The Law Practice Exchange is a marketplace, brokerage, and resource for buying, selling, and valuing law firms. Earlier this year I was hired to help the Law Practice Exchange align its website with its long-term business goals.
Before & After
When I took over development for The Law Practice Exchange last year they had just completed a visual redesign of the site. It looked like this:
Visually it looked fine, but underneath it had some issues. The various web developers LPE hired over the years each used their own preferred components and layered their code on top of the existing code. It’s not apparent just from looking at the website, but there were layers on layers of competing code, plugins, template files, and duplicate pages slowing page load, confusing the search profile, and making it hard to work on the site.
So I did some general maintenance and deep cleaning even as I got started on LPE’s strategic projects. This was time-consuming but important work, and as a result of doing it the website is now much more manageable, has a cleaner SEO profile, and drastically improved page load times.
LPE’s goal is to become the marketplace for buying and selling law firms, and that meant redesigning the front page to put law firm listings front-and-center. We took inspiration from real estate websites like Zillow and Opendoor and changed the primary call to action to a simple search field. Of course, LPE still represents buyers and sellers directly, so there are secondary calls to action for those.
A lot of the cleanup work is evident in the redesigned front page, as well. The site header and navigation have been streamlined, there are fewer fonts to load, it no longer requires a page builder, and I developed an updated design language for elements like page headers and cards.
Streamlining Key Workflows
I also helped streamline and automate some of LPE’s key web-based workflows, including adding new law firm listings, intake and onboarding, and partner referrals, all of which need to be sent to ActiveCampaign, LPE’s CRM software.
To do that we are using a combination of Advanced Classifieds and Directory Pro, Gravity Forms, and custom code to sync up fields and options and enable the ActiveCampaign integration.
Automating a complex workflow like LPE’s buyer intake is a challenge, but it can make a big difference.
LPE’s website remains a work in progress as we continue to refine it and tackle new projects as LPE iterates on its business strategy. We’ve just begun to scratch the surface of its potential.
If you’d like to talk about maximizing the value of your website, let’s talk.