AI Law Guy

Benefits of a Mobile Site for Lawyers

Benefits of a Mobile Site for a lawyer As an attorney in a high-tech world, increasing the business potential of your practice can be challenging. Game-changing technology is constantly emerging and it really is a matter of embracing the changes and working them to your advantage. It is true that this takes time, money and expertise, but rising to the challenge is the key to business growth. You are also welcome to dig your heels in and refuse- your competitors will be real pleased, for sure. The current online- marketing must-have for any niche is the ‘mobile site’. No matter how fancy, professional or high-ranking your current website is, it will be next to useless to your clients and potential clients who access the internet via their smart phone. Having to pinch and zoom and slide the screen around to read your information, the potential client will become frustrated and give up. It really is as simple as that. What is a Mobile Site? A mobile site is so much easier for your client to navigate. It basically is a version of your current website that is optimized for use on smartphones such as iPhone and other handheld devices. The layout on a mobile site is optimized for: 1. The smaller screen of a handheld device 2. The touchscreen platform of a handheld device A mobile site for your legal practice takes away the need for pinch and zoom navigation. All of the essential tabs are listed neatly, usually in a vertical fashion, providing your client with an instant ‘call to action’ in the form of a Contact Us button. Benefits of a Mobile Site Because of this instant call to action set-up, a mobile site can grow your legal practice like no other technology available. A conventional website can be quite distracting and overload the visitor with information. They may get so busy reading the information on your site that they forget to click the contact button. A mobile site avoids this scenario as it offers all the vital information in a pleasing yet non-distracting fashion. Conversion rates are higher with a mobile site because the Contact Us button is the first thing a client is offered when they access your legal practice’s mobile site. They can then complete the Contact Us form quickly and easily from their handheld device and there you have it; a client has initiated contact with your firm with no hassles as they sit on the train pondering their legal problem. An even more exciting use for a mobile website is the ease with which a client can call your office. When a client accesses your mobile site from their smart phone and clicks through to your Contact Us page, the phone number-integration feature means they literally are just one click away from calling your office. It is therefore an excellent idea to have your phone number on the Contact tab. The client simply clicks on it and their smartphone dials your firm. Too easy! For more information on the benefits that a mobile site can bring to your legal practice’s marketing campaign, visit Mobile For Lawyers for a free mobile site quote.  

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Top 4 Entertainment Apps for Attorneys

 Top Entertainment Apps for Lawyers As a busy lawyer you are likely using your smartphone or tablet for all work and no play. How boring! There are many fun apps that attorneys are loving right now. From joke books to virtual law firms in your pocket, why not have a bit of fun laugh now and then? We have handpicked these highly rated apps just for the attorney who is looking to lighten up Francis. Lawyer Games #1 – Phoenix Wright This recently ugraded game is totally addictive. Step into fantasy land and become Phoenix Wright, the rookie defense lawyer who is new to the court scene with the wildest cross-examination skills in town. Prove your seemingly guilty client’s innocence, no matter how dire the circumstances may seem through five intriguing cases to reveal dramatic, stunning and even comical court proceedings. Great fun for lawyers and law students too; this is a genuinely comical game with cool graphics and intelligent gameplay. #2- Pocket Law Firm Grow your own virtual law firm by putting your legal wit and sense of logistics to the test. Decide if potential clients have a right, match them with the right lawyer, and win the case. The more clients you serve and the more cases you win, the faster your law firm grows! This is the most popular game ever made by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s iCivics program. Highly rated and totally free, this game has been well-received by attorneys and law students alike.  Its also a fantastic game for the children of lawyers who want to learn more about what mom or dad is doing at the office. #3 – Kaplan MBE Flash Cards OK, so not technically a game but this is a GREAT app and is loads of fun for law students to play around with. Basically, cards pop up, showing a legal term. The definition is revealed, giving law students the chance to test their knowledge. Many law students are raving about it this app, saying that it makes study for the Multistate Exam. Also provides instructional videos to give you some insight into passing your exams. Lots of fun. #4- Lawyer Jokes Ok, so attorneys don’t really like lawyer jokes- and that’s fair enough. You can run, but you can’t hide. Whether you like it or not, attorney jokes are out there and people are using them. How will you fight back if you don’t know what you’re up against? Try these apps with lawyer jokes written by people that think they are soooo clever. We all know who they come running to when they are in trouble!! So download these apps and have the last laugh. Lawyer Jokes HD This app is formatted as a book for iPad and has some pretty cool sound effects. Some old classics as well as some updated jokes thrown in for good measure. 500 Lawyer Jokes For Android platform, this is definitely the nastiest collection of jokes about lawyers we have ever set eyes on. Worth checking out as these lawyer jokes hit lower than ever.  LAWYER MOBILE APPS Need a mobile app for your legal practice? Visit Mobile For Lawyers for assistance with developing a mobile app for your law firm.

