Responsive Design & Millennials Or How to Stay Cutting Edge in Your Law Practice

Responsive Design & Millennials

Or How to Stay Cutting Edge in Your Law Practice

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By Anastasia Shilova

94% of consumers in the U.S. have a mobile phone, and the majority of those phones are smartphones.

The Internet has transformed the world we live in today. It has significantly influenced business in every corner of the world.

With a multitude of online information available, we expect to instantly receive it, whether being at the desktop computer or, more frequently, offline using a mobile device. According to a Nielsen study, 94% of users in the U.S. have a mobile phone, and the vast majority of those phones are smartphones. Tablets have not reached that level of market saturation yet, but it is estimated that approximately 416 million devices will be shipped by 2017.

In a digital world, where the word “Google� is used more often as a verb, and where mobility defines the success of a law firm or practice, a website plays an essential role. Another study by Nielsen found that 3 out of 4 people search for lawyers online compared to other advertising. Lawyers in private practice should not ignore these trends.

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Web presence could drive a sizable number of qualified leads to the business. Potential clients search for a lawyer and are ready to hire the best one. For example, when searching for a DUI attorney, consumers usually select the practitioners and firms that appear on top of the list. While the Yellow Pages and other traditional marketing tools have been speedily declining, it is crucial to make sure that consumers, who are searching for a lawyer are able to do so. When searching for the law firm or practice, the potential clients should be able to easily and quickly view and navigate the website.

Particularly, it’s important for targeting “Millennials” as the potential clientele. Despite the fact that those age 35 and older still comprise the majority of the U.S. consumers, Millennials account for the nearest future of a buyer’s market. As this generation becomes the major service buyer, their habits and behaviors will only become prevalent in the U.S. market.

Millennials account for the future of a buyer’s market.

Millennials spend a full day of every week online.

Millennials: Habits That Will Become Mainstream Millennials are the generation ages 18-34 and 77 million strong, on a par with Baby Boomers. They account for 24% of the U.S. population and represent the imminent target market not only for law firms, but also for every industry worldwide. The majority of Millennials grew up when the web was invented and expanded into a common denominator of business and lifestyle today. Because their Internet consumption habits forecast the nearest future of a buyer’s market, understanding how to advertise to this valuable demographic is vital to businesses and firms that want to stay ahead of the game.

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Millennials are clearly a highly mobile demographic, and by virtually every definition they are more reachable and engage more often on this medium. Nearly one out of every five Millennials are mobile-only Internet users, a percentage that far exceeds 5% of those 35-54 yearolds and 3% of those age 55 and older. In addition, 67% of Millennials are multi-platform (i.e. desktop and mobile) Internet users, meaning that nearly 85% of this age group access the internet via mobile devices – again, far exceeding the percentage of the older age segments.

Millennials more likely own smartphones and have attraction for iPhones

There is a popular notion that Millennials live their lives on their smartphones, and the data suggest that this is very much the case.

Millennials have a substantially higher rate of smartphone usage with their age segment than their older counterparts, with more than four out of every five Millennials using a smartphone compared to just over two out of three 35-54 year-olds and two out of five 55+ year-olds.

Among the smartphone owning population, a slight majority of Millennials (50%) are on the Android platform, but they have a higher than average attraction for Apple products. While 38% of 35-54 yearolds and 39% of 55+ year-old smartphone users own iPhones, 44% of Millennials use this platform.

85% of Millennials access the Internet via mobile device

Raised in the technology age, Millennials can’t even imagine their life without the Internet. Millennials are one of today’s most valuable service buyers for lawyers, as the size of this generation rapidly eclipses that of the Baby Boomers and become the major target audience. Thus, establishing online presence is crucial for business.

However, having just a website alone does nothing for the law practice if users can’t navigate the needed information via smartphone or tablet. Online presence is a powerful marketing tool, but it’s essential to make it attractive not only for the traditional desktop customers.

While Millennials rapidly overshadow older consumers today, designing a user and mobile-friendly responsive website is the right thing to do, as this generation will significantly contribute to the return on investment (ROI) tomorrow. Going responsive is the effective way to make the most of mobile and tablet traffic, and to offer visitors the best user experience.

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What is responsive web design?

Responsive web design is just as the name implies – responsive.

This design allows site owners to deliver quality content to audiences across devices. The offline browsing capabilities of HTML5 allow for the sites to be easily accessed ‘on the go’. As HTML5 enabled tablets and smart phones burgeon, it becomes increasingly important. Email newsletters and content included in hybrid HTML5 web applications increasingly are consumed on the move and in the absence of an Internet connection.

In simple terms, responsive design means that website’s pages reformat themselves depending on which device they are being displayed on, ensuring that whether the content is viewed on a phone, tablet, or desktop computer, the website will remain userfriendly.

When a site is built with a responsive framework, the content, images, and structure of the site responds to the screen size of the device that is accessing it. This means that the website will look similar on any device, and when there is less room, the structure of the page changes to fit the new space the site is contained in.

Responsive design will optimize a user’s browsing experience by creating a flexible and responsive web page.

