Is your law firm getting the most from its website?
If it’s something that was put up as an afterthought at the firm’s founding, then the answer is probably not. Maybe now is the time you’re thinking about a serious upgrade in your digital marketing. If that’s the case, then you need to learn more about how law firms can use Google Analytics.
The first step is to answer a basic existential question—why does your website exist? It seems like a safe guess to say that you want more leads, whether it’s people filling out a form online or picking up their phone and calling. Assuming that, the next step is to take a look at your site’s current content and ask another basic question—is this a buy site or an about site?
A “buy site” is clearly driven towards pushing users to become customers. An “about” site is focused on providing them with information—maybe on important legal topics or maybe just about you and your firm.
There’s nothing wrong with that; ”about” sites can generate significant traffic and the person that wants information today might be looking for a lawyer tomorrow. But you need to understand the distinction and know where your website fits in. You can then make a decision if you want to keep your current content and configuration or make a change.
Now it’s time to dig into Google Analytics and start measuring how people use your website. The full scope of this is the subject of entire certification programs run by Google, but you can simplify it with these 3 steps.
Set up goals and conversions
The overall amount of site traffic is a nice stat, but it’s really not meaningful to your business goals. What’s noteworthy is how many people are taking the actions you want them to take. Are they clicking on the “Contact Us” page which has the form you want to be filled out? Are they scrolling their browsers over the phone number? Or if there’s a specific piece of content you’re highlighting, are they checking it out? Analytics allows you to specifically track these goals.
Know where the traffic is coming from
A person who enters your domain name directly into their browser is entirely different from one who found one of your pages in a search engine listing. The latter is almost certainly going to be an “about” visitor, just looking for information on a specific topic. If you have a good number of these, that can affect your decision on whether to create a newsletter sign-up or a Google Ads remarketing campaign as a way of keeping in touch.
Find out where people drop off and after how long
Let’s go back to those people finding you through a Google search. Take a look at the number of pages they visit on the website. If it’s just the one page, you can look at ways to keep them searching around—like a “related articles” feature. If they drop off the site in less than a minute, you might want to review the content and find out if it’s truly useful in answering someone’s question.
In today’s digital marketplace, you can’t afford to waste website visitors. Google Analytics helps you use your online space efficiently.
