As much as 67% of people who invest or purchase products and services online say they consider the quality of images as a critical part of their decision-making. In other words, potentially two out of every three visitors to a website will make the decision to purchase a product or service based in part on the quality (or lack thereof) of the images (or lack thereof) on your website. That statistic alone puts a lot of weight on the importance of quality images.
But, does this statistic apply to legal services? Though the survey did not include consumers of legal services, that’s not the critical piece of information – it’s consumer behavior that matters. It’s less about the product or service and more about how we process images. Pictures can immediately pack a punch that impacts us emotionally and physiologically, and that process is out of our control – it’s what our brains do automatically.
So, if you have a service to sell online, including legal services, you should want quality images to help you sell that service.
The problem is this: Many solo attorneys and small law firms simply don’t know what images to put on their website and how to benefit from them. Budgets also play a significant role.
To make good use of images on a website, it’s important to be strategic and thoughtful. Here, we provide a guide to help you determine what types of images to use, where to use them on your website, and how to maximize the benefits from them – and to do so with a tight marketing budget.
The Benefits of Images on Law Firm Websites
A picture is worth a thousand words. This adage underscores the power of visual imagery to convey complex ideas, emotions, and narratives much more quickly and succinctly than words alone could ever accomplish. It also explains the many benefits images can offer to a law firm website, such as helping to:
- Leave a memorable impression by giving visitors a reason to remember your law firm website
- Connect with potential clients before they read a single word
- Enhance engagement by capturing the attention of visitors faster
- Increase interaction because visual content is more likely to be shared on social media, thereby increasing reach and online visibility
- Reiterate your brand by reminding visitors of who you are as a law firm and what you represent
- Transcend language barriers by making your law firm website accessible to a broader audience
Research in recent years can testify to these benefits, too. For example, according to a study on news storytelling through images, it was found that within a split second of viewing an image, a person makes a determination whether or not to read an article. Another study on image content and social media engagement found “a significant and robust positive mere presence effect of image content on user engagement…” and “that high-quality and professionally shot pictures consistently lead to higher engagement.”
Applying these findings to law firm websites makes sense. The legal industry is competitive and saturated – there are many other law firm websites a visitor can explore. You want a visitor to decide immediately to read the content on your web page and to explore your website. The more visitors engage, the more likely they are to reach out to you as opposed to seeking another law firm.
To benefit from images, you need to know what types of images work where and how to optimize them for maximum results.
Custom Photos for Law Firm Websites
Custom photos are the premier kind of photographs you want on your website. It’s the best means to convey authenticity and develop branding. On the other hand, custom photos can get expensive. As a solo attorney or small law firm, that expense factors greatly into your overall marketing budget. With the latter in mind, here’s our take on it.
When it comes to images on your law firm website, they do not all need to be custom. There are, however, three types of web pages that benefit from professionally-made photographs: (1) your profile page; (2) the About Us page; and (3) the homepage.
Attorney Profile Images
Attorney profile pages are high converter pages – if visitors like what they see on your bio page, statistically they are more likely to reach out to you from this page than from most other pages on your website. Even though bio pages are traditionally where you summarize your résumé, they are also a place where prospective clients can get to know you, connect with you on a more personal level, and determine whether you might be a good fit.
In this regard, first impressions matter. If they like what they see, they’ll stay on the page to see what you have to say about yourself and what you have to offer to them. If they don’t like what they see, they’ll quickly move along to another page of your website or, worse, another law firm website. So, what pictures work (or don’t)? Let’s start with the don’ts.
- Will an old picture of you when you graduated law school work? No. It’s insufficient.
- Will a cropped picture of you at a family event work? No. It’s sloppy.
- Will a professional portrait of you when you first became a lawyer – thirty years ago – work? No. It’s misleading, though one taken within the last few years is fine.
- Do you even need to have a profile image? Yes! Without one, you might create a sense of mistrust.
