I just ran the traffic numbers for several law firm websites that we manage, and the data shows that 56% of the page views are attorney bios:
Shocking? Not really. For years, legal marketing pros have known that the most frequently visited pages on their websites are the attorney bios. And this makes sense; the business of law is a relationship business. Clients naturally want to know about the people that will represent them.
The question then is, with so much traffic naturally flowing to these sections, does the current one-size-fits-all attorney-bio paradigm make sense anymore?
Our feeling is, no. Expanded bio areas (see our previous posts on attorney microsites) is the natural evolution for the law firm website. Law firm clients expect it — the stats tell us so.
We find similiar statistics are generated from our website. My question to everyone is what is best practice around creating profile pages (apart from the obvious contact details)? Just to clarify ‘profiles’ vs ‘microsite’.
Ang — Thanks for the post. We used to have a “best practice guidelines” document for attorney profiles, but we’ve since stopped using it. Every attorney is different, and consequently, they need to offer different information when promoting themselves. Video may be an appropriate medium for one partner while blogs, articles or podcasts are good for others. In short, we believe that attorney profiles should be malleable –- and rich with information. If you’d like to read more about attorney profiles, we’ve written an article.
That said, bite-size bits of information on an attorney profile is far more compelling than long paragraphs. We recommend using bullet points, subheads and lists to communicate information. And of course, an engaging photo is vital.
[…] Jakes’ research indicates that some 56% of law firm website traffic is to attorney bios. Our monitoring of client stats shows it to be less than that, but it’s still twice the traffic […]
[…] in 2010, Great Jakes did a study on how much website traffic goes to attorney bio pages and it was 56% (and I’m sure that number has risen). Take a look at your Google Analytics and see for […]
[…] most law firms, the attorney bio pages are, by far, the most viewed part of the site (according to one study, the bio pages may account for as much as 56% of law firm website traffic). It’s the place […]