140-year-old legal firm sees web inquiries rise by 72 per cent after digital switch

Respected legal firm Goughs has seen online enquiries increase by 72 per cent since making a fresh foray into the digital age.

The 140-year-old company, which has seven offices across Wiltshire, commissioned a new website and digital marketing from creative agency Milk & Tweed after recognising it was in danger of being left behind. The new site, launched last April, has seen a 24 per cent increase in traffic.

Marketing executive Amber Turner said the change was needed because clients want to engage differently with legal firms. She said although Goughs has had a website for many years, it didn’t give potential clients, who are often anxious and under stress, clear information that was easy to find.

Milk & Tweed built a completely new site from scratch and researched thousands of online searches to see what people most wanted to know about the range of services Goughs offers. It then helped the firm’s experts identify topics for online articles.

Miss Turner said: “For new clients it is increasingly the first point of reference and having a lot of content on our site means we are really building ourselves up as a reputable source of information on legal issues.

“We’ve had people in the last few months who’ve selected us based on how easy they’ve found the website easy to navigate and how quickly they’ve found the information on the services they are looking for.”

She said the articles are aimed not just at answering legal queries also emotional ones. “For instance, we have an article on the impact of separation and another on domestic abuse,” she said.

“We cover a wide range of business and personal legal services, including managing sensitive matters such as divorce and domestic abuse. Clients often come to us at a difficult point in their life, so having articles that help them manage these matters helps to demonstrate how we genuinely care about their circumstances.”

Milk & Tweed head of digital marketing James Scott said the challenge for the Chippenham-based agency was creating a site that felt fresh and new but also authoritative and helping find content that people would relate to.

He said: “We undertook a huge research project focusing on what people were asking and searching for on Google. We used this research in building the website and made sure every page and article had a reason for being on the site. So when Goughs promoted their website on social media, through emails or when people searched a question on Google, they were able to easily find helpful information.”

The agency has already refined the site after installing software to track what viewers look at. “We have given them the website but then we’ve said ‘let’s analyse it, let’s improve it’ and it’s very much an ongoing thing,” said Mr Scott.

Miss Turner said: “We chose Milk & Tweed because they are a local company who have a reputation for offering a particularly tailored service. They really seem to care about their clients’ individual needs and that has been the case since then.

“One of the great things about Milk & Tweed is their data-driven approach so they are continuously looking to improve what they’ve done for us, from the functionality to the design. They have really helped us move forward into the digital age and we can see a  lot more of our inquiries come through the website now.”