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Top 5 Legal Apps for Lawyers

With heavy demands on their time, lawyers will be pleased to know that there are several smartphone apps available to help them organize their work. From arranging your legal research neatly to managing the details of your client’s case as well as tracking your own billable hours, we bring you the Top Five Smartphone Apps for Lawyers: #1 – Fastcase If you have a subscription to the desktop edition of Fastcase, then it makes sense to download the free app for iPhone, which has won the prestigious American Association of Law Libraries New Product of the Year Award.  Fastcase for the iPhone/iPad also uses smart search technology from Fastcase’s fully-featured Web-based legal research application, which allows you to sort the most relevant results to the top of the list, customize and re-sort search results, and integrate citation analysis tools right into the results list. #2-  Black’s Law Dictionary There is nothing quite like being able to travel light. Smartphone technology makes life so much easier for lawyers in so many ways. It really can help to cut down on the amount of books lawyers have to carry around with them. Legal research is a large part of legal practice and lugging heavy books everywhere is inconvenient. With Black’s Law Dictionary now available for iPhone, lawyers can now have this invaluable Thomson Reuters reference text in their pocket at all times. View rest of top 5 list at Mobile for Lawyers…

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Legal Mobile Marketing: Push Notifications & QR Codes

Mobile Marketing focusing on “Push Notifications” and QR Codes Mobile marketing makes staying in touch with your customer base a fun, dynamic experience- so everyone’s happy! With “Push Notifications” and QR Codes, you will have contact with your customers, no matter where they are. And best of all, it is something that they opt-in for. With careful strategy and a tasteful, restrained approach, you will be using your customer base’s smartphone as a medium for your business message. Here is how it goes; Push Notifications In short, a ‘Push Notification’ is a brief message altering the smartphone user as to a commerce-related opportunity. This message will be a prompt to either purchase a new amazing product or to visit a website for the full run-down on some hot-off-the-press news from your company. When your clients download your application- whether from Facebook or the App store or your website, you have the chance to get them to opt-in to receive “Push Notifications”. If they agree to this, you will then have the opportunity to incorporate this wondrous new technology into your marketing campaign. The do’s: Always give your client the chance to opt-in to Push Notifications when they are downloading your app. You can’t just spring your message on them whenever you like. Make the incentive to accepting Push Notifications irresistible. Make a promise such as “you will receive early-bird notifications” For heaven’s sake, deliver on the promise you make. Otherwise your client’s will opt-out before too long… The don’ts When sending Push Notifications, don’t overdo it. Depending on your niche, even once a day is probably too much contact with your client base. Think more along the lines of weekly. Don’t send Push Notifications at the small hours of the morning. Give consideration to time of day when sending out your Push Notifications. Quite frankly there is nothing worse than being woken up with a chime from your smartphone at 1am telling you that you should visit a certain site for a hot coupon. QR Codes You know the future has arrived when you look at these rather unsightly perfectly square bits of gibberish that translate into total customer interaction. Operate on the assumption that all of your customers use smartphones and have the ability to scan your QR code. What? You don’t use QR codes? Your business needs to get one- now. Why? Because QR codes are so hot right now and your competitors definitely make use of them. QR codes evoke curiosity and your customer base WILL want to scan. They can’t help themselves. You can put anything into the QR code- url, phone number, message- anything. They are free or next to free to generate. QR codes bring fun and creativity to your marketing campaign. Put one on your business card for example. It creates interest and makes the recipient want to hang onto your card for longer so that they can check out what your code is about. Don’t be shy about implementing mobile technology options into your legal marketing campaigns.  Push notifications and QR Codes are another part of mobile marketing and can be used to your advantage. Visit Mobile For Lawyers for more information on mobile solutions for attorneys.

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Do You Use Video in Your Attorney Site?

