4 helpful ways to get website visitors to trust your law firm
Building trust through your website is crucial to your firm's online success. We have found that "walking the talk," using social proof, transparency, and showing off your awards can all help build trust with your website visitors.
How do you get website visitors to trust your law firm within the few seconds they're on your site? The short answer is to use scannability and psychology to persuade visitors with the information they care about most.
In this article, we'll go over four critical pieces of information that get website visitors to trust your law firm:
- Your values
- Social proof
- Awards and accolades
- Transparency
Walking the talk with your values
Your website is a reflection of your reputation. Your reputation is a reflection of your values. It's not enough to talk about your values on your website. Everyone says they are trustworthy, value their clients, or offer a white-glove experience. You need to walk the talk.
To give you an example, if one of your values is precision, then your website needs to be accurate, grammar error-free, and clean. It needs to be purposeful and intentional.
If you value helping your community, show it. Use friendly language and have pictures to back it up.
The attributes and characteristics of your website need to align with what you're claiming your values are.
Social proofÂ
Social proof is a phenomenon where people assume others' actions in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. A great example of social proof is Google reviews.
How do people find lawyers? Well, some google, "Best lawyer near me," and compare the first few at the top of the page. They might ask themselves, "What's their rating? What have people said about them?" These are common internal questions they'll ask when looking at your reviews. "Do people trust this firm? If so, then it's probably safe to trust them."
If you're looking for more info about this, HubSpot has a great article on local SEO statistics and how it relates to social proof.
Awards and accoladesÂ
Similar to social proof, awards and recognitions help potential clients decide to hire you or not. For example, Avvo helps people find experienced lawyers that meet the platform's specific qualifications and ratings. At a glance, seeing a law firm with awards and recognitions helps visitors decide if you're reputable reasonably quickly, even if they are unfamiliar with the specific award.
The downside is awards, accolades, and recognition have become an industry-standard in law. Every lawyer has them, so not having them could lose trust with visitors.
Transparency
Nothing builds trust like showing your hand. Put all of your cards on the table so everyone can see. People are always want to know how much your services cost, what your process is like, and if they know you can help them.
Having information on your website that points to common customer concerns can build trust. An FAQ page is excellent for providing this type of information quickly.
Being transparent can also save time and give you more accurate conversions. By displaying your sensitive information, like pricing, you gate people who cannot afford you. It's better they know they cannot afford you while on your site before they call you. It saves everyone time.
However, if you have a referral strategy in place, then being transparent about pricing and other factors might not be needed since you'd still be able to help regardless of what they can afford.
Don't go nuts
Most firms do not need to redo their site to build trust with their visitors. From what we've seen, it usually takes focusing on one of the four areas mentioned above. An easy place to start is determining if your messaging aligns with your values.
