A redesign for a law firm gets significant results
Stimmel, Stimmel & Smith is a well-established San Francisco law firm that recognized early on that people would be seeking legal information on the internet. The firm adapted to the new reality by creating and publishing online an impressive number of articles with information on a wide variety of legal topics.
This might seem counter-productive—short circuiting the need for in-person legal advice—but in fact the articles became a key driver of new client inquiries. They demonstrated the firm’s expertise while showing a commitment to serving the needs of their clients in the most efficient way possible.
Lee Stimmel, the firm’s president, along with being a top expert in many areas of the law, is a prolific writer. By 2016 he had published some 600 articles on the firm’s website, with titles as varied as “Community Property, The Basics” and “International Joint Ventures, The Basic Criteria for Success.” The website was drawing some 15,000 visitors a month, many of which led to requests for legal services.
When the website was ready for a redesign in early 2016, SS&S asked Bay Design for a proposal. Our plan included a visual rebranding, but it also entailed a reworking of the infrastructure to create a much better user experience and improved search ranking.
SS&S hired Bay Design to implement the approach, and we set a target of increasing traffic by 50% within a year. This was an aggressive goal; the traffic had remained fairly constant the previous 12 months.
We launched the redesigned website in Fall 2016. Almost immediately, Google Analytics measured an improvement in search results. Within 10 weeks, we exceeded our one year goal. At the one year mark, site traffic had more than doubled, with an even greater increase in inquiries and conversions.
Visit the website at www.stimmel-law.com
Project: Redesign, rebranding and improved architecture of the Stimmel, Stimmel & Smith website
Responsibilities: Design, branding, editing, photography, site architecture, web development including site migration
Technology: Drupal 10
