Clearly, clients don’t engage professional services firms based on a website alone. But there are significant benefits to be realised by treating your website as an integrated part of business development strategy.
Vikki Whittemore, director of business development at law firm Wright Hassall, sums it up: “Our main objective [behind the upcoming website redevelopment] is to ensure that all aspects of the website support lead generation and engage with clients and prospects more dynamically.” To achieve this you need to review exactly what you want the website to do and optimise information architecture, content and design with this in mind.
Where to start?
Reassessing your website strategy starts with identifying audiences and objectives. Who are you communicating with and what do you want them to do after they arrive at your site? Keeping users on the site for as long as possible or making it ‘sticky’ should not be your primary goal. Usability is about ensuring your visitors can use your site to meet their needs quickly and easily.
For most professional services firms the main audience is of course clients and prospects. Within this group users are at different stages of the buying process. Your site needs to work for users at each of these stages – awareness, interest, desire and action – and to propel them forward through this pipeline. Think of user needs in terms of ‘tasks’. What tasks will users at each stage of the buying process need to complete? And how can you help them to achieve this?
Users may, for instance, be private clients who have used the property practice for years, but have little understanding of the breadth of services you could offer. Or they could be fledgling technology firms unaware of your specialism in their sector. Each will require careful consideration and compelling content, while others may want nothing more than a telephone number.
A clear and consistent structure
Professional services firms’ websites need to have a clear and consistent structure that leads users efficiently to the information they require. To do this you should focus on the ‘magic triangle’ between sectors, services and people. Categorising content consistently allows sector and service groups to have their own ‘microsite’ within the structure of the main site, thus creating highly targeted landing pages for specific marketing communications.
This categorisation also allows for automatic cross-linking between all sectors, people and content. It also improves search functionality as it enables users to filter by sector, service or article type and drill down from an initial search result to the most appropriate content. “Classifying content and identifying the links between content types should be a key focus for any web redevelopment project,” says Mike Barrett, head of digital at Grist.
Remember that showcasing the expertise of the firm’s people is a key differentiator, so the biography pages of the firm’s partners are probably some of the most important pages on the site and need to be quickly accessible. And using dynamic navigation menus, where hovering over a top-level navigation button reveals further information about that section of the site, will help users find their way around quickly and easily.
Compelling content
The websites of professional services firms tend to be content heavy. It’s essential, of course, to demonstrate the expertise of your people and the capability of the firm – but you need to avoid information overload. “The first step is to realise that all content needs to have an objective, and only then can you start to fulfil that objective,” reveals Whittemore.
Content on a website can broadly be broken down into that focused on a problem (or issue), and that focused on the solution (or service / expertise). Most content on current websites is focused on the latter, which misses a trick in creating the issues driven content that draws users in to your website in the first place.
There may well be existing content that can be leveraged for this purpose. If you run events for instance, are there presentations or videos that would help to position the firm as thought leaders? And don’t limit yourself to in-house views: opinion from clients, business partners, industry commentators and other experts will showcase the quality of the company you keep.
Consistency across all content is important; it shows that you care about the detail. Make sure you have a style guide and stick to it. Use language that resonates with your audience to show that you are client-focused. Review content regularly and be ruthless about removing anything that no longer serves that purpose. And consider having a ‘one in, one out’ rule to prevent your site from becoming overgrown, with good content ‘hidden in the long grass’.
Pushing brand boundaries
“Your website is one of the most visible manifestations of your brand,” stresses Richard Wise, creative director at Grist. A potential client’s first encounter with you is likely to be online – and first impressions count, he says. An outdated or poorly designed site will have a negative effect on your brand. Bad design also hampers usability, for example when too much content is shoehorned onto one page, or when typography makes reading difficult.
Professional services firms can be prone to using inconsistent and unimaginative imagery, and employing fairly blunt visual metaphors to highlight expertise or knowledge. Allow your designer to push the boundaries of your brand positioning and don’t fall into the trap of trying to please everyone, which can result in a diluted, ‘least-worst’ outcome.
Take account of the increasing popularity of mobile devices. Your site needs to work seamlessly – with no extra effort required from the user – across desktops, laptops, tablets and mobiles. So your design needs to cater for this. And don’t forget accessibility. Make sure that your site can be used by anyone, regardless of ability or disability. Accessible sites perform better for all users.
Finally, don’t get bogged down in the technical aspects of content management systems. Find a platform that works for others and focus on the need to integrate with CRM systems to add value and visibility to marketing and business development.
Then what?
Launching your new, optimised site is not the end of the journey – it’s just the start. Use analytics to look forward, as well as back. The standard measurements of pageviews, time spent on site and so on will form the basis of your analysis, but you should also analyse behaviours to learn more about potential clients: where have they come from, how do they move through the site, what are they looking at and what are the exit points?
Answering these questions will allow you to refine your site to meet the needs of your different user groups and more effectively integrate your website into the broader business development strategy.