By having a responsive site, the content will look great no matter what the screen size or device it is. Moreover, Google’s Developers and Web masters actually recommend using responsive web design due to the benefits it will give to business owners. It will consolidate the website without the need to have a separate mobile URL, making it easier to maintain the site.

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The content of a website with a responsive design will look great no matter what the screen size or device it is.

Improving User's Offline Browsing Experience One of the most appealing aspects of responsive web design is that a responsive website can provide a great user-experience across many devices and screen sizes. This is an important characteristic, since it’s impossible to anticipate all the devices and screen sizes consumers will use to access the site. A website that works well regardless of these variables will provide a better and more consistent user-experience than a separate mobile site that is designed for a specific device and screen size.

80% of the mobile visitors leave the website within seconds of loading a site that has no mobile-user design.

Statistics show that many lawyer websites have 20% to 35% mobile traffic. Yet, many of these sites have flash animation and little to no mobile-user design. No doubt, about 80% of the mobile visitors leave within seconds of loading the site. Since Millennials are the potential target market of tomorrow, it only makes sense to create a great customer experience for them. A website needs to be an enjoyable experience that allows clients to easily consume whatever information they are looking for. Responsive design makes that happen.

When accessing a website from a laptop or desktop computer, the user is delivered a full view of the website. As the display size decreases for a smartphone or tablet, the page retracts and stacks the elements for easy viewing and usability. This creates a user experience that works across all devices without changing URLs or HTML code.

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In the end, it’s all about the person trying to interact with the website. Keeping this in mind, responsive design allows for the use of one URL. This means that users don’t need to worry about switching between a mobile and desktop version of the site; they will have access to the same pages and content that is optimized for any and all devices. Not only it creates a positive customer experience, it’s more likely to maintain their attention, as an average individual’s attention span has significantly decreased over the last few years.

The average attention of an individual in the U.S. in 2013 was 8 seconds.

Attention Span Decline According to National Center for Biotechnology Information, the average attention span in 2013 was 8 seconds, which is 4 seconds decrease from 2000. As a comparison, the average attention span of a gold fish is 9 seconds. Also, 7% of people occasionally forget their own birthdays.

Attention span is the amount of concentrated time on a task without getting distracted. It’s no surprise attention spans have been decreasing over the past decade with the increase in external stimulation. While browsing through online websites, 17% of page views lasted less than 4 seconds on only 4% of page views were more than 10 minutes. Additionally, on average, consumers read 49% of words on pages with 111 words or less. However, only 28% of words were read on average web pages containing 593 words. Thus, businesses should strive to create a website that would be visually readable, hold the attention of a customer for more than 10 minutes, and facilitate a great customer experience.

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Businesses should design a website that would hold a customer’s attention for at least more than 10 minutes.

Staying In Business Without a responsive website, it’s inevitable to lose customers and money. While searching for lawyers online via mobile devices, the websites that aren’t readable or easy to navigate would be disregarded and overlooked. By not having a responsive web design, a large portion of the potential market, Millennials would be ignored and, in the process, money and business would be lost.

Responsive design allows businesses to stay ahead of the trend.

Making Law Practice Flourish Not many sites currently utilize responsive web design. By making the website responsive, it’s easy to stay ahead of other law practices, which don’t want to invest in this technology yet.

Thus, it’s fundamental to be responsive to the increasing use of the Internet and proliferation of web applications on tablet and mobile devices. Traditionally users would be re-directed to a device specific site (e.g. mobile), but responsive design means one site can be implemented across all devices.

Responsive design allows businesses to stay ahead of the trend. As the demand for media rich mobile Internet and apps is growing, several important implications must be addressed; development and maintenance costs and visibility in search engines. It is these factors combined with an integrated approach to design that will be beneficial for all stakeholders.

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Responsive design helps modern websites appeal to modern users, and especially Millennials, users who are increasingly likely to wander the internet using a mobile or tablet device, but who still expect their desktop experience to be as smooth as ever.

Responsive web design has become a central feature of the modern web design landscape.

There is still some debate surrounding the issue of whether a separate mobile website or a single, responsive site is the best route to take, but from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, the latter is usually the better option. Separate mobile websites have their own URL and different HTML to their desktop counterparts, whereas responsive sites use one URL and one set of pages and files, making it simpler for Google to crawl and index content. SEO will certainly make the web presence much more visible.

SEO makes online presence much more visible if the website is build with responsive design

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SEO and Responsive Design Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the higher ranked on the search results page, and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including local search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML, and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

In most cases, responsive design is the way to go in regards to SEO. With responsive design, only one URL for each page should be maintained. While with a multi-version website, a correct code should be employed, such as canonical tags for each version of that page.

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Overall, there are fewer SEO problems when using responsive design versus having a separate mobile website. Though, it is important to work with a qualified and experienced SEO professional who can advise about how to execute web design to utilize search effectively for the marketing strategy.

Responsive web design is the best option for the mobile SEO strategy

Google Recommends With 67% search market share, Google works very well with responsive web designs. Google not only recommends such websites as the best way to target mobile users, but also favors mobile-optimized sites when presenting results for searches made on a mobile device. This is especially true when mobile users search for local services. Redesigning the website as responsive will enable maintaining the back-links. This means all of the links will be directed to one domain (as opposed to one mobile website and one desktop site), giving it a prioritization on a search engine result page. Marketing online can be very competitive. It is important to be more visible than other law firms and maintain leverage over other businesses.

