How Top Attorneys Use Their Websites to Build Trust With Prospective Clients

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Trust is important in every industry and business. But when it comes to the relationship between an attorney and their client, it’s invaluable. And in today’s modern, digitized world, much of the trust-building process takes place online before you ever shake hands with a client. Having said that, are you taking full advantage of your website?

Why Trust Matters

There are dozens of elements that directly or indirectly play a role in the health and well-being of a relationship, but trust is, without a doubt, the primary influencing factor in the success of any relationship – especially a client relationship.

Trust lays the foundation for autonomy, open communication, effective collaboration, and mutual respect. With it, you’re able to serve your clients well, earn repeat business/referrals, and build a strong and sustainable practice. Without it, you’ll find it difficult to bring on new clients. And when you do, your ability to serve your clients will be undermined by feelings of uncertainty, bitterness, and skepticism.

Initially, trust is established through a variety of mediums and actions, including a combination of pre-existing reputation, first impressions, face-to-face interactions, digital interactions, and branding. Over time, trust increases or diminishes based on your interactions with the client and the results you achieve for them.

Leveraging Your Law Firm Website to Build Trust

As a 21^st-century attorney, your law firm website is one of the first elements of your brand that a prospective client experiences. Thus, it plays an influential role in your ability to establish trust. Here are a few tangible ways you can do just that: 

• Implement association badges. There’s a transitive property to credibility. If you’re able to align yourself with authoritative brands and individuals, you can actually establish a higher degree of trust with your audience. It’s as if some of their credibility rubs off on you. One way to do this is by implementing association badges and logos of any publications or journals where you’ve been featured into your website design. 

• Use client testimonials. Prospective clients want to know what you’ve done for past clients. Consider integrating client testimonials into your website to show visitors success stories. The more personal details and data points you can implement, the better.

• Utilize video content. The human brain processes visuals much faster and more efficiently than textual content. Take advantage of this fact by implementing video into your website. As Blumenshine Law Group shows on their auto accident recovery page, video has a way of putting people at ease and making them feel comfortable in what’s otherwise a very frustrating situation. 

• Nix stock photos. Visuals are good, but they need to be genuine. Get rid of all the cheesy stock photos on your website and replace them with high-resolution images of you and your team. Don’t have any? Pay a professional photographer to shadow your team for a day. You’ll have plenty of content to work with. 

• Use a second person voice. So many law firms use third-person voice, which is simply too corporate and cold. Use a second person voice and your website visitors will feel as if you’re speaking directly to them.

• Make it about the client. One of the worst things you can do with a law firm website is make it all about you. (If you want to know the truth, people don’t care about you. They care about what you can do for them.) By shifting your focus to the client and their needs, wants, desires, and pain points, you reframe your value and position yourself as the guide they need to get from an undesirable state to a state of happiness. That’s where the magic happens. 

In a day and age where social media, paid advertising, landing pages, and information products seize a lot of the attention and focus, it’s easy to forget about your website. However, the law firm website continues to play a central role. The sooner you prioritize it, the better your results will be. 

Trust Goes Beyond a Website 

Your website is important, but it’s just one ingredient in the trust recipe. If you want to build your firm and establish lifelong relationships with your clients, you must prioritize trust in every medium and at every touchpoint. This includes digital exchanges, as well as offline interactions.