The image you choose is about integrity as much as it is about professionalism. That said, there’s room for creativity. If your office is down-to-earth and pet-friendly, then an image expressing the same is great. You in casual business attire smiling beside your golden retriever may capture your law firm brand perfectly. On the other hand, if you are more conservative and cater to businesses, you might want a more traditional portrait of yourself in a black or navy blue suit with your office law library as the background. Either way, you want to incorporate your brand and your personal approach to law, which also includes consideration of body language: Hands on hips versus crossed arms or a smile versus a stern appearance, and so on.
Thus, the best attorney profile images are those that:
- Are professional. Professionally made photographs are preferred but portraits that look professional even if taken with a smartphone can work.
- Are relatively recent. You don’t want to surprise prospective clients who might, for example, think they are meeting someone in their thirties but who is now in their sixties.
- Represent your brand. Think about the tone you want to establish: Classic, conservative, high-tech, creative, compassionate, or what?
- Make a connection. By connecting with your audience, you make it personal, and by making it personal, you make yourself more memorable.
As said, it all comes down to integrity, and that’s for your prospective clients first and foremost, but it is also important for search engines.
About Us Images
About Us pages are pages of a website where law firms can express who they are as a law firm, collectively. On this page, many law firms choose to establish or vociferate their values, mission, goals, and their place in the community. Some law firms choose to balance these lofty topics with more concrete information about them, like highlighting who their clients are and in which jurisdictions – from states to counties to cities – they represent them.
Ultimately, when it comes to About Us pages, authenticity matters. If you do not come across as genuine, you miss a big opportunity to build trust and credibility. Anything that leaves the opposite impression to any degree can be detrimental. That’s why professional, custom images are important for these types of web pages, too.
Think: Why would a prospective client even bother looking at your About Us page when they have the bios and practice area pages to view? It’s because, by this time, they might like what they see already and want confirmation that you are the law firm for them. In other words, they are getting close to making a decision and want to confirm your approach, your convictions, and your mission align with what they want and need in legal representation.
Examples of good photos to have on this page include high-quality images of:
- Your team posing (you can include staff members, too, if the turnover rate is low)
- Your team in action (e.g., working together at a conference table or walking up the steps of the local court in which you often appear, but be sure not to make it look too staged)
- Your office sign (if you have a brick and mortar office space, images of signage or the building can indicate that your law firm is well-established in the community)
- Community photo (e.g., an image demonstrating pro bono work or accepting a community award)
You only need one or possibly two images on your About Us page. Of course, you can add additional images but don’t overdo it. You can even change the images from time to time as an award is given or an additional lawyer is added.
Tip: LawLytics members can easily add, update, change, or delete images via the LawLytics app.
Homepage Images
Your homepage is typically the entry point for most visitors, but it also acts as the control center where visitors will go from time to time as they navigate your website. In terms of prospective clients, this page needs to accomplish quite a few things, like:
- Leave a good impression – a bio page is the first impression of you as a lawyer, but the homepage is the first impression of your law firm
- Identify practice areas – so that visitors can easily determine if your services are relevant
- Provide quality, well-structured content and design – positive user experience is critical
- Develop your brand – so that visitors can remember your firm
- Distinguish your firm from others – this adds value to your services and incentivizes prospects to contact you
- Highlight the many ways to contact you – from telephone to email to contact forms
Homepages are very diverse in their makeup and design, so some may require one image while others more often are accompanied by multiple images. You might have:
- Hero images (the large, stationary image above-the-fold)
- Slider images (rotating images with text at the top – usually three images)
- Practice area images (some use icons but many use photos)
- Profile images (to meet the lawyer or legal team either within the hero image or elsewhere in the homepage)
- Section images (smaller images that accompany short sections of text)
Custom photos could get expensive if used for all the possible locations on your homepage website. Fortunately, it’s not necessary. A mix of quality custom and stock images may suffice.
For custom images, you might want to consider:
- What is the one thing you want to convey to potential new clients; and
- How do you want to convey that message?
