“Page Not Found” – Is your website costing you client leads?

We spend a lot of time on law firm and other leading professional services firms websites as part of our research activities.

During our online travels we’ve noted some relatively basic issues from the “user” perspective that at best are putting firms in a bad light and at worst are losing those firms potentially high value client leads. Here are some of the common issues we encounter:

Broken links/missing content. A very common issue (and there are simple tools to monitor this). I can think of few things worse from a website marketing perspective than to have content that a potential client is interested in not actually be available. It’s the online equivalent of failing to turn up for a meeting or return a phone call with a prospect or client.

Non-functioning content databases. Similar to the issue above. For example I got the following error yesterday from a top 25 law firm when trying to access their client alerts – it’s still broken today.

Server Error in ‘/’ Application. Request timed out. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Request timed out. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [HttpException (0x80004005): Request timed out.]

Navigation and Search. Helping users navigate to relevant content based on their issues, their terms (i.e. taxonomy) and their thought process rather than how the firm compartmentalizes its practices and content would be a big step forward. Search on most websites (not just law firms) is pretty bad but there are good practices and excellent technology out there for those willing to invest in the user experience.

Firms invest significant dollars in their websites and the content (newsletters, webinars, whitepapers etc.) that is posted to those websites. Failing to make that content readily accessible is a potentially huge waste of those investment dollars.

Poor website housekeeping may be punching a big hole in your lead generation pipeline.

Is your website leaking $$$?

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