Law Firms Websites Profit or Cost?

Law Firms Websites

Profit or Cost?

Hampshire Inc. Law Society


7 February 2006


David Gilroy

Introduction

•
What’s it for anyway?

•
How a website fits into your “systems”

•
Cross
-
selling via email marketing

•
Content management systems. Why are they
important?

•
Why is good content on your website so
important?

•
Search engine optimisation and marketing

•
How much did you make from your website
last year? How do you know?

Law Firms’ Systems

Website

CRM

PMS/DMS

Accounts

This is the
problem
area for
most firms

What can your site do?

•
New Business

–
The EasyJet effect

–
Search engines

–
Support the brand

–
Staff profiles

–
News and content

–
Online tools e.g.
conveyancing calculator


•
Client Service

–
Online case
management

–
Cross selling via email
newsletters

–
Added value content

–
PMS integration

–
Intranet integration

–
Online credit card
payments



20%




80%

Technology

•
Content Management System

•
User Registration

•
Email Marketing Engine

•
Links Directory

•
Audio Technology

•
Staff Directory

•
Conveyancing Calculator

•
Poll

•
Search Engine

•
Statistics

•
Legacy Giving Module

•
PI Wizard (coming)

•
PMS integration (coming)


Content

•
Why?

–
Helps with the easyJet Effect.

–
Shows that you are “up to date”.

•
Who?

–
In
-
house

–
Sub
-
contract

•
What?

–
Legal news

–
PR

–
Reference information


Newsletters
–

print v email

Print

•
Costly

•
You’re CRM can be a bit
hit and miss

•
Some clients still like
holding things in their
hand

•
Long lead time to
produce


Email

•
Cheap

•
Needs accurate CRM to
target clients

•
Do people really read
them? Do they open and
print or scan on
-
screen?

•
Quick to produce. Base it
on content already on the
website


Print v Email Cost Comparison

Cost Item
Print
Email
No of Clients
5,000
5,000
Buy In Newsletter
2,500
Buy in Content
350
Time to assemble (8 hours)
160
Contract out stuffing
500
Postage, envelope etc.
1,250
Total Cost Per Issue
4,250
510
Number of issues per year
3
3
Email Marketing Tool
1,200
Annual Total
12,750
2,730
Search Engines

Search Engine Marketing

•
Pay Per Click (PPC)

•
Pay Per Call (Touch)

•
Yell, Waterlow, Touch,
Law Society


Search Engine Optimisation

•
Optimising the content of
each page.

•
<title> field

•
Meta tags

•
Position of text on the page

•
Heading styles (H1, H2 etc)

•
Domain name

•
Number and quality of
inbound links

•
No “all Flash” sites

Yellow Pages v PPC

Annual
Cost

Leads
YTD

Billing YTD

Yellow Pages

£2,300

8

>£5,000

PPC

£1,032

10

>£10,000





Final Q&A

Fire away!