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Dee Latham, Senior Copywriter at LexisNexis, hit it spot on with this blog post about the importance of mobile websites.

Veruca Salt. Do you remember that name? She was a character from the classically delicious movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She uttered the famous line, "I want it and I want it NOW!"Never mind that she was a spoiled child and met with a highly unlikely and untimely death of drowning-by-chocolate.

But she had the right idea. If Willy Wonka had a mobile website, imagine the mayhem. Instant gratification rules, especially in the age of smartphones — if any Web search takes longer than three seconds, that is two seconds way too long. What is the human instinct in this case? We move on to the next, best thing.

Take your firm's website. If prospects are searching for a lawyer on their smartphones, will they be able to find you? If they do find your site, it needs to draw them in, not push them away. Small, hard-to-use navigation, broken or missing graphics, or no clear way to contact you are some of the negatives of an incorrectly rendered mobile version of your website. Forty percent of consumers will visit a competitor's site after a bad mobile experience.1

Take a look at your website right now on your smartphone. How does it look? It may need to be optimized in order to help you convert mobile site visitors into leads. By maximizing your online visibility in this way, you expand your firm's mobile footprint with improved search engine rankings. A Martindale-Hubbell® Mobile Website is also a way to sync your traditional and mobile site content, so you can focus on your practice instead of making changes to both properties. You may be missing an entire audience if your website looks incomprehensible and cluttered on a mobile phone.

Have you seen any law firm mobile websites that make the cut?

If you would like to learn more about how a mobile website can attract more potential clients who are looking for legal help, give us a call at 866-799-3717, or contact a LexisNexis Law Firm Marketing Specialist.

And in the long run, a mobile website is a lot healthier than a piece of chocolate.

Read this post at its source here.

1Gomez, 2009 

More people are online than ever before and they are looking up lawyers using their mobile phones and tablets. If you haven't optimized your website for mobile devices, you are missing a lot of new business.

Smartphones have been outselling PCs since the end of 20101 and tablets (like iPads) will start outselling PCs in 2015.2 Mobile Internet users have grown over 30 percent in one year to about 1.5 billion users worldwide.3

When you realize that 21 percent of consumers use smartphones to search for an attorney (according to "Attorney Selection Research Study," The Research Intelligence Group, March 2012) you can see it's time to capture this new business.

Mobile websites are very different from PC websites — your mobile content should be action-oriented, and focus on issues that arise when a person's primary access to the Internet is a smartphone, not a PC. A great example is being stopped for a DUI, where a consumer needs an answer instantly.  

Here are other scenarios where you'll want a mobile website:

• A lawyer's name is given to a client as the best person to handle a matter. The client goes to your website on his iPhone to validate the lawyer's credentials. Your mobile website or profile on a legal directory should highlight your attorney profile, the firm's practice areas and your expertise (e.g., your blog).
• A lawyer is at a conference and meets a prospective client. The lawyer mentions an alert the firm issued and is able to display it instantly. Your mobile website or profile on a legal directory should highlight your alerts, publications and news.
• A client is going to a meeting at the firm and needs directions. The client can't recall the address. Your mobile website or profile on a legal directory should highlight your offices, maps and directions.

Think of how often you check your own cell phone when you are looking to buy something or hire someone — and you'll be convinced. LexisNexis has experts at creating mobile websites. Call 866-799-3717 today or click for a free website evaluation.

1 IDC, "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker," February 2011.
2, graph IDC, "Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker," May 2013.
3 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, "Internet Trends 2013," May 2013.

Samantha Miller, Vice President of Product, Web Visibility Solutions at LexisNexis, wrote an important piece back in November about the importance of optimizing your firm's website for mobile users.  Here is an excerpt. Read it at the source, here.

Have you ever tried to navigate a website with your mobile phone or pad, when that site was NOT optimized for mobile devices?

The text is too small and the images are too large. There is way too much content and that material is basically unreadable. Pictures are not sized or placed properly. If you can even find the scroll bar or tabs, you have to keep swiping. And forget about trying to find any contact info.    

In short, the website looks and feels terrible.

If you are a consumer in urgent need of legal information or actually need to find an attorney, you're moving on to another firm's site.

This is a guest blog post by The Law Firm Mobile (LFM) blog. In December, LFM released its second annual research on which firms from the AmLaw 200 and Global 100 have entered the world of the mobile web (the first report can be found here).

Below are following sections: an overview of the report, statistics describing the extent of mobile web site penetration for large law firms, statistics regarding the type of content used in firm web sites, and a final section on mobile web best practices. The final section of this report provides a detailed list of the names of law firms with hyper links to a screen shot of each respective firm’s mobile site along with the URL for that site.

Overview

• Of the firms on the 2012 AmLaw 200 list, 54 firms (27%) have mobile sites. This is an increase of 46% (17 additional firms) from 2011. Of the firms on the 2012 Global 100 list, 29 firms (29%) have mobile sites. This is an increase of 32% (7 additional firms) from 2011.
• Of the firms on the 2012 AmLaw 200 or Global 100 list with a mobile websites, most firms (67%) have from 7-9 total content types for the mobile site.
• Of the firms on the 2012 AmLaw 200 or Global 100 list with a mobile website, the most popular type of content offered to users is Professionals/Attorney Biographies (59), Offices (53), and Practice Areas (52). The next set of content includes News (45), About the Firm (42), Careers (40), Events (38), and Publications (34). Some of the least used content types included Contact Us (13) and Industries (9).
• Even with the increase in firms with mobile sites, the majority of large law firms in the AmLaw 200/Global 100 do not yet have a mobile web despite the significant growth in smartphone use.

