Law firm website design refresh using the latest technology and search engine optimization strategies.

Since 2003 our web design agency has worked with law firms of all shapes and sizes across Canada and the United States to refresh and refine their digital marketing assets to present a future-forward platform to grow their practice.

Working with the marketing and communications team at Phillips Lytle was as rewarding as it gets. Collectively, our team engaged with more than fifteen passionate project stakeholders to identify realistic goals and significant areas of improvement for the firm’s website, digital branding and competitiveness in organic search.

Website Design for Phillips Lytle, US-based Law Firm

Website Design & SEO Goals

Digital brand refresh – after more than 15 years of operating the firm’s previous website, it was time to make a bold leap forward into the modern area with a digital brand refresh that stayed true to the 185+ year history of the firm and its client base across North America.
Custom website user interface design – a brand new user interface design that uses every pixel on the screen with purpose would be crafted encompassing more than 20 unique page layouts to offer flexibility to present information in various formats.
Custom WordPress development – with a plan to publish articles, announcements, webinars and other various types of content daily, a powerful yet easy-to-use content management system was planned to provide the power and flexibility required to handle more than 3,500 pages across the site.
Content Audit and Strategy – our team would lead workshops with the firm’s marketing team, IT services and external marketing agency to audit the previous website content, analytics and guide on selecting the right keywords and optimization tactics for the new website.
Search Engine Optimization – to power the firm’s digital marketing plans from 2023 and for years to come, our technical SEO expertise strategies will be woven into the design and development process from start to finish.

US Law Firm Website Design for Phillips Lytle LLP

The Website Design Process

Discovery and Strategy

The most crucial phase of any project is the Discovery phase. Our web designers conduct in-depth analytics and competitive research in the early stages of the project after interviewing project stakeholders. This process yields important feedback, direction and data that informs the strategic plan for the new website from information architecture, user interface design and even how the backend of the website is developed to simplify common tasks for the marketing team.

It is essential to understand the audience we’re designing the website for, how they navigate through the website and what technology they use to consume content or interact with the law firm.

Based on this data, we develop a web design strategy to help stakeholders make the most informed decisions about their new website at every milestone throughout the project. We’re firm believers in providing our clients with the most information possible and prefer to include stakeholders in every stage of our 6-step web design process. This encourages decision-makers to take ownership of the project immediately and encourages collaboration that yields the best possible outcome.

Parachute was a true pleasure to work with… They offered amazing project management and always offering creative ways to solve challenges with a very confident demeanor that was important in explaining technical reasoning to the attorneys. The team was also was very collaborative and worked so well with our ad agency and our own web designer. The responsiveness was truly second to none. They were always extremely accommodating and always offered solutions to our questions and challenges along the way.

Rebecca Farbo,

Chief Marketing Officer, Phillips Lytle LLP

Sitemap Design

Crafting a new site map is the first key deliverable in the process. The site mapping exercise focuses on establishing the navigational system for the website. It is our opportunity to address pain points that the website analytics show us users experienced in the previous website. Before transitioning into the wireframing of UX design phase, mapping out the navigation system allows us to create a more efficient organizational structure within the new site.

Wireframe Design

Once the site map design is finalized, our UX designers begin to layout the new wireframe design. Also known as user experience design, the wireframe’s role is to help establish the information architecture and user journey mapping for each unique type of page in the website. Wireframing allows our creative team to create interactive layouts in a simple blueprint style that is void of stylistic elements like photography and colour, which are simply distractions at this phase of the project. Focusing on the core architecture of each type of page in the website before the creative design phase allows us to be more efficient with our time and to make faster adjustments to page architecture and layouts, which streamlines the creative phase that follows.

Wireframes are shared with project stakeholders using an interactive prototyping tool that allows decision-makers to experience and interact with the page layouts in context to make the most educated decisions possible at this phase.

Responsive Web Design

A graceful, adaptive user interface.

Responsive User Interface Design

Once stakeholders have signed off on the wireframes, we transition to the creative phase, which is naturally the most popular part of the process. Using a rich combination of more than 20 years experience and weeks of collaborative strategic planning with our client, our creative team focuses on crafting high-fidelity design layouts based on the finalized wireframes.

Responsive Law Firm Website Design for Phillips Lytle LLP

Mobile Law Firm Website Design for Phillips Lytle LLP

Lawyer Website Design for Phillips Lytle LLP

We first present a conceptual design focused on a few key pages to refine the design direction as a group and iron out any significant wrinkles before narrowing our direction and carrying the new design system across every wireframe we created in the strategy phase. The process is called design expansion and wraps the website from top to bottom in the newly crafted digital brand.

We take special care to present every unique page for review in both the desktop and mobile environment using our prototyping tool so that decision-makers can experience the new website interface in the traditional desktop environment and also the more contemporary mobile or touchscreen environment.

Custom WordPress Development

Our web developers have been working with WordPress for 20 years and have built the skillset to shape and mold the world’s most popular CMS to suit virtually every possible need our clients challenge us with. Through the use of Advanced Custom Fields, we are able to develop a truly flexible content management system with individual template variances to put more tools and automations at the disposal of the marketing team by extending the use cases for different types of pages throughout the site.

Perhaps one of the most unique aspects of working with our expert WordPress developers is their ability to think ahead and customize the backend of the website to make the content management much more efficient and build content dispersion automations that take the manual intervention out of the day-to-day processes on the site freeing up more time for our clients to focus on more important tasks.

Some of the most unique aspects of the Phillips Lytle website included a direct-to-PDF and direct-to-DOC page export tool to make attorney profiles and thought-leadership pages instant tools for marketing efforts.

Custom Law Firm Website Design for Phillips Lytle LLP

CMS Demo and Industry-leading SEO Training

As our team nears the end of the development phase, we enter the web content to thoroughly put the website through its paces with an end-to-end quality assurance process that tests both the front-end design and behaviour of the site as well as the backend functionality. Once we’re confident everything is working as expected, we conduct a live training session with the marketing team to introduce them to their new CMS and closely examine every tool, function and feature within the platform. This training session is recorded and made available for download as a reference guide and training manual for future team members.

During the CMS training session, we share our extensive experience managing multimedia assets and content for websites of all shapes and sizes. This training helps the marketing team understand how to properly format and publish all types of content to take advantage of the latest search engine optimization strategies and give the new site a competitive edge in search engine rankings.

When we hand over the administration of new site, we want to be sure that our client is ready to take over and use the most powerful marketing tool in their arsenal to grow their business.

Manage and Grow

For the first 60 days after the website launches, we include a complimentary end-to-end aftercare service for the website. This plan includes pre-scheduled maintenance and support that covers security updates, 24/7 performance monitoring and regular website health checks to ensure the new website is achieving the goals we established at the beginning of the project. Once the aftercare period runs its course, we tailor an individualized maintenance and support plan that ensures the website is safe, secure and stable for the long term. This support also allows the marketing team to make minor adjustments or update requests each month as their marketing plans change over time.

Law Firm Web Design

Web Design Services

Platform

Project Overview