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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.

According to new research, there are three places online that are most likely to influence a consumer to make a purchase:

• "Retail" websites like Lawyers.com^SM
• "Brand" websites, like a law firm's site
• Blogs

Also topping the list were Facebook, and online forums and groups like Ask a Lawyer. The new findings in theTechnorati Media 2013 Digital Influence Report confirm that the best way for lawyers to attract new clients online is to market around the way that consumers behave.

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. It surveyed 6,000 "influencers" (bloggers), 1,200 consumers and 150 top brand marketers. "Brand managers report an expected increase in budgets for digital marketing in the upcoming year," Technorati reported.

Retail websites

Consumers love to go to retail websites like Amazon.com or Zappos.com - online shopping centers where people can find many brands. In this sense, Lawyers.com, which gets more than 6 million page views per month, is a "retail" site - where consumers can find tens of thousands of lawyer profiles.

On Lawyers.com, consumers can easily find out many lawyers' expertise, website and contact information, and can compare attorneys by peer and client ranking. Online reviews can be a great source of new clients. Lawyers.com andmartindale.com® are the top online directories used by consumers who sought an attorney in the past year, according to the Attorney Selection Research Study by The Research Intelligence Group (TRiG).

Brand websites

In contrast, a "brand" website displays information about one kind of product or service, like Microsoft or Google. A brand website is an online store, the digital equivalent of an Apple store at a shopping mall.

"Today's consumers are increasingly comfortable going online to find answers for all kinds of issues, including legal ones," says Samantha Miller, vice president of product, Web Visibility Solutions, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. "Law firm websites need to capture consumers' attention and engage them, while serving as part of a larger marketing campaign."

There's no doubt that attorney websites still matter. More than one in three potential consumers of legal services turn to law firm websites to find a lawyer, and 26 percent have checked out a firm's website in order to validate an attorney, according to the TRiG research.

Lawyer blogs

It's clear to see why blogs also influence people to make a purchase. Consumers begin their search for a lawyer by researching their legal issue. The ideal place for them to learn a particular aspect of the law is on an attorney blog. And once a consumer has read a good blog post, who better to call than the lawyer who wrote it?

To learn more about what we can do for you and get a free Website Evaluation and Consultation, contact a LexisNexis Law Firm Marketing Specialist.