DOES YOUR LAW FIRM USE VIDEO? Using video to promote your law firm has been around for awhile now, but not many lawyers seem to utilize it. Having video on your lawyer site can be a big advantage.   People tend to not want to read as much as they want to easily watch something.  So if you can create a short video that explains who you are and what you do, it can go a long way to building trust with a website visitor. ADVANTAGES OF HAVING ATTORNEY VIDEO If the person who comes to your site and is looking for a lawyer and they visit other lawyer sites and you are the only one that has  video, that might make the difference.   Also if you have a video, now you can do things with it. Not only put it on your lawyer site, but you can also create a YouTube account and setup your videos so they can come up in the Youtube and google search results. Then you can also easily embed your video anywhere else, so if you have a blog or another site you want to include your video, its a simple cut and paste process. THINK MOBILE VIDEO More people then ever are on mobile devices and are visting websites in record numbers. These numbers will keep growing and according to Bytemobile’s February 2012 Mobile Analytics Report, online video now accounts for half of all mobile traffic and up to 69 percent of traffic on certain wireless networks. If a visitor to your website that is looking at a smaller smartphone screen that has a choice of scrolling through text or watching a short video, they no doubt would rather press a button and watch your video.  Its so much more powerful then just having mobile site that has a lot of text or worse having to see a lawyer desktop site on a mobile phone, people will leave. INTERNET MARKETING AND VIDEO Having a video can help your Internet Marketing and organic search rankings for many reasons.  The first is that you can submit your video to mutliple video services such as YouTube and this alone can help your overall Internet Marketing campaign because your video can now get traffic from YouTube AND also in some cases Google will include youtube videos for certain keyword searches, so this can be another chance to get someone to view your video, visit your site and contact you. Also there are many other things you can do with videos and Ive seen more and more that videos can really help your overall organic SEO rankings . Most law firms dont want to do video because its costly and time consuming. Yet you can have someone shoot a professional video for a very reasonable cost these days.  Also if you don’t want to be on your video or spend a lot of money on it, you can have a BASIC VIDEO for lawyers done, where it just includes your Firm logo, images and text about your firm.  The bottom line with these videos are that they at least give you a video to use on your site and at YouTube and other video services. Contact us for more info on creating and marketing Video for Law Firms.

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Pay Per Click and Mobile For Lawyers

PAY PER CLICK MARKETING AND MOBILE I see it all the time, lawyers who are advertising with Google adwords or other pay per click programs and they do NOT HAVE A MOBILE SITE. So unless they go in and change the settings to not include mobile devices, then anyone on a mobile device will then see the ad, and possibly click on it, and then they will be led to a NON MOBILE FRIENDLY Site, which is hard to read and has to be tapped in to navigate. People might leave if it’s hard to navigate your site and are less likely to continue on your site.  SO if your paying for these visitors, then it might be like throwing money away.  Example of Desktop Site on Smartphone                  Non Mobile                                        Mobile Friendly   CHANGE YOUR PPC CAMPAIGN SETTINGS If you do not have a mobile friendly site, then its probably best to change the campaign settings within Google Adwords so that you uncheck the box for mobile devices. This way your ad will NOT be shown to people on smartphones. YET that then means your losing out on all that valuable mobile traffic. SO the better idea is to first off get a mobile site for your law firm, one that is easy to read, navigate and contact you.  Then after you have a mobile site, it makes sense to create a Google adwords campaign that just focuses on mobile devices. Then you would make your landing page your mobile friendly site home page.  So now the visitors that come from these Pay Per Click campaigns will see your mobile friendly site and have a much better experience. LEGAL MOBILE WEB DESIGN So make sure you create a mobile friendly version of your lawyer site and then utilize it in your PPC campaigns.  If your not doing this, your possibly throwing money away and also losing potential clients.   Visit MOBILE FOR LAWYERS For assistance with both legal mobile design and Google Mobile PPC Campaigns.

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Example of Lawyer Site Where Mobile Traffic is Soaring

MOBILE IS BIG AND GETTING BIGGER Everyone basically now knows how big Mobile is. It makes sense because so many people are on smart phones these days. So it stands to reason that more people would use smart phones to search and visit web sites. The main way to see exactly how many people are visiting your site via mobile devices like Iphones, Androids and blackberry phones, is to view your Google analytics. Google tells you not only how many people are visiting your site via mobile, but exactly which mobile devices they are using. I’ve started to notice over the last 6 months that the mobile share of traffic was growing on most lawyer sites.  Yet it was only like 3-5% of traffic, yet now Im seeing 10, 15 and even 25% of total traffic coming from mobile. That is BIG!  That alone is reason to make sure your lawyer site has a mobile friendly version of it setup.  Otherwise people will visit the desktop version of your site and it will be hard to read and navigate and they probably will leave! OVER 20% OF TRAFFIC COMING FROM MOBILE If you look at the graphic below, this is from Google analytics for a lawyer client and they have had over 5000 visitors to the site in July. 1,159 of them came via a mobile device! Thats over 22% and this number has been growing steadily. IF YOUR SITE IS NOT MOBILE FRIENDLY, PEOPLE WON’T STAY LONG The above graphic shows that people that did come to site on a mobile device didnt stay nearly as long as people on desktop versions.  This is because this lawyer doesnt have his site setup in a mobile format.  We are in the process of setting this up and it makes sense because once its setup, then these 1159 people will then see a easier to read version of site, where they can click to call the lawyer, email him and easily navigate around the mobile friendly version of site. Contact us today for help on setting up a mobile version of your lawyer site.

