Everything About Web Analytics Best Practices

Ten years ago, most websites didn't use any web analytics when trying to attract customers.  Some law firms today have still been slow to catch up to web analytics best practices, and because of that, your firm can take advantage of web analytic services to get a leg up on your competition.  You can use this guide to start you on your web analytics journey—once you know more about the terminology and best practices involved, you'll be able to seek out more in-depth information.

Web Analytics Best Practices: Key Performance Indicators and Goals

When you invest in web analytic services, one of the first things that you need to think about is what defines success for your law firm's website.  What are you hoping to generate with your website's content?  Are you hoping for clients to fill out an online contact form or call your offices?  Identifying these goals can help you understand which metrics should be considered your key performance indicators (KPIs).  

You should use caution in deciding what your KPIs should be.  While some law firms initially identify site visits as a KPI, most web analytic services will advise against this.  Total traffic doesn't really make a difference to your firm unless that traffic is converting into clients.  Web analytics best practices require you to give careful consideration to which metrics will really best represent your firm website's overall performance.

You also need to develop your goals for improvement.  While these goals will change over time (more on that later), web analytics best practices include identifying how much you want your KPIs to change, and to set clear dates for achieving those goals.  If you're having difficulty figuring out what reasonable goals would be, you may want to hire web analytic services to help you develop actionable goals.

Web Analytics Best Practices: Identifying Your Ideal Clients

One of the most important aspects of preparing for web analytics data is knowing what kind of client you're hoping to attract.  Every firm has a different ideal client, and if you're having a hard time articulating what kind of client is best for your firm, you should consult with web analytic services to get a better handle on your client goals.

When you have identified the demographics and desires of your ideal clients, you can begin to create a website that caters to those clients specifically.  If you hope to attract several different types of clients, current web analytics best practices avoid “one size fits all” websites and focus on differentiating the customer experience for each type of client.  

You may want one landing page or website to draw in clients looking to sue after a car accident, but a wholly different page for those who want to sue a doctor after a child was born with birth defects.  For every type of client, consider using different content to drive the maximum number of conversions—even if that means your web analytic services are designing several different websites for your firm.

Web Analytics Best Practices: Continuous Improvement

When you seek out web analytic services, you may initially be considering using these services for just a short time—perhaps long enough to do an overhaul of your website or see an uptick in conversions.  In order to get the most out of web analytic services, though, you'll want to stay with a service for a long period of time.  Web analytics best practices call for a process of continuous improvement that extends beyond a single site redesign.

Ideally, web analytic services can create a positive feedback loop for your law firm.  The more data that is generated by your website, the more that a service can help you to use web analytics best practices to revise your site, improve your search placement, and get the clients you want.  Every improvement can create new opportunities for even bigger goals, so there's no reason to stop with just a few months of analysis.

Web Analytics Best Practices: Testing and Experimentation

When people start to use web analytic services, they often want instant results.  To get the best results for your firm in the long term, though, web analytics best practices require you to work a little bit more slowly.  Taking your time to test hypotheses and experiment with your data can be the difference between a slight increase in client conversions and having as many calls as you can handle.

When you begin to test your hypotheses by creating new content, changing your advertising strategies, or redesigning your website, you gain a wealth

of data that can help you for years in the future.  Remember that even a failed experiment is still, in some ways, a success: knowing what not to do can often be nearly as valuable as knowing what to do.

Web Analytics Best Practices: Beyond the Click Stream

Web analytic services examine your website's “click stream”—the patterns of traffic flow within your site—using their analytics tools.  When you really want your website to shine, though, it's important to look beyond the click stream for improvements.  Conducting user surveys and demographic research as well as focus group testing is vital if you want to really key in on what customers want.  

Trying to figure this out through experimentation based solely in your click stream research can be a process of trial and error, with a lot more errors than successes.  Instead of guessing what your clients want, ask them—especially if what you've tried before hasn't seemed to work.

Web Analytics Best Practices: Time Management

One of the best pieces of advice for any law firm looking into web analytics is this: hire someone full-time, or hire web analytic services.  If you try to balance the time of a member your staff between web analytics and other critical services, odds are that they won't be able to use web analytics best practices and really give you the results you want.  Hiring web analytic services can be a good alternative for firms that don't want to have a full-time analytics guru on staff, but make sure you get to keep your data for future use if you use one of these services.

