Get a website for your practice

A website is the single biggest change most South African firms can make to how findable they are. A client who hears your name from a friend will search it. If nothing comes up, they call the next name on the list. It does not need to be impressive. It needs to exist, load fast on a phone, and answer three questions: who are you, what do you do, how do I reach you.

Option one: the free stopgap — R0

Until you have a website, a fully completed Google Business Profile does the minimum job: photos, services, hours, description, and reviews. Clients can find and phone you from it. Treat it as the stopgap, not the destination — a firm without its own site still looks smaller than it is.

Option two: build it yourself — roughly R100 to R400 a month

• A builder such as Wix, Squarespace or WordPress.com. A capable person at the firm can put up a five-page site in a weekend.
• Buy a .co.za domain — usually R80 to R150 a year — and use it. yourfirm.co.za, not yourfirm.wixsite.com.
• Set up email on that domain too. A client trusts info@smitattorneys.co.za more than smitattorneys@gmail.com, and it also lets us verify your LawIndex claim instantly.

Option three: hire someone — roughly R8 000 to R35 000 once off

A freelancer or small studio. Ask to see two law firm sites they have built, ask who owns the domain when the relationship ends (it must be you), and ask what ongoing hosting costs. Insist on being given the login details.

What every law firm site must have

1. Firm name and what you do, above the fold, in plain words.
2. A phone number that is tappable on a mobile, at the top of every page.
3. Your physical address and office hours, plus a map link.
4. Your practice areas, each as its own short page — conveyancing, family law, deceased estates, labour, RAF, criminal. Individual pages are what get found in searches.
5. The attorneys: names, admission year, photograph, a short paragraph each.
6. The towns you serve, written out. "Serving Nelspruit, White River and Barberton" does real work.
7. A contact form that emails a person who actually checks it.
8. Your Legal Practice Council reference and required legal notices.

What to leave out

• Stock photographs of gavels and unfamiliar courtrooms.
• A splash page or anything a visitor must click through before reaching content.
• Guarantees of outcome — the LPC rules on advertising still apply to your website.
• Long paragraphs of Latin. Write the way you speak to a client.

Two things people forget

• Test it on a phone. Most of your visitors are on one, often on mobile data. If it takes more than four seconds, fix it before adding anything else.
• Put the same firm name, address and phone number on the site as on your Google profile, character for character.

Once the site is live at your own domain, request a re-scan from your dashboard. Our next scan will find it.