This question from Marty, a practice manager at an Adelaide general practice firm with 8 lawyers, highlights a common concern for law firms: visitors seem to land on lawyer profile pages and then disappear without exploring the rest of the site.
What many law firm managers don’t realise is that this pattern isn’t necessarily a problem – in fact, it’s often a sign that your website is functioning precisely as it should for a referral-based practice. At its core, this is a question about website structure and user journey, and understanding the actual path most prospective clients take when finding legal representation.
The Digital Referral Journey: How Clients Actually Find Lawyers
For most established law firms, particularly general practices like Marty’s, the client acquisition process follows a predictable pattern:
- A potential client receives a personal recommendation for a specific lawyer
- They search for that lawyer’s name on Google
- They land directly on the lawyer’s profile page
- They consume the content on this page and any related information
- They make contact by phone or email
This direct pathway reflects the reality that word-of-mouth remains the dominant source of new business for most law firms. The lawyer profile page should include all the information potential clients require for validation, or at least contain internal links to that kind of information.
The profile page serves as both the landing point and the conversion point, with the primary goal being to facilitate contact after the prospect has found the information they need.
Why Lawyer Profile Pages Are Key Conversion Points
Given this typical referral pattern, lawyer profile pages aren’t just another section of your website – they’re critical conversion points. They serve several essential functions:
- Validation of expertise: Confirming the lawyer has the expertise mentioned by the referrer
- Personal connection: Allowing the prospect to “meet” the lawyer before making contact
- Trust building: Reinforcing the referral by presenting professional credentials
- Decision facilitation: Providing direct contact information to take the next step
When a referred prospect lands on a lawyer profile page, they’re in what we call “the messy middle” of their decision-making process.
Their behaviour at this stage varies widely – some will need extensive validation and exploration deeply throughout your site, others may require minimal convincing, and some might even leave your platform entirely to research the lawyer and firm on social media or review sites before returning.
The profile page needs to accommodate this range of information-seeking behaviors while still guiding visitors toward making contact.
Tracking Success: What You Can (and Can't) Measure
Understanding how prospects use lawyer profile pages requires acknowledging the limitations of standard website analytics:
What Standard Analytics Can Track:
- Page views and time spent on lawyer profiles
- Clicks on email links or phone number buttons
- Navigation to other pages from profile pages
What Standard Analytics Miss:
- Copy-pasted email addresses
- Phone numbers dialled directly from mobile devices
- Decisions made to contact the firm through other channels
While more sophisticated tracking solutions exist (call tracking numbers, custom email domains for attribution), these often represent significant investments that may be unnecessary and overly complex for firms with established referral networks.
A more practical approach is to simply ask new clients during intake how they found the firm, and whether they visited the website before making contact.
Optimising Profile Pages for Conversion
Since lawyer profile pages often serve as both landing pages and conversion points, it’s worth investing in their optimisation:
Essential Elements for Lawyer Profiles:
- Professional headshot (updated regularly)
- Clear areas of expertise
- Relevant experience and qualifications
- Direct contact information (email and phone)
- Call-to-action for making contact
- Mobile-optimised layout
These elements ensure that when referrals search for your lawyers, they find authoritative, professional profiles that encourage immediate contact.
Should You Encourage More Website Exploration?
While profile pages may be the primary destination for referrals, there are ways to encourage further exploration for interested prospects:
Effective Cross-Linking Strategies:
- Link to relevant practice area pages from profile specialisation sections
- Highlight recent articles or presentations by the lawyer
- Showcase upcoming events or webinars the lawyer is involved with
However, these elements should be secondary to the primary goal of the profile page: facilitating direct contact. Every additional element should be evaluated against whether it supports or distracts from this conversion objective.
Key Takeaways
- Lawyer profile pages being your most-visited pages is normal and expected for firms that have a marketing strategy focused on referrals
- These pages serve as critical conversion points in the digital referral journey
- Standard analytics tools have limitations in tracking the full conversion path from profile visits
- Profile pages should be optimised primarily for validation and contact facilitation
- Cross-linking to other content should support, not distract from, the primary conversion goal
Next Steps
Review your lawyer profile pages with these questions in mind:
- Do they clearly present each lawyer’s expertise and specialisation?
- Is contact information prominent and accessible?
- Are they optimised for search when someone looks up your lawyers by name?
- Do they include strategic links to relevant content without overwhelming the visitor?
- Is the mobile experience seamless, particularly for contact options?
By treating lawyer profiles as the valuable conversion assets they are – rather than worrying about limited exploration of other site sections – you’ll align your website strategy with how prospects actually find and choose legal representation.
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Paul Evans is a legal marketing expert with extensive experience helping lawyers build their practices.