Everything About Web Analytics Analysis

Today, more people look for attorneys online than in the newspaper, phone book, television, and radio combined.  It takes more than just an accurate or frequently updated website to bring in clients today.  Doing web analytics analysis (not just reporting) can expand your law firm's client base and identify potential areas for website improvement.  Whether you're looking to reduce your web analytics bounce rate (the number of people who leave your website after just a quick glance) or want to know how to use analytics to develop your site for mobile web traffic, this guide can help.

The Difference Between Web Analytics Analysis and Reporting

Most law firm websites today, especially for larger firms, do some form of web analytics.  However, there's more than one way to use analytics tools, and the sad truth is that most firms aren't doing the best they could do with their information.  Instead of performing real web analytics analysis, many firms simply look at reporting tools without really understanding what the numbers say about their business.

Web analytics reporting is easy with today's software packages: you just make a few clicks, and you'll see a report on your dashboard that illustrates one or more metrics.  But web analytics analysis goes deeper: for example, instead of just finding out that you have a high web analytics bounce rate through reporting, you can analyze your bounce rate to see what's causing potential clients to leave.

Web Analytics Analysis: What Your Web Analytics Bounce Rate Says About You

One of the biggest website statistics that can stop law firms from implementing their marketing plans is the bounce rate—how many clients leave too soon to see enough content to convert.  When you want to reduce your web analytics bounce rate, it's important to know why your bounce problem is occurring if you want to come up with the right solution.  Guesswork leads to wasted time and effort, and web analytics analysis tools allow you to get to the real answer.

To figure out what's causing your bounce problem, here are some things to check.  The web analytics bounce rate can be measured in several ways.  The default for most web analytics analysis software is looking at clients who have visited only one page of your website.  But what if that doesn't represent your true web analytics bounce rate?  If someone stays for several minutes, watches a video on the first page, and then calls your firm using the phone number, that's not a bounce—it's a conversion.

In order to get a better view of what your true web analytics bounce rate is, consider looking at the difference between reports from the default “bounce rate” and those for site visitors who stay 10 seconds or less.  If the numbers are about the same, you can safely assume that the default represents your true bounce rate.  If clients are staying on one page for a long time before clicking away, though, you may want to focus on making calls to action or attractive links that keep potential clients clicking.

Lowering Your Web Analytics Bounce Rate

There are several ways to use web analytics analysis to lower the number of potential clients who bounce away.  Keep in mind that one of the biggest reasons that your web analytics bounce rate may be high is that your website is not sufficiently search engine optimized.  If a large number of people are arriving at your website through searches for irrelevant search terms, your web analytics bounce rate will increase every time they click and realize you're not what they're looking for.  Make sure to keep your content clean and focused on your firm's strengths, and verify that any keywords for PPC advertising are related to your firm's practice areas.

Another way to lower your web analytics bounce rate, if  your firm uses primarily PPC advertising, is to use negative keywords.  Web analytics analysis may show that a number of people are bouncing from your website after searching for (for example) “free divorce help in Phoenix.”  If you want to make money, you'll need to avoid paying for clicks from people seeking free services.  After you add some negative keywords (like “free” or “sliding scale”), you may see a significantly lower web analytics bounce rate.

If you still have a high bounce rate, odds are your content is the problem.  You may want to conduct user surveys or focus groups to help your web analytics analysis and find a content solution.  With some experimentation, you can usually significantly reduce the web analytics bounce rate through diligent analysis and creative problem-solving.

Lowering Your Web Analytics Bounce Rate for Mobile Traffic

The mobile revolution has significantly impacted web analytics analysis.  Within the next year, up to a quarter of all web traffic will come from mobile devices, and if your firm's not ready, you could see high web analytics bounce rates that just climb higher as time goes on.

The best way to make sure that your bounce rate stays low when clients search for a law firm on their phones is to redirect clients to a useable mobile site.  Don't neglect content on these mobile web pages: while you can make content more abbreviated in order to attract more mobile clients, if there's not enough quality information most people will still just leave.

It's particularly valuable for law firms to have mobile websites.  When a potential client searches in this way, they already have their phone in hand—and all it will take is a quick touch to call your firm.  This is the perfect environment for generating conversions, so make sure that any conversations your firm has about web analytics analysis includes mobile marketing.

Web Analytics Analysis: What Comes Next?

