Why Your Site’s Infrastructure Is So Important

Many clients in a hurry to have their legal Web site up and running overlook the importance of the site’s infrastructure in terms of site performance, ease of use, navigation, ranking opportunities and other important considerations. They care a great deal about page layout, color scheme, cool Flash animations, how the site reflects the professionalism of their law firm and other cosmetic features of their site, but are less concerned about the actual ‘nuts and bolts’ aspect of their site.

In many ways, a Web site’s infrastructure in analogous to a house in that it can look great from the outside but, unless it has been built to withstand a wide range of different environmental pressures, it will not last or provide its intended benefits. From a legal Internet marketing standpoint, unless a site is designed and built to rank well and perform well from the very beginning of the project, it will never achieve its goals or provide the proper foundation for the success of any legal Internet marketing strategies. Here are a few reasons why your legal Web site’s infrastructure is so important:

• It ensures that your site loads quickly in all browsers and traffic conditions – Good site infrastructure will ensure that you legal site loads quickly and properly when viewed through any browser and in high traffic conditions. A site that looks great in one browser but displays broken features in another will turn off site visitors and reflect poorly on your practice.
• Makes it easier for Google and other search engines to index your site – Sites built with clean, uncluttered code are easier for Google and the other search engines to index, which is a bigger deal than you may think. The indexing algorithms are designed to ‘remember’ which sites are difficult to ‘crawl’ and therefore index their contents less often, which affects placement in search results.

Makes site navigation easy and intuitive for users – When Web users visit a site, they first scan the whole page to find the information they seek. If the site’s content links to other pages, and features and navigation tools are easy to find and use, then a visitor is more likely to explore more of the site. If the site is cluttered and the users cannot quickly and easily find what they want, they’ll click the back button on their browser and bolt.

It relies more on performance and less on trendy gimmicks – A slick Flash animation may sound like a great idea and allow your legal Web site developer to show their technological chops but, in reality, most users have little patience for anything that loads on their screen without their approval. If they make the decision to see it by clicking on a link that says “View this Flash presentation on what to look for in a personal injury lawyer,” then that’s different. But no matter how cool the site intro may be, it is usually an instant annoyance to visitors.

The reasons listed above are only a few of the many important reasons why site infrastructure is so important to visitors, search engines and the success of your legal Internet marketing. To learn more about these or any other aspects of Web site design and development for lawyers, contact SLS Consulting for your legal online marketing needs.