As more and more lawyers and law firms redesign their websites, splash images and rotating picture galleries are often incorporated on the home page or website. Though there is nothing wrong with splash images and rotating image galleries, there are 2 issues lawyers and law firms should be aware of when using splash images:
1. site load speed
2. relevancy of images and galleries to website content
Site Load Speed of a Law Firm Website
Too many images on a website can affect site load time; therefore, you don’t want to overload with flash images because the load time can slow down significantly.
Research shows that visitors on a website will leave the site if it does not load within a specific time frame. The 2010 Gomez Peak Time Internet Usage Study conducted by Equation Research revealed that 32% of website visitors leave a site between 1 and 5 seconds. (See below snapshot of the Gomez survey results regarding site load time)
Therefore, there is a small window of time prospective clients are willing to wait before leaving the site. I am sure most of us have had the experience of visiting a slow loading website and abandoned the site because it was frustrating to wait for it to load, right? If we know that it is frustrating for us as visitors to websites, we need to make sure that we don’t do the same thing to our prospective clients.
For a discussion on the 2nd issue with splash images, click here to access part B of the article.
Related Lawyer and Law Firm Website SEO Design Articles:
- 5 Mistakes Lawyers and Law Firms Make When Designing or Redesigning a Website
- Tracking ROI for Legal Website Marketing Campaigns
*Published: 8-22-2012
October 10, 2012