The biggest trends in web analytics today involve mobile traffic and social media marketing.  If your firm wants to get ahead of the competition, you need to keep updated about the latest web analytics analysis tools.  Because the field of web analytics has changed so much in just a few short years (very few analytics companies even existed a decade ago), consider analytics to be another area that will require continuing education if your firm is to continue to prosper in a web-centric era.

Everything About Social Media Marketing Services

Just a few years ago, the web wasn't much of a social arena, especially for lawyers.  Today, social is king: over 80 percent of law firms report some social media marketing activity.  Maximizing your marketing through social media can be tough, especially if the attorneys at your small firm aren't internet experts. Because of this, many firms today have turned to social media marketing services.  If you're not sure whether your firm could use a social media marketing service, read on: they may be even more useful than you think. 

Client Referrals and Marketing Through Social Media

Today, the online social media world has, to some degree, largely replaced the traditional social sphere for a number of potential clients of all ages.  Word of mouth referrals today are more likely than ever to come through Facebook or LinkedIn rather than an actual face to face conversation.  What this means is that marketing through social media can get you not only a loyal client base, but a loyal client base that tells their friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances about the quality of the legal services you offer. 

Business to business marketing is also much easier when you use social media marketing services.  Making connections on LinkedIn or Google Plus can be easier than in-person networking, and allows you to do a great deal of research on potential B2B connections that would be difficult or impossible without marketing through social media.

Why Would I Outsource to a Social Media Marketing Service?

When law firms start to look at marketing through social media, they often debate creating their social media presence in-house or using social media marketing services.  While some firms can afford to hire a full-time person to handle their marketing through social media, this is a luxury not every firm has.  If you can't get someone to do social media full-time, your next best option is a social media marketing service.  These services employ experts who know best practices for marketing through social media today.

When you outsource your social media presence to social media marketing services, you don't have to lose control of your brand.  A good social media marketing service will work with you to meet your goals, and won't stop you from changing your strategy when you need to (though they may advise against a strategy that goes against established practices).

Trying to do all of your marketing through social media in-house instead of using a social media marketing service can lead to big problems.  Juggling multiple responsibilities including social media marketing services can be very difficult for a law firm employee, especially since the social media world is in constant flux and requires constant continuing education to stay on top of new developments.

Blogging With a Social Media Marketing Service

In addition to managing your presence on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, many social media marketing services also offer blogging services.  Blogging is one of the best ways to increase the amount of quality, relevant content on your website, and can enhance your page rank in organic search results.

A social media marketing service can not only make sure that your blog is maintained and has fresh, interesting posts, but can also monitor comments and moderate any discussions that occur as a result of blog posts.  This can help your firm to interact with potential clients who have questions and aren't yet ready to make a phone call.  Maintaining a helpful, frequently updated blog is a form of marketing through social media that can generate a steady stream of new clients for your law firm.

Creating Your Brand with Social Media Marketing Services

The key to winning clients at any law firm is differentiating yourself from the competition—something a social media marketing service can make possible.  Too often, all law firms can look the same to potential clients.  Marketing through social media can change that, because the human factor makes a difference: for example, clients are up to 50 percent more likely to call a law firm that has videos on its website.  A social media marketing service can create a Facebook and Twitter presence for your firm that gives your brand a voice and an identity, making you seem different from your competitors and easier for potential new clients to talk to.

When you use social media marketing services, you can discuss your goals for marketing through social media.  A social media marketing service can help you to create a brand if you haven't done much with branding, or can help you to project an already existing brand image across a wide range of social media platforms.

Reputation Management with Social Media Marketing Services

One of the biggest reasons that law firms today hire a social media marketing service is to handle their online reputation.  If you've tried any marketing through social media, you may already know how quickly your reputation can suffer online.

Social media marketing services can monitor the reputation of your law firm across a wide range of websites, including common social media sites and ratings sites.  If you receive a negative review on a ratings site, your social media marketing service can get to the bottom of it: in some cases, it may have come from a competitor rather than a real client, and it may be able to be completely erased.  Social media marketing services can also help you to work on getting better reviews from clients, and give you good tips for asking clients to write a positive review.

Reputation management can also help you know when an action taken by your law firm may be drawing fire from your community.  This can be especially critical for firms handling cases involving sensitive matters relating to the finance community or for criminal defense attorneys.  Finding out early about a potential public relations issue can help you to do damage control right away, rather than waiting for it to spiral out of control.