If you are a solo attorney without a brick and mortar office, you may want to convey a results-driven practice by adding a hero image with a picture of you inside the courtroom. If you are a small law firm providing services primarily within one large city, you may opt for a picture of the team with the skyline as your backdrop. You can use stock images to support and complement the main custom image(s) on the homepage.
A word of caution: The use of only stock images on the homepage can create a bad impression and reduce a sense of authenticity, especially if the stock photos depict fake lawyers, courts outside your jurisdiction, or banal images of gavels, scales, or law books.
Stock Photos for Law Firm Websites
When it comes to stock photos, you have options. The extent of these options, however, depends on whether the stock image is free or paid. More people, including more solo and small law firms, because of the financial advantage, choose free stock images. The problem becomes overuse of the same image where other law firms use the same image. Chances are a potential new client will not come across another law firm website using the same image, but the possibility exists. That’s why you want to use stock images for blogs and practice area pages rather than profile pages, About Us pages, and homepages (to a certain extent) where you need to garner the visitors trust and connect with them both personally and professionally.
When using stock images, you also want to keep in mind:
- Your law firm brand (think of everything from the colors you use on your website and stationary to your unique approach to the law)
- Your audience (consider who your target audience is and prioritize the latter over other potential clients)
- Overall message (consider what exactly you are saying in the text of the practice area page or blog and whether you are taking a problem-centric or solutions-driven approach
For example, if you are an immigration lawyer representing clients seeking citizenship, are your priorities with more professional clients like those with green cards through work or are you more focused on citizenship through family members? In the former, you might want an image of a businessperson while in the latter, you might choose an image of family members embracing each other.
Citizenship through Work Image #1 |
Citizenship through Family Image #2 |
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To note, the above images are free images via Unsplash. Having an image with the U.S. flag or the presence of another symbol might be preferable, but as said, free stock photography has its limits. Regardless, images are still very useful and, if used well, can affect the visitor in a meaningful way. Alternatively, poor images can have the opposite effect, harming the success of your web page and ultimately your website.
By keeping images – as best you can – aligned with (1) your brand, (2) target audience, and (3) the text on the page, you can significantly increase user experience. With positive user experiences follows a domino effect of additional benefits from higher search rankings to higher conversions – all of which translate into an increased caseload for you and your law firm.
AI-Generated Images for Law Firm Websites
AI-generated images are available now. They can be great for animations and illustrations, but they have their limitations, too, especially when it comes to legal content. Here’s an example of two images created using Microsoft Designer. The prompt was simple, describing in the first image a youth pulled over for drunk driving and worried about an arrest while in the second, it’s a middle-aged man pulled over under suspicion of drinking and driving but standoffish about police questioning.
DUI / DWI AI-generated Image #1 |
DUI / DWI AI-generated Image #2 |
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The images are slightly off but could work for a blog topic on drunk driving. For the first image, you can imagine a blog topic on college students who drink and drive and the collateral consequences a conviction could have on their academic and professional futures. The second image, with the driver appearing more defiant than scared, could accompany a blog on how to successfully fight DUI / DWI charges in court.
Keep in mind you would never want to use AI-generated images for bios, About Us pages, or homepages. Likewise, you should steer clear of them for practice area pages (at least until the quality improves). With blogs, however, room for creativity exists. So, if cautious, you could create persuasive images that engage your audience before they even have a chance to read the first sentence.
Tips to Maximize Benefits from Images on Your Law Firm Website
After you choose images, your next step is to optimize those images. Image optimization simply means you ensure the images perform well whether viewed on a desktop, laptop, or mobile device. You don’t want images that slow down performance or otherwise hinder user experiences. But you do want images that help you attract more visitors who thereupon convert to clients.
Now, you might ask yourself whether this is all really necessary? Data suggests it is.
For example, according to MOZ, optimized images make up 20% of the Google search engine results (though that number can fluctuate a bit from time to time). This means, when a user searches citizenship through family immigration and your image is optimized for the same, it can help your page rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs). That additional boost gets more eyes on your website. Plus, if the image is high-quality and instantly engaging, you have a recipe for success.