SEO is much more measurable than other forms of marketing and advertising. Statistical data related to the website is easily available as provided by programs with analytical data. This data could show how many hits the website is getting, what pages people are viewing, how long they are staying on the site, where they are visiting from, what search terms people are using, etc.

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SEO Benefits Of Responsive Web Design Switching to responsive design will help capture people searching from mobile devices. One of the big ranking factors for Google is website quality. Websites with poor quality will be less likely ranked for mobile searches.

Responsive web design is recommended by Google, it allows one website to provide a great user-experience across many devices and screen sizes, and it also makes managing your SEO strategy easier. For these reasons, responsive web design is the best option for your mobile SEO strategy.

Visibility in search engines Content is essential for SEO. Good quality content regularly released, improves the search results page positioning.

Therefore, a further advantage of responsive design is that fewer resources can be wasted in duplication of content across sites.

The content only needs to be published onto a single website, increasing the chances of being ranked higher on the search results page. Additionally, Google suggests that mobile optimized responsive sites are notably featured in localized search results.

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Mobile optimized responsive sites are notably features in localized search results

High Bounce Rate

There’s no need to compromise the content to be displayed.

Even if a website is located in search results, yet, doesn’t work effectively for mobile and tablet users, the bounce rate will be a big problem. The bounce rate of mobile websites can be high if the content they offer is too dissimilar from the content offered on the desktop site. Google will translate this high bounce rate as a sign of offering irrelevant content to users, which is likely to lower the position in the rankings.

A responsively designed website battles this problem by presenting all of the same content found on the desktop site, but in a functional way. Responsive website design means that there is no need to compromise the content to be displayed, this ensures visitors always receive the information they are looking for, which keeps them on the page.

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Return On Investment SEO can replace any other forms of advertising in the budget. As a business owner, it’s natural to strive for maximizing ROI. With the current trends in the way people search for attorneys, it is safe to say that the web is the number one source of information.

Implementing a responsive website design will save the budget money from advertising with outdated marketing methods.

Google search engine indexes hundreds of billions of web pages.

However, a responsive website design will facilitate the top positions on Google’s search results page, which in turn will generate potential clientele. Searched on mobile devices, it will also attract the major buyer’s market, Millennials.

A responsive website will help attract the types of customers that advertising couldn’t bring. An effectively implemented responsive website will help generate the types of cases that pay well. Even current or former clients will still be searching for their lawyers online. People understand that the Internet is an immediate source of information. An up-to-date responsive web page will certainly represent the law firm or practice in a modern and professional way, a way that clients want to be represented by.

Nobody is using the Yellow Pages anymore. Every modern and successful law firm is online.

Perhaps it’s time to outperform them?

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Nobody uses Yellow Pages anymore.

References: Attention span statistics (2014). Statistic Brain.

Retrieved from: http://www.statisticbrain.com/ attention-span-statistics/

Millennials: Breaking the myths (February 18, 2014). Nielsen. Retrieved from: http:// www.nielsen.com/us/en/reports/2014/ millennials-breaking-the-myths.html

Calloway, J. (n.d.). Adapting mobile technology.

What does that mean for today’s lawyers?

Oklahoma Bar Association. Retrieved from: http://www.okbar.org/members/MAP/ MAPArticles/HotPracticeTips/ AdoptingMobileTechnology.aspx

Seven business advantages of responsive web design (July 2, 2013). Byte9. Retrieved from: http://www.thebyte9.com/news/responsive-webdesign-what-can-it-do-for-your-business Taylor, J. (December 26, 2013). Three reasons why responsive web design is the best option for your mobile SEO strategy. Search Engine Watch. Retrieved from: http:// searchenginewatch.com/article/2253965/3Reasons-Why-Responsive-Web-Design-is-theBest-Option-For-Your-Mobile-SEO-Strategy

Dechant, D. (October 23, 2012). Mobile users and responsive design. Think Legal. Retrieved from: http://www.thinklegal.org/thinklegal-blog/ mobile-users-and-responsive-design/ Duncan, R. (April 29, 2014). SEO and responsive design. Yahoo Small Business Advisor. Retrieved from: https:// smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/seoresponsive-design-033224182.html

Ten reasons why attorneys need SEO (December 13, 2013). Law Marketeers.

Retrieved from: http://lawmarketeers.com/10reasons-attorneys-need-seo/

Five benefits of responsive web design (December 10, 2013). Web Shop Manager.

Retrieved from: http://webshopmanager.com/ n-9447-5-benefits-of-responsive-webdesign.html

Why professional web design gives the best ROI for any new online business (2014).

Ampersand London. Retrieved from: http:// ampersandlondon.co.uk/blog/professional-webdesign-gives-best-roi-new-online-business

Francis, H. (March 16, 2014). Four SEO benefits of responsive web design. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved from: http:// www.searchenginejournal.com/4-seo-benefitsresponsive-web-design/92807/

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