Google, with its nearly 67 percent market share, is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the search engine marketing world.  It's no surprise, then, that Google profile directories are some of the biggest and most relevant directories for law firms to become a part of.  If you're not already using the Google profile directory as part of your marketing strategy, there are several reasons that you may want to change that.  Keep reading to learn more about how Google profile directories are already helping attorneys across the United States, and how you can get onboard.

What the Google Profile Directory is For

Google's goals involve becoming a market leader in a huge variety of tasks involving information gathering.  Google profile directories were made in a way that makes them scalable all the way up to becoming a sort of giant global telephone book.  By creating a Google profile directory entry, you make your business more easily searchable by people looking for you.

Google profile directories also are a valuable source of link juice for many businesses.  Because Google's own pages are often relatively high Page Rank pages, and because the search engine ranks its own pages higher in its search results, you can give yourself a search boost by becoming part of the Google profile directory.

Local Search and the Google Profile Directory

One of the most innovative aspects of the Google profile directories is that they allow businesses not only to include their location, but also to have those location results displayed on a map.  This means that Google profile directory users can find the businesses that are closest to them and that would be most convenient for them to drive to.

Currently, Google profile directories including Google Places have been renamed to Google+ Local.  However, Google+ has not been as successful as the tech giant had perhaps hoped.  This means that there's a strong possibility the Google profile directory could go through another name change in 2013 in order to better reflect the ways users are actually using the site.

Local searches now represent about 30 percent of overall searches, and a higher percentage of searches for attorneys.  You're much more likely to get conversions from clicks you get through Google profile directories and local search than from clicks you get from traditional search engine rankings.  This means the Google profile directory is a great time investment for any law firm that primarily draws its client base from a small local area.  Firms that have a very specific legal field but nationwide geographic practice focus may have a harder time drawing in users from Google profile directories.

Creating Your Profile

When you create a profile on the Google profile directory, you'll be asked for a substantial amount of information.  There's always a temptation to put in only barely as much as is required and say “we'll come back to it later and fill it out more completely.”  However, that's not really putting your best foot forward, and this kind of short-sighted thinking is no way to get started on your search engine marketing campaigns.  Fill out all the information in a way that makes your website inviting for potential clients to click on.  You want to portray yourself as informed and professional, but not too stuffy for people to contact freely.

Also, this should go without saying: double check all of your data before you submit the profile to Google profile directories.  You don't want to have your Google profile directory entry accidentally direct people to an incorrect phone number or address.  If people make a mistake based on the entries you've placed in Google profile directories, they're unlikely to become a client of your firm—who would want an attorney who wasn't detail oriented?

Maintaining Your Profile

If any aspect of your law firm changes, from the name to the phone number to the focus of your niche marketing efforts, you should update your Google profile directory entry.  Google profile directories aren't somehow updated automatically, and you will need to manually input any changes to your firm in order to make sure that your directory entry stays current for prospective clients.

Monitoring Reviews in the Google Profile Directory

One of the more interesting aspects of Google profile directories is that business profiles allow people to actually write reviews about businesses they've patronized in the past.  You should check your reviews in the Google profile directory at least once a week after you have created your directory entry.  Keep in mind that even one or two negative reviews, if they're particularly harsh, can make it much more difficult to get clients.  People today have a tendency to look for reviews before purchasing any products or services, especially when those services are expensive.

There's always a chance that some or even all of your negative reviews are not written by disgruntled clients, but rather by your disgruntled competitors.  If you suspect that a review is not actually from a customer, you can report the review.

Keep in mind that not all negative reviews are just from the jealous competition.  Be smart enough to respond in a positive and optimistic way to genuine negative reviews.  There's nothing that looks worse for a company than loading off all of the blame onto a client who had a bad experience.

Incorporating Google Profile Directory With Your Marketing Campaign

One of the smartest things you can do with Google profile directories is encourage your best past clients to post reviews.  If you've received negative reviews from real clients, this is your best way to make those reviews irrelevant.  Enough positive feedback will start to overwhelm the negative reviews until prospective clients simply don't listen as much to the negativity.  Ask your social networking contacts to give you a positive review if they've had a good experience at your firm—this can be a great way to help you generate inbound links and great reviews.  You can re-post the call for reviews every few months, so that new followers see it.
 

Yelp is one of the biggest websites for posting reviews of services all over the world, with over 50 million visitors a month visiting the site to check reviews while researching their purchases.  Yelp for lawyers can help with your law firm marketing and make it much easier to get new clients converting just based on your web presence.  This simple guide will help you understand some basic things to do and things to avoid when you're becoming part of the Yelp lawyer listings for the first time.

