Law firms are creating more legal blog content than ever before. Many have indicated they intend to produce a lot more. The 2015 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey found that 74 percent of in-house counsel said they find law firm blogs valuable.
In fact, 98 percent of law firms said they actively engage in content marketing, and 87 percent said they intend to increase that amount of content. The other 13 percent said it would stay the same. Virtually no one is reducing their content marketing – including legal blog writing.
But here’s what they aren’t doing: Adopting responsive web design. This is curious considering that the survey also showed 29 percent of in-house counsel are accessing legal blogs on tablets and 23 percent on smartphones. Customers are even more likely to be accessing them that way.
Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales and mobile usage has overtaken desktop usage. Google reports that nearly 70 percent of internet users say they are more likely to engage in a company’s “call to action” when the site is mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly – or responsive design – website is one that automatically detects the screen size of a device and responds by reconfiguring the texts and graphics to fit the screen. Someone isn’t going to stay long on your site if they access it via smartphone and the large, intended-for-PC text and graphics are a pain to wade through.
“Over the last few years, website visits from ‘smart’ devices like phones and tablets have exceeded 50 percent, with some industries approaching 80 percent,” said Wilson Revehl, a web developer and Vice President of Go Media, a Cleveland web design firm. “It is now absolutely critical for companies trying to reach the public to have a responsive or mobile web presence as the major search engines, especially Google, will now penalize you in the rankings if you do not.”
And when Google, with nearly 70 percent of the market share on search engine services, speaks, legal blog writers, content marketers and others listen carefully.
Think of it in practical terms: You spend time and resources creating a smart, insightful legal blog that actually drums up a sizable following on social media. Someone on their mobile phone catches an article you wrote on drunk driving laws in your state and passes it on to his buddy, who just got arrested on that charge. That’s a potential client. But when they click on the link from their desktop, the content is optimized for a mobile site. Sure the content is the same, but what they are seeing is a stripped-down version of the page, which creates a less-then-optimal user experience. Not only is that individual user not going to be impressed – and neither is Google. Your bounce rate – the rate at which users bounce off your page – is likely to increase as well, which also hurts your search engine rankings.
In general, poor website design is going to result in a poor user experience. Photos that are too big or too small, content that requires too much scrolling, constantly needing to click-through – all of those are design issues, and they can lessen the impact of your legal blog if you aren’t careful to address them.
Contact Law Firm Ghost Writer to learn more about our legal blog writing services at 1.888.901.3939.
More Blog Entries:
Legal Marketing Must Keep Pace in Competitive Market, March 16, 2016, Legal Blog Writing Blog
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