website equipped to convince them that you're the best business for the job?

Will the design of your site help or hurt your chances? Are you adequately promoting and selling your products, services or even lead generation assets?

In this blind case study video, we're going to look at Alfano Law Office of Concord, New Hampshire and what we think they could do to improve the sales- and lead generation-effectiveness of their website.

Video transcription:

Today we're going to do a live case study looking at the digital marketing and website optimization for - let's see here, I'll pick one of these attorneys listed on our New Hampshire Business Ranking page - I'll pick Alfano Law Office.

So, let's go ahead and go to that. Let's take a step back and do a quick search for them.

We can check out their search results. Real quick, it looks like they have some meta tags set up, site links, I can see the social media pages, a couple LinkedIn pages.

It looks like, I wonder if this is the same company - Alfano Law Firm - maybe that's a different company. So, that's interesting. They might be from somewhere else. I see some other business pages.

They have a Google Business page but it looks like it's not very well filled out. There's ratings which is good - look to be pretty thin, could even be fake, but they have a few and they're good for the most part.

Let's go check out their website. Real quick, as I visit the site I'm trying to get some first impressions here. There is some basic templating where we have the content on the left and sidebar on the right. I wonder if this is a WordPress site. Let me see with my BuiltWith extension here.

Let's see - yeah, Yoast is a WordPress plugin so we can tell this is a WordPress site. They might be using a free template from WordPress which is fine. They could update the design a little bit. On the sidebar, maybe they could update the alert signup a bit. I'm not able to tell what the newsletter is about.

Are they sharing valuable information? Why should I sign up as a user? This should be described a bit better.

Allobar strategies, is that another company that they operate? Then there are some more links, some more links to articles, more links ... so, yeah, I would clean this up. It's kinda distracting on the home page. What am I looking at?

The main section contains some good information about who they are. It gets right into what they offer, what their mission is, what their basis is in, their experience is in. My first thought, though, when I'm a user is what can you do for me? So, it's great that you're experienced in these ways, but if I'm looking for a particular type of attorney, or some type of service - or basically, what do I do? Here's all this information about you, but do I call one of the numbers up top here, or visit you in the office?

You want to be very direct - you're on our website and we want you to do this. That might look like a large image banner with text in the middle saying something direct like "If you're interested in help for a work-related dispute, contact us today". Something that would be right to the point.

Otherwise, this information on the home page is good to have. I would just focus on the user. Yes, the user would want to know this information about you, but maybe after they've already taken a look and considered one of the services that you offer.

It looks like we do have some services listed here - real estate law and estate planning. So, I guess that's what they focus on specifically. I'm not an attorney so I'm just kinda browsing the content from a baseline user's perspective. Someone that has no idea and is looking for a company like Alfano to help.

I clicked on "Road Law" and can see that they say they're a recognized authority. They have a lot of good content about that. I guess there are some things about the design. I try to steer away from picking apart the design as much as I can, because design can be a 99% waster of time when it comes to a website. Overly tweaking of colors, sizes of fonts, etc.

Really, that's not going to move the needle a whole lot when it comes to the impact that the website will have on your business.

We talked about the sidebar already, but some of this content - maybe it's still a text-heavy page, but perhaps the way it's broken out. It's good that they have some headlines and lists, but if we just want to scan the page real quick. Some supporting images might be helpful.

I do like how they have the information and that at the bottom is a call to action. A strong headline with a phone number and email. I love that there are options. Some people like to call and some like to email. And it's great that you know who you're talking to. If I click on this link for Paul - I see a picture of him and some more information. That's great.

Users want to have as much information as possible before they actually need to talk to someone. We can all be introverted. We all like to do our own research, so the more that you can provide the user so that they're prepared for what they're about to step into is definitely a positive.

So, overall, good information. What else can we find? Let's look at estate planning real quick. Very similar-type page which is fine. We talked about the design, but it's kinda nice that it's very similar. In this case, it's identical with the content on the left and the sidebar on the right.

That's a positive in this case because as a user I don't have to get used to a different-looking page and try to figure out where I'm going.

I'm going to go down to the footer. Very basic. Social media links are fine. If you're going to include those, then include those at the bottom of the page or off to the side somewhere.

It's a secondary thing - we don't want to send people away from our website to social media, right? Social media's purpose is to bring people to our website.

Let's look at some of their articles real quick to see what they do for content creation. I don't see any dates so I'm not sure how often they're posting. It looks like a decent article - maybe 500 to 700 words? I like how the paragraphs are short and they use a lot of headlines. That's great for being able to scan the content on the page.

Let me just click on one more - similar-sized article - 600 words or so.

Let me look at the contact us page. Same layout here with the content on the left and sidebar on the right. More information even if you want to visit them in person so that's great. Or you can just contact Paul.

I think that having a form is still a good idea even if you have an email address. Some people may not feel like they know Paul and may not want to send him a very direct, almost personal email. They might feel more comfortable taking a step back and submitting a form which very well might go straight to Paul, or go to an administrator or secretary who would take this and forward it to the correct person.

I think that's great to include all those options and if you're willing to still include a phone number that's great.

I see another link for that newsletter. I wish there was a bit more information about what it was. Yeah, it's just a simple Constant Contact signup form. I think it's great that they have that lead generation tactic where they're able to capture emails and names and all that. I just wish they would maybe sell it a bit more.

Maybe they're getting some signups, but could probably could get a bunch more if they sold it - explain what it is, what the value is that will be received.

Let me just take a look at another page or 2. I think these are all probably going to be the same as far as the design is concerned.

The calendar page - same layout, just a list of dates which is fine. Honestly, when different clients envision having a calendar, they often want to have a visually-looking calendar, and I think that's actually a negative if they can't fill that calendar.

In which case, having a list of dates like this or something similar is more than enough.

Looking at the about us page - more information about them - different links to different sections. And another CTA to Paul at the bottom.

My thoughts are that the site is fine. The design could certainly use some tweaks here or there. It could be modernized, but everything is clear. I can read everything very well - very easily. I love the headlines, lists and HTML that we can see in the text. It makes it very easy to read.

The sidebar is kinda irrelevant - unclear. I think when you're an attorney, or any business, really, the design does have a level of importance. It's often the first impression that you have on a visitor.

So, if you're looking at a website that maybe has some things that as a user you've been to thousands of websites and you see stuff like the long sidebar - let me be clear, this isn't terrible. But if you want to have a more buttoned-up, professional, modern, clean website, and leave an awesome impression on a visitor, you may want to clean up some of these things.

I think this website for Alfano is good - good content from what I can see. Lastly, I would just say, again, the home page could maybe be focused more on the user. When a user visits the website, what do you want them to do? Do you want them to contact you about real estate law, estate planning? If that's what you want them to do then that's what they need to see first - before information about you.

Because we want the user to do something. We don't want the user to just learn about Alfano. That's fine, but we're not in the business of running our website just for informational purposes. We want our users to learn about what we offer for real estate law. What we offer for estate planning.

Then, once we've grabbed your attention and helped you take the next step in our "sales funnel", we'll sell you on why we are the company to help you handle your situation.

That's my 2-cents for the Alfano Law Office website! Please let me know if there's a business that you'd like me to review next! Thanks.