On the other hand, failing to optimize means, of course, you don’t reap the benefits of better ranking and positive user experiences. Failure to optimize could negatively impact your law firm website, and so going without an image could potentially be better. Unoptimized images increase the weight of your webpage – heavy web pages are slower and perform poorly, especially on mobile devices. According to HTTP Archive, an unoptimized image can make up nearly 40% of a web page’s weight on a mobile device. So, when a potential client finds your website via their smartphone, but they can’t skim the page because of poor performance, you just lost an opportunity to convert a new client. That’s pretty significant. Reducing the weight of the image is in part what optimization can accomplish.
Here are a few tips to image optimization that can help you and your law firm win the domino-effect game.
Tip #1: Use SEO Keywords.
So many people will insert an image without giving a second thought about the name of the file, alternative text (alt text), or a caption. These things, however, are critical to on-page SEO and ranking higher on SERPs.
- Name the image file properly as opposed to retaining its generic name. For example, rather than keep something like DCIMAGE2209179.jpg, rename it to DUI Police Stop College Student. Why is this important? Search engines cannot process visual data well, and so their algorithms read image filenames to better understand the image. By using keywords in the filename, you maximize SEO benefits. You should keep file names concise yet descriptive.
- Add alt text. Alt text assists visually impaired users in understanding image content, and it also enhances your website’s search engine visibility by providing relevant context to search engine crawlers. The description used can be longer than the filename, but keep it at one to two sentences. For example, “A college student is stopped by the police under suspicion of driving drunk. He looks worried about taking the breathalyzer test.” In this example, several keywords are used. You can get more specific by adding a location to benefit from local SEO. The best alt text provides the subject, the setting, actions or interactions, and any other relevant information.
- Add a caption. Captions are not as important as filenames and alt text, but they can still contribute to on-page SEO and user experience. Captions are typically used for accessibility and to help users better understand the meaning of the image. For skimmers, too, captions can be a useful addition – and let’s face it, people are busy and are more likely to skim than they are to read a web page in detail. The below images exemplify how a caption may or may not add to a user’s experience.
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Tip #2 Format appropriately.
Large image files can slow down your website, leading to higher bounce rates and decreased user satisfaction. You want to make sure your image’s size and file format are optimal. Images should be resized to display appropriately on your website. For example, that might mean reducing a 2500×1500 pixels image to 250×150 so that the large image displays as a smaller image.
The image display size is just part of it. You might also have to optimize the file size, which means making sure the scaled image is compressed. You want to be careful, though, because quality could suffer when playing around with the sizing.
Tip: At LawLytics, when members add images to their media library, those images are automatically compressed and optimized for faster page load speeds – it’s all a part of our mission to provide lawyers with the most effective law firm website in the most efficient manner possible.
Tip #3 Ensure Responsiveness.
After you undertake tips 1 and 2, make sure the images are responsive and adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes and devices. Test your website across various platforms to guarantee optimal image display on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. It goes without saying but we will say it anyway: If you want visitors to be responsive to your website (i.e., they engage with the content), you need to make sure your website is responsive to them (i.e., the web page provides information quickly and accurately).
Optimize Images and More with a LawLytics Law Firm Website
To compete today in an overly competitive and saturated legal market, your website must be optimized, and that includes everything from the technical aspects like structure and design to the content part of it, including images. At LawLytics, we have built-in optimization tools to help lawyers get their websites up and running within weeks if not days. Our platform is user-friendly and allows you to add, organize, and revise content easily, including the use of images – whether they are custom, stock, or AI-generated.
If you are currently a member of LawLytics and would like to know more about image optimization, please reach out to support. If you are not yet a LawLytics Member and would like to learn more, schedule a 20-minute interactive demo with a product expert today. We are here to help you get your website up and running today so that tomorrow you can allocate more time to practicing the law.
