Law Firm Website Images – Best Practices

Why do I need good quality images on my law firm website?

If you want your law firm website to be effective and make a good first impression on your prospective clients, you need to make sure it features good quality images.

Think about the last time you met someone new, whether it was at work or in a social setting.

Their clothes, hairstyle, and the way they held themselves most likely gave you an impression of them instantly.

Eventually, you may have spent more time with them and learned more about who they are.

But spending time with new clients in order to get to know them is a luxury that most law firms don’t have.

Visitors to a law firm’s website might take one look, not like what they see, and leave straight away, not giving the firm an opportunity to showcase its strengths.

A law firm website, therefore, really needs to “dress to impress”.

Your prospects can quickly judge and decide what your law firm stands for through the imagery you use. And make decision whether to contact you or leave in less than 3 seconds.

Did you know that around 90% of human learning is done via visual cues?

For this reason, every image used on your website can teach prospective clients something important about your law firm.

We are going to use an example to explain this further.

What aspects of website imagery matter

Your should pay attention to the following aspects of your law firm’s imagery.

Focusing on them will help you ensure that the images are high-quality, relevant, and effective in communicating your brand and message to potential clients.

Relevance

The images you use on your website should be relevant to your law firm and the services you offer.

They should help to convey your brand identity and communicate your message effectively.

Quality

High-quality images are more likely to grab your visitor’s attention and create a professional and trustworthy impression.

Make sure the images are clear, well-lit, and properly focused.

Size and resolution

The size and resolution of your images should be optimized for web use.

Large files can slow down your website. So it’s important to choose images that are appropriately sized and not pixelated.

While there’s no hard and fast rule, you should try to keep the image files small.

Around 100 kilobytes or less would be good.

While there is no limit on how many photos your can add, it’s a good idea to feature no more than 5 large images per page.

Compression

Compressed images can still look good, but load quickly.

This will help to improve the overall user experience on your website and keep visitors engaged.

Images can be compressed before they are added to your website or using a website plugin.

Style and composition

The style and composition of your images should be consistent with your overall website design and branding.

For instance, try using similar backgrounds and styles in your employee ‘about us’ page photos.

This will help to create a cohesive look and feel for your law firm’s website.

Make sure that you choose photos with colours that complement your site’s overall design and brand.

Format

Another element you should always pay attention to is whether or not your images are in the right format.

Your images should be JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, or SVGs.

Use photos of real people

A good option is to use photos of real people. Keep in mind that some visitors may never have seen or visited your physical office and need more convinving to trust you and submit their enquiry form.

Ask your employees if you can take pictures of them, or happy customers to provide testimonials.

It may be beneficial (but not absolutely necessary) to hire a professional photographer.

Image copyright

If you want to feature images that another person has taken of your law firm, make sure that you ask them for their permission to use them first.

Legally, they are considered the intellectual property of their photographers.

You can use your own photos, as long as they are good quality. This can help make your website feel more authentic.

Though, don’t mistake “authentic” for “anything goes”.

Your images still need to look professional and be high quality.

What if you don’t have your own images?

You might consider purchasing stock images from companies like Getty or Shutterstock.

However, you need to be careful to choose images that don’t seem too stylised, fake, or out of place on your site.

It’s also best to always check the terms and conditions of images you don’t own.

Bear in mind that some images require paid license fees and royalties because they’re not in the public domain (and are free to use).

Furthermore, even if you’re using images from a “free” website, you should always read the fine print.

When in doubt, ask.

Law Firm Image SEO

Do you know what alt attribute (also known as alt text or alternate text for an image) is?

Simply put, it’s a short description of an image that you add to your website’s HTML.

Alt text helps out your site visitors understand what the images would look like if they didn’t load.

Alt text for images also assists search engine crawlers and screen reading tools (often used by people with vision impairments) to understand the appearance of your images.

Using alt text is good for SEO!

So when you’re writing your alt text, consider what’s useful to customers (and crawlers) who can’t see the images.

Sometimes, that’s not just a literal description of the content.

For instance, our example Jackie the florist might use alt text “White and Pink Rose Bouquet tied with Blue Ribbon” instead of just “Flowers Option 1 with ribbon”

Conclusion

In summary, your law firm website should be “dressed for success”.

It should contain good quality, high-resolution images. Your images can quickly communicate vital information about your company and products to site visitors, so they need to be relevant.

Lastly, your images should be clear, (best) owned by you, in the right sizes, and in the right formats.

We hope that the above website images best practices help you improve your law firm.