If you’re looking to grow your small law firm, then building your own website is the best solution. A recent LexisNexis study revealed that almost 80% of new US law clients used the internet to search for a law firm. The same study recommended building a ‘robust website’ in order to attract new clients and generate new leads.
A well-designed law firm website will attract potential customers from search engines, online marketing, and social media. It should showcase the areas of law that you specialize in and key successes that you’ve achieved for past clients.
Building and maintaining your own website might seem like a daunting and costly task. However, with Elementor and WordPress, you can design a fully-functional and cost-effective law firm website today. Elementor’s features, templates, and drag & drop editor allow you to custom-design your very own law firm website. Simply follow the steps below and you’ll be up and running in no time.
Here’s how to create an awesome law firm website in WordPress and Elementor:
What should a Law Firm website include?
Before we begin with our guide to creating the site, we first need to understand the key ingredients of a Law Firm website and its role. Here are some of the important pages and elements that every Law Firm website needs:
1. Homepage
The homepage is analogous to a storefront on the high street. New users should be instantly aware of who you are, what you specialize in, and how you can help.
It should prominently display your firm’s name, logo, and core mission statement, along with a compelling message that encourage users to seek legal aid. The rest of the page should highlight the firm’s partners, successes, credentials, and areas of legal practice. It’s important to include clear navigational links and CTAs to the other important pages on the site.
2. Services Page
The services page should detail each area of legal practice that you specialize in, i.e. criminal law, family law, divorce, estate, etc. If you offer multiple specialties, then the services page should function as a lobby, with links to individual landing pages for each practice area.
3. About Page
The about page is where you’ll provide your credentials, experience, and education. The page should include a bio and headshot of each lawyer in your firm. It should also detail the history of your practice, the successes you’ve achieved, your goals, and expertise.
4. Case Studies
The case studies page should discuss, in detail, various victories that you’ve achieved on behalf of your clients. This social proof helps encourage new users to trust in your capabilities, and hire you to represent them.
5. Contact Us Page
The contact us page is for site visitors to book a consultation, or inquire about your services. It should include a contact form, and details of when you will respond.
How to Build a Law Firm Website — A Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Choose your domain name
When you set out to create your own website, the first thing you need to do is get a domain name and a web hosting service. Your domain name will allow visitors to access your website.
Step 2: Choose your web hosting plan
The hosting plan will allow you to house all the files that make up your site. Your hosting server is where you will install WordPress and the add-ons mentioned in this tutorial.
What’s great about WordPress hosting is that it’s optimized specifically for WordPress performance, security needs, installation, and onboarding processes. There is a long list of WordPress hosts to choose from, and many considerations to factor into your selection process.
As far as hosting plans go, they range from affordable shared hosting plans to more expensive managed WordPress hosting and premium dedicated servers. To make your lives easier, we recommend several hosting packages that are fully compatible with Elementor.
Once you’ve signed up for your hosting plan, you will receive a welcome email that will have all the details related to your account. Find the login link to your hosting account area and use the username and password to log into your account.
Step 3: Install WordPress
The next step is to install WordPress. After you have logged in to your hosting account, click on the My Accounts tab and then log in to your cPanel. In cPanel, click on the WordPress icon in the auto-installers area and follow the steps to install WordPress.
After WordPress has been installed, go ahead and visit your WordPress site. Enter the name and password you’ve set up and click ‘Log In’ to access your WordPress dashboard.
(Textual link) See our full guide on how to install WordPress here: How to Install WordPress
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the WordPress software, you can take advantage of the WordPress CMS platform. The flexibility of WordPress lets you choose from tens of thousands of WordPress templates, themes, and plugins.
Step 4: Install Elementor
The next step is to install Elementor, a visual website builder that greatly simplifies the WordPress website building process. Sometimes, WordPress can be an intimidating tool that seems too complex to use on your own. However, by using a visual site builder, you can create your site quickly, efficiently, and comfortably.
In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Add New. Search for Elementor Website Builder and click Install. When Elementor has been installed, click Activate.
While Elementor is free, depending on the features you want you’ll also need Elementor Pro to take full advantage of Elementor’s capabilities. Visit Elementor.com and purchase the Pro version of the plugin then install and activate it in the same manner as above. Once Elementor Pro has been installed, you’ll need to enter your license by going to your WordPress dashboard and navigating to Elementor > License.
Because you’re going to be using Elementor Theme Builder and your template kit to design your entire website, you don’t need to look for any design elements in your active WordPress theme.
Instead, you just want the most lightweight, performance-optimized foundation, which is what the Hello theme from Elementor provides.
To get started, go to Appearance → Themes → Add New and search for “Hello Elementor”. Then, install and activate the theme.
Step 5: Choose a Law Firm Template Kit
Once you’ve installed Elementor, the next piece of the puzzle is a law firm website template kit. These are individual sets of templates needed for a complete WordPress website: Header, Footer, 404 page, Blog Archive, Single Post, Single Page, Popup, and more.
Our Template Library features websites of many niches, each kit catering to the needs of our user community. These include portfolio sites, digital agency sites, magazine sites, beauty salons, and so much more.
Elementor template kits are also offered by creative marketplaces, such as Envato or ThemeForest.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the Elementor law firm template
To install the kit, first, create a page called “Home” and click the Edit with Elementor button to launch Elementor.
Then, open the Elementor template library and search for “law firm” under Pages. Once you’ve found your desired template, simply click on install.
For more information about installing the kit, see here: Create a Complete Website Using Elementor Kits and Theme Builder
Step 6: Customizing the template kit
Once you have downloaded and installed the kit, you can use the drag & drop editor to customize each aspect of the design and layout to tailor it to your needs.
You can change the logo, color scheme, navigation links, website copy, and any other feature that you wish. You can also use the Elementor widgets to add specific functionalities to your website like a custom donate button.
To learn more about customizing your template, visit our help center.
You can also read our thorough guide to creating your Elementor website here
Step 7: Publish the website
Once you’re completely satisfied with your website’s design, interface, and functionality, then it’s time to publish it live.
- To preview the site, click the icon.
- If you are satisfied with the result, go ahead and click the button.
- Click ‘Have a Look‘ to view the published page
Conclusion
Creating a well-designed, and fully-functional law firm website can be a smooth, seamless process with Elementor’s template kits. No coding required, simply download and install Elementor onto your WordPress site, choose your desired template kit, customize, and publish.
Ready to Build an Awesome Law Firm Website with Elementor?