See the remainder of LFM's findings on the LFM blog here.

LexisNexis has rolled out Site Essentials, Site Edge and Site Exclusives, a suite of updated website development products and services — complete with blogging features and mobile device optimization — designed to help law firms establish an effective online presence and attract more clients.

“LexisNexis has updated its website development services to provide law firms with solutions that help them establish an effective web presence, generate robust site traffic and accelerate and track their web-based lead generation efforts,” said David Palmieri, vice president and managing director of Marketing and Consumer Solutions at LexisNexis. “When law firms engage with us, we can deliver higher return on investment with a wider variety of products and services that meet firms’ marketing goals.”

The new LexisNexis® Site Essentials product offers firms:

• An effective, professional website, designed and hosted by LexisNexis, that can be implemented in as little as two weeks
• A creative consultation
• Home page content with suggested content for practice area descriptions
• A website performance dashboard to track key site statistics including phone and email inquiries
• A content management system enabling users to make copy adjustments and site updates
• Basic search engine optimization
• A mobile-optimized version of the site
• Ongoing technical assistance from LexisNexis website experts.

Additionally, LexisNexis® Site Edge includes copywriting assistance as well as the addition of five articles each from three practice areas which update every two weeks, giving visitors a reason to come back to the site. Site Edge customers can also add a professionally produced video to their site.

Also available is LexisNexis® Site Exclusives, a custom, end-to-end web development product. In addition to providing all the features of the other two services, Site Exclusives gives customers significantly more copywriting and ongoing technical assistance, while also providing a fully customized site design and architecture and hosting services for up to five videos on the firm’s website.

While websites from all three services are optimized to render on mobile devices, LexisNexis® Mobile Website Personalization service gives firms the option to create versions of their site optimized for specific devices or to target specific clientele. According to a 2010 report from Gartner, Inc., mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide by 2013, making it more important for firms to communicate their expertise and capabilities effectively on the mobile web.

For firms looking to increase online engagement via their website, LexisNexis® Blog Basics is an easy-to-use integrated blogging tool. LexisNexis Blog Basics provides customers with another effective way of promoting authoritative firm content and maximizing lead generation. According to a 2010 study released by HubSpot, companies that blog have 55 percent more website visitors and generate 88 percent more leads.

To learn more visit the Law Firm Marketing Center at http://lexisnexis.com/law-firm-marketing.

82% of businesses plan to increase their spending on mobile phone marketing over the next year, according to a new research report, "Mobile Marketing: Plans, Trends and Measurability: What Do Marketers Think?"

Law firms are faced with a growing installed base of mobile devices among their clients. Clients use smart phones for email, the Web, texting, and even working on documents. In response, 33% of businesses currently have a mobile strategy in place, and among those who don't they plan to have one within the next 12 months. Relationship marketing -- customer loyalty and retention -- is at the heart of the perceived benefits of mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing involves:

• Creating mobile-friendly websites
• Apps for clients
• Methods to conduct business with programs “in the cloud” using a smart phone.

It’s called the M-dot revolution, because the URL of mobile friendly websites is usually “m.lawfirm.com.”

The spark for the revolution is the new HTML5 web code standard which makes the browser the universal computing platform – not the operating system (such as Mac OS or Windows). It helps overcome the weak processors in smart phones so they can run tasks quickly. The average smart phone user now spends more than 11 hours a month using apps, according to a March 2011 study by Zokem.

Many clients use smart phones to read news, which is accessible with an app or a browser, the information is stored in the cloud, and billing information and preferences can be easily shared.

CMOs will need to push their teams to develop compelling mobile-advertising strategies and create opportunities to use video more often. Who knows, maybe a law firm will develop a mobile app to monitor the purchasing activity of clients and offer them real-time, location-specific legal solutions.

You can see what your website looks like on a smart phone by visiting http://mobilesimulator.info. Check out this video which explains the importance of mobile marketing and has details for us techies.

I have seen the future of the Internet, and it will be viewed on a 2 by 3-inch screen.  New research shows that most people will view the web on their smart phones and PDA -- instead of computer monitors. Accordingly, visitors to the LawMarketing Portal can now see a special mobile version of the site specially designed for their handheld devices.

Like CNN.com, the New York Times online and Google, the LawMarketing Portal displays neatly on the screens of iPhones, Blackberrys, Treos and other handheld PDAs that can access the web. By simply visiting www.LawMarketing.com on your handheld, you'll see all the articles on the home page in a minimalist display that includes text, links and graphics.

No downloads nor special software is required. Simply open your device's browser and point it to www.LawMarketing.com. Your PDA will automatically pick up mobile.lawmarketing.com, the address of the handheld-friendly site, allowing you to see all the latest articles on the home page.

Mobile devices will be primary web viewer

Mobile technology has reached an inflection point where the mobile Internet could be another viable consumer resource for online shopping and purchasing. According to PriceGrabber.com’s Mobile Shopping Behavior Survey, 58 percent of US online consumers already own a Web-enabled mobile phone. Furthermore, of those consumers that own a Web-enabled mobile phone, one in 10 has purchased products and/or services with their device.

Of the online consumers with web-enabled phones:

• 21 percent own a smartphone
• 8 percent own an iPhone
• 29 percent own another type of web-enabled phone
• 42 percent of survey respondents said they own a non-Web-enabled phone capable of using voice and text service plans only.

For the entire article, visit the LawMarketing Portal at www.lawmarketing.com