Attorney John Hooge already had an attractive website. After some months of work with a local phone company’s SEO program, they had seen changes in their rankings, but they weren’t seeing much change in their conversions from the website — the actual business coming to them from the website.
It can be very hard to measure the results of website optimization. Nowadays, most customers have probably visited your website before they call your company, and they’re not likely to say how they found you if they did something as ordinary and obvious as look you up online. Years ago, someone told me that businesses often don’t realize the value of their websites unless they take them down; nowadays, businesses rarely decide to give up their websites, so they may carry on for years with a vague feeling that their website might not be working as hard as it should.
But this company’s site showed some clear opportunities for optimization, so Kansas design company TitusD invited us to join them in an optimization project. Darren Moore of TitusD had designed the site originally, and the overall design was fine. The clients had done their own content, though, and that needed some work.
The updated website is shown at left. It features a rotating gallery that speaks to customers at several points in the decision making process. The first banner, shown above, has a photo of the attorney and basic information about the practice, with a large “Contact Us” directly above the banner. For people looking for Mr. Hooge because they’ve heard of him, this may be enough to bring them to contact his office.
The second banner, on the right, speaks to the customer who has an immediate need for the main kind of work Mr. Hooge undertakes. The image and the text encourage visitors who are considering bankruptcy to click through.
When they do so, they’ll see the page below.This page provides a good deal of information in a comforting tone, and has a strong call to action, both in the form of a button for a “FREE initial consultation” and in a form visitors can fill out. This form is also on the homepage for return visitors. This page also has a weaker call to action for those who aren’t quite ready to share much personal information: a newsletter subscription which lets Mr. Hooge keep in touch.
The third banner in the rotation speaks to people who are worried about their financial position but not yet ready to call a lawyer.
Just as the first banner helps people looking for Mr. Hooge get in touch right away and the second banner directs those looking for a bankruptcy lawyer in general toward Mr. Hooge in particular, this banner provides information for people at this earlier stage of “shopping” for a solution to financial problems. Mr. Hooge and his associate, a credit counselor, do a regular radio broadcast. This banner encourages people to listen to that broadcast, and also leads them down to the podcasts of that show below the banner.
Some listeners may find the podcast helpful enough that they won’t need either counseling or bankruptcy. Those who still need those services will already have been helped by Mr. Hooge’s office in the form of information, so it will be natural for them to return to him. Having heard the voices of the people there, they will feel more comfortable in making the initial call or filling out the form.
The rest of the page below the banner not only includes podcasts, but also testimonials, links to blog posts answering questions Mr. Hooge’s clients are likely to have, and helpful links to further information. There’s a list of Mr. Hooge’s affiliations to reassure visitors about his qualifications, and a contact form for those who scroll down to the bottom of the page and may be ready, at that point, to take action.
The new site has more informative pages inside, but the homepage definitely does its job:
- It provides valuable information, both about the business and about the services offered.
- It speaks to people at several different points along the path toward their decisions.
- It gives multiple opportunities for visitors to become customers.
- It has enough to do and to learn that visitors are likely to come back.
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