Best Mobile Designs for Lawyers
According to DataReportal’s April 2023 Global Statshot Report, internet users globally now spend 57% of their online time on mobile. So, when you post a piece of content on your law firm website, just over half the people who consume it will do so on their phones or tablets, rather than their laptops or desktops.
You may not realize it, but there are specific considerations you need to keep in mind when it comes to your mobile site. If you ignore them, both your search engine performance and your mobile user experience will suffer.
That’s why it’s so important to have a website that is mobile friendly. Your site needs to be fast, secure, and easy to use, and it should provide your contact information immediately. Links and buttons need to be large enough that users can easily tap them with a thumb or finger without accidentally clicking on something else. Text should arrange itself neatly on the screen and be in a large enough font that scrollers don’t have to squint.
Mobile web users are notoriously impatient; if they don’t see the value in your website within 10 seconds, they’ll probably be gone.
How the Best Mobile Designs for Lawyers Use Responsive Programming
Most mobile-friendly attorney websites are programmed to be “responsive” – meaning that the size, orientation, and placement of on-page elements automatically adjust to the size of the visitor’s device. However, many older law firm websites still lack any dedicated mobile-friendly version. If this is your situation, you need to prioritize fixing it.
Even if your site is designed to be responsive to device types, you should still test your web pages on different devices to ensure they’re all appearing as they’re supposed to. If any issues arise, you should be able to address them on a case-by-case basis.
Mobile-friendly websites are responsive, meaning the size, orientation, and placement of on-page elements automatically adjusts to the user’s device.
This is important, first and foremost, for user-experience reasons; you want your website visitors to be able to navigate your website and read your content easily. However, it will also have a big impact on your SEO.
Google has announced the introduction of mobile-first indexing. Under this system, the search engine “predominantly uses the mobile version of a site’s content … for indexing and ranking.” So, if you’re not optimizing your site content for mobile consumption, you cannot realistically hope to consistently outrank competitors who are doing so.
How to Tell Whether Mobile Websites for Lawyers Are Performing Well
Luckily, it’s not too difficult to figure out whether your website’s mobile presence is up to scratch — just visit it using your smartphone. When doing so, consider the following:- How fast does your page load? Time it! According to a 2023 study by Website Builder Expert, the average load time for pages with the best SERP results is 1.65 seconds. We discuss the importance of page speed in more detail below.
- Do text and images pop up quickly and clearly, or are they fuzzy, mottled and sometimes missing?
- Are your firm’s phone number and location immediately obvious, or do you have to hunt around for them?
- Can you easily navigate between pages on your site by clicking buttons with your finger, or do you frequently click links you weren’t intending to or miss the buttons altogether?
- Can you read the text easily, or do you have to squint?
- Do you feel annoyed or energized by the overall experience?
How to Avoid Slow Loading Speeds on Mobile
One of the biggest killers of mobile website performance is slow loading. Google has confirmed that page speed is one of the factors it considers when ranking search results. Luckily, there are several relatively quick and straightforward steps you can take to address issues with loading speed, such as:- Optimizing images: Large images slow your website down. However, you can reduce the file size of your images without impacting how they look onscreen by compressing them and using the correct image format.
- Enabling browser caching: This temporarily saves some of your files on your visitors’ devices so that they don’t have to re-download everything every time they visit your site.
- Minimizing HTTP requests: Too many HTTP requests can slow down your site; you can minimize the number of requests by limiting the number of scripts, images, and CSS files on your web pages.
- Using a content delivery network (CDN): CDNs store copies of your site at multiple data centers around the world. This allows users to download files from the server closest to them, which can speed up load times.
- Loading above-the-fold content first: This technique, also known as lazy loading, can speed up your perceived load time. It involves loading only the content that’s needed for the initial display and then progressively loading the rest.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes. The idea of responsive design is that it should provide an optimal viewing and interactive experience across a variety of devices. However, it’s important to note that a user’s experience on tablets and smartphones may differ significantly, and this has important implications for the way you design your website. To ensure all your website visitors have a positive experience, you should test your pages on a variety of devices and address any inconsistencies that arise.
Yes, there are several tools that can be useful for testing the loading speed of your web pages, including Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, Uptrends, WebPage Test, and Varvy Pagespeed Optimization.
Yes. If your website does not have a responsive design that translates well to mobile devices, Google’s mobile-first indexing method will punish it. Also, poor mobile design can lead to a high bounce rate, which means a large percentage of your visitors will leave without interacting with your website.
If your website has a log-in portal for clients or potential clients, social autofill allows them to log in without manually filling in their username and password. This can greatly add to user experience; research shows that people frequently leave sites due to forgotten login information.
Yes. A call to action can help you turn leads into clients, particularly if you use phrasing that humanizes the process. For instance, rather than labeling the contact button “Click” or “Submit,” consider naming it “Get Started” or “Let’s Talk.” You should place these buttons in several locations across your site, making it as easy as possible for potential clients to schedule a consultation with you.
This depends on your firm’s individual needs and resources. However, as a general guideline, it’s recommended that you refresh your site every 2-3 years and perform minor updates or tweaks as often as you need to. This keeps the site modern, relevant, and in line with the latest technological and design trends. More frequent updates should be made for functionality, usability improvements, content updates, and SEO. Regular reviews and analytics tracking can help determine when updates are necessary.
Videos and interactive content, such as animations or complex forms, can indeed slow down your mobile website if not properly optimized. This is because they have large file sizes and require more processing power to load and run, which can result in slower page loading times. This can be especially problematic for mobile users who may not always have stable internet connections. However, you can still utilize interactive content and video on your site as long as you optimize properly, use lazy loading, and implement regular performance testing. You should also consider using a hosting platform like YouTube for your videos, rather than hosting them on your own server.