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Google Now Shows You Your Most Recent Links

Google has added a new option for downloading your links in Google Webmaster Tools. You can now click on a “download latest links” button. The latest links download option will download your links that Google Webmaster Tools discovered but do so sorted by date. Google will have the link in one column and in the other column list out the date Google discovered the link. Matt Cutts tweeted the feature upgrade recently, saying: You can now download links from Google *sorted by date*. Nice. Look for “Download latest links” in console UI. Pass it on! This may be one of the best features with the link reporting tool within webmaster tools. Being able to quickly see your most recently acquired new links might be helpful in tracking link acquisitions, as well as determining which links might have caused a penalty. This is very useful information and for example, if Google sends you a letter about them detecting spammy links to your site, you can look at this list and try and determine the links they are talking about and do something about them.

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iMobiTrax to Combat Mobile Ad Network Click Fraud

On Friday, the team behind iMobiTrax spoke an uncomfortable truth: the mobile advertising networks on which most advertisers place their mobile advertisements  run rampant with click fraud. This means millions of dollars are being wasted by honest advertisers while the mobile ad networks are making fortunes providing sometimes useless and even fraudulent traffic practices. If you’re not familiar, iMobiTrax is a self-hosted application designed specifically to track and optimize campaigns that target mobile devices. With iMobiTrax, merchants, agencies and affiliates will be able to quickly and accurately analyze click data from smart phones, feature phones and tablets, right down to the device, carrier and operating system. This will allow for incredibly accurate post-click optimization, resulting in higher ROIs and increased scalability. “Mobile marketing is way more than just its own unique marketing channel, it’s a UNIQUE mass media,”says managing partner of iMobiTax, Ralph Ruckman. “Even thought TV, Print and Internet advertising was before it, mobile advertising is the most widespread form of mass media worldwide. It’s also the most personal. What makes mobile advertising such an effective marketing tool for advertisers is that you are reaching consumers one at a time on their mobile devices versus tv, print, radio and Internet advertising where you are reaching mass audiences all at once.” “Advertisers whom utilize the Proprietary mobile tracking platform of iMobiTrax have already reported less click loss from mobile devices which have slower load speeds than traditional computers,” Ruckman added. “In mobile, a fast platform is essential in retaining the clicks and visitors you already paid for. iMobiTrax has been benchmarked and optimized for speed, reducing the chance that any request will time out.” Source: Mobile Marketing Watch

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Getting Top Listings at Google AdWords

Everyone wants to be at the very top of the search engine listings, both in the organic results and also at the Google AdWords pay per click program. When someone does a search at Google, depending on the search, the paid ad results which come from Adwords are listed at the very top of the screen and then on the right side.  In order to be listed at the very top of the screen in the first 3 results, your ad must have a good QS (Quality Score) and you also must bid higher then the other people bidding on the same keyword. Google Bid Simulator The bid simulator doesn’t predict the future, but it can estimate what your advertising results could’ve been on the Search Network over the last seven days, if you’d set different bids. So it shows you how many impressions you might have gotten and how many TOP Impressions. If you look at the graphic below, this bid simulator is for the keyword “Personal Injury Attorney” and its for a geographic location campaign.  It shows that at teh current $3.25 bid, we would have only receieved 11 impressions and no top impressions.  Yet if we had increased the bid to $34.20, we would then have gotten 170 impressions and 34 of those would have been at the very top. So you can see it can be hard to always have your ad at the very top of Adwords results, especially if you have a lot of competitors who are also bidding high. Yet if your goal is to be listed at the very top, then first off you need to make sure you have good ads and good Quality scores on your keywords, then you need to bid higher then you have been bidding and use the Google tools to get an idea of what it costs to be at the top, it isnt cheap, especially with personal injury keywords! Google AdWords for Lawyers If you need assistance with your Google Adwords campaigns, contact us at 630-393-0460 or fill out the online form below. [si-contact-form form=’1′]

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