Tracking Results

Measuring Your Success with Online Lawyer Marketing

My marketing and business background tells me that any expenditure you make on marketing should be analyzed by its Return on Investment (ROI). Simply stated, if you can buy a 5 dollar bill for 1 dollar, how many 5 dollar bills would you like to buy?

Too many attorneys look at a law firm Web site as an expense instead of looking at it as the money-making opportunity it truly is. With an effective, well-written, beautifully designed law firm Web site and the right mix of additional lawyer marketing products, your investment should pay for itself five to seven times over.

Clearly, you want to keep close tabs on how this investment is doing for you. All FindLaw attorney Web sites include a reporting system, powered by industry leader WebSideStory. This state-of-the-art online traffic reporting system enables you to track the number of people who have come to your site and how they arrived there. This information is available to you 24/7.

Additionally, as your law firm marketing consultant, I prepare custom reports for my clients—monthly, quarterly, whatever frequency makes the most sense for you. I can tell you:

• What search keywords people typed in to find for your site with the search engines
• Which pages on your site are most popular
• Where people are spending the most time on your law firm Web site
• Which search engines or Web sites are sending you the most traffic

Getting some unusual traffic? Let’s take a look at the search engine keywords on that page and see if they need tweaking.

Are you getting a lot of hits but not many people e-mailing you? We can take a look at what pages people are visiting and where they are leaving your site.

Remember, though, that we can only track “conversions” (visitors who actually contacted you to inquire about services) by looking at who e-mailed you. At your law office, you need to develop a method for tracking phone calls that come from the Web site.

Web Success is More Than a Numbers Game

Attorneys typically have a number of law firm marketing goals they want to achieve when they establish a Web presence. Web traffic is not always the most important goal. You will need determine for yourself how to measure whether your other goals are being met.

Every Web site is a work of art, as much as it is a work of technical expertise. As your Web marketing consultant, I make it my business to know what’s getting searched throughout the Southern California legal market. And I stay on top of results for my clients.