DO Take Charge of Your Own Yelp Destiny

Keep in mind that even if you're not among the legions of attorneys who have already become Yelp lawyers, clients can still post reviews of your firm on Yelp.  If you are a Yelp lawyer, on the other hand, with a full profile, you'll be able to check your reviews more easily and make sure that any reviews you get are the genuine article.

Don't let other people get to your profile before you do.  Yelp for lawyers works best when attorneys are taking charge of their pages and making sure that they contain correct information.  Yelp lawyer listings should be updated on a regular basis if your firm has any changes that could affect the accuracy of the information already contained in your profile.

DON'T Ever Post False Reviews on Other Profiles

When first using Yelp, lawyers often notice that some reviews are posted that don't appear to actually be from real clients.  This is one of the most deleterious parts of Yelp lawyer listings for attorney marketing, and you may think that posting reviews like that for your competitors would help you get ahead.

However, if you're found to be posting fake Yelp lawyer reviews, you could face severe disciplinary action from your state bar association.  This kind of conduct is considered extremely unethical, and on Yelp lawyers are expected to work only on their own profile rather than on profiles belonging to other firms or attorneys.

DO Solicit Reviews for Your Services on Social Networks

If you're already using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, you probably have some friends and followers who will click on just about any link you post.  If this is the case, try asking your social networking friends whether they'd be willing to contribute a Yelp lawyer review for you.

Often, the people you're connected with on a social network will be more willing than other clients to help you by giving positive reviews to help you better compete with other Yelp lawyers.

DON'T Solicit Reviews from Non-Clients

Even though your great aunt Sally and your roommate from college want very much to see your legal career succeed, it's never a good idea to solicit reviews for your Yelp lawyer profile from people who've never actually been on your client list.  Make sure that it's clear when you make your social network call for reviews that you're only looking for reviews from real clients who can speak to your legal decisionmaking abilities.  Yelp lawyers who knowingly allow positive reviews from non-clients to continue being posted on the website may face disciplinary action, the same as if they had created the reviews themselves.

DO Ask for Misleading Reviews to Be Deleted

If you have received a negative review that sounds like it's not from any client you've ever had, you can immediately notify Yelp to let them know that someone has posted a false review.  Yelp lawyers find that this happens relatively frequently, and it's often difficult to track down which Yelp lawyer posted the negative review to defame you.

Generally speaking, the best way for Yelp lawyers to deal with receiving a false negative review is to report it, have it removed, and move on.  Trying to get a competitor disciplined is a waste of time unless you have very good proof of who created the false Yelp lawyer reviews for your firm.

DON'T Respond Unfairly to Real Criticism

When you see something negative said in your Yelp lawyer reviews, some attorneys have a tendency to get defensive.  But when reading reviews on Yelp, lawyers should look at negativity as giving an opportunity for improvement.  If you comment on a negative Yelp lawyer review, your comment should be constructive and contrite, rather than defensive or aggressive toward the reviewer.

If potential clients see that someone is giving extremely vitriolic feedback to negative reviewers, they won't be very likely to contact your firm.  The best web presence for Yelp lawyers is to look collected and professional, even if someone's saying things about your law firm that are deeply negative and hurtful.

DO Monitor Your Reviews Frequently

By finding that your Yelp lawyer profile has received a negative review early, you can do a lot to mitigate the damage.  You can, as many of the best Yelp lawyers do, respond in a thoughtful and kind way to the negative review, which will improve audience perception of your practice.  You could also make sure that you now solicit positive reviews from some of your best clients, in order to drown out the voices of the disgruntled clients who had posted a review.

DON'T Panic Over One Negative Review

It's easy for Yelp lawyers to become panicked at the idea of a negative review if they've never received one before.  Some attorneys with Yelp lawyer profiles have even gone so far as to sue for defamation.  However, as long as the reviews were posted by actual clients, it's very hard to collect on this type of suit.  Most businesses, including law firms, that have tried to sue due to Yelp reviews have had the case thrown out and been forced to pay the attorney fees for the defendant.

Use positive techniques to regain trust from your internet audience if you've lost some of it due to a negative review.  Suing typically just makes it so that the lawsuit is forever a part of the Google results when someone searches for your law firm.  That's not what any firm wants on the front page.