One of the most important aspects of any professional’s website is the biography page, which is the section that is often looked at the most. What we’re seeing is the morphing of each firm professional from having a “cookie-cutter” biography page to a biography microsite—a miniature website, which much like their larger counterparts, can have multiple pages. For instance, within a biography, along with facts like education and experience, there might be navigation tabs for published articles, awards, or case studies, which then make the biography more of a standalone website within the firm’s umbrella site.
People forget that often site visitors no longer enter a website via the home page. For example, when they run a search, they enter the site from wherever that search leads, meaning they might be coming to the website via a practice area or a biography page. The latter is particularly significant because research shows that clients hire the professional as opposed to the firm, and each lawyer is selling him/herself. Therefore, you want to think in terms of creating your own website within the larger firm’s context; it’s no longer about just having a one-page biography. Instead, it’s about creating a microsite that provides page visitors with a deeper amount of information and expanded content. This transformation of the one-size-fits-all biography page into more of a personalized landing page is one reason microsites are becoming more common.
Another reason for this transformation is that no two lawyers want to be limited to marketing the same way. Whether there are 20 or 2,000 lawyers in a firm, each has a different background and is selling something different. There are also those lawyers who have a much better understanding of marketing and how to sell themselves, and you want to be able to work with those variables. Microsites provide individual attorneys the ability to use their landing page as a personal business development tool and control the amount of marketing they do while still incorporating the firm’s overall culture.
Ultimately, microsites are designed with the intent to convert a site visitor into a lead. If developed and maintained well, microsites can greatly benefit professionals and their firms.
