About 7 months ago, I felt a change was in order. I wasn’t showing up in Google well. I wasn’t getting a lot of traffic, and my website needed an update. I came to the conclusion that I needed to brand my website with my name and put my face on it. I decided to start be changing my domain from www.personalinjuryofnevada.com to naqvilaw.com.

Considering that I had been working off www.personalinjuryofneveda.com since I started my firm, I was concerned about switching. I had spent the last years building up my website with content and doing everything I could to show up in Google. I had three main concerns I needed to overcome before switching my domain:

I was afraid I would lose the “sweat equity” I had built up in my old site.
I didn’t want to start over with a new site.
I was worried that my name would be too hard for people to pronounce.

Table of Contents

The House I Built

These first two are basically the same fear. I spent a lot of time with my old site. I blogged. I wrote new content. I treated it like a pet that needed constant care and feeding, investing a lot of my being into making it something that would produce leads and I could be proud of.

Here’s a picture of how the old site looked:

All told I had around 300+ pages of content on my site. I was worried that if we switched domains I would lose all of that work not to mention all of the equity we had in it. Turns out that was not the case. We were able to keep all of the content I had worked so hard on, and with a few tweaks, made everything really showcase who I am as an attorney.

We then moved everything from the old site to the new site and lost very little of the equity I had built up.

The Pictures Make The Site

I knew that if making the switch to a branded site was going to work, I would need some awesome pictures to really show off our high energy office. So I hired a photographer to come take pictures of the office and our team. I wanted to show we are personable and friendly. We took over 200+ high quality photos.

It was these photos that lead to finding the voice and tone for my new site. I wanted to showcase our accomplishments and let our visitors know why we are one of the most capable law firms in Las Vegas.

Here’s what we came up with:

When you load this site, there is no doubt that it is mine. And, ultimately, when I saw this I knew switching was the right way to go.

As far as worrying about my name being hard to pronounce, I got over it.

Have I Looked Back?

Simple answer: No. However, I have noticed three distinct advantages to our new design that we didn’t have with the old design.

1. We Present A Confident Brand

I love that the site is bold. The black and the yellow really help to enforce that we are confident attorneys. With the old site, we used words and bullet point lists to convince our visitors that we were the right choice for them. Even the grey color that dominated that site communicated averageness. On the new site, we are up front with our awards and claims. We use bold colors and direct statements. We aren’t average attorneys. By making the changes to the site, our visitors know that right away.

2. We Give The Brand A Human Touch

Leading with my picture really does make our visitors relate more to the site. They get to know more about who I am, my personality, the work I do, and, by the time they contact us, they already know what to expect. With the old site, we never put a name or face to the brand; it could have been any attorney’s website and our visitors reacted that way. Now, they know Naqvi as a brand (even if a few say it wrong), and that means we make a personal connection before they talk to us.

3. We, As A Team, Have Better Ownership Over Our Brand

This relates to the previous benefit but I have noticed a major shift in team morale and opinion about the website. We are using my name. It’s a hard thing to take some times; my name and face are out there for anyone to defame and criticize. But what I thought was a risk really wasn’t. Now everyone at the firm feels connected to the site. I attribute this mostly to the About Us page.

Everyone at the firm has their bio on the site. We are currently working on making individual pages for each member of the team. This recognition of team involvement on the site, out there for every visitor to see and read, has resulted in a coming together of the team. We all want the site to succeed.

The New Domain Is Easier To Remember

I didn’t think this would be the case. Having an exact match keyword seemed to best the route for people to remember who we were as a firm. But we found that people remember us better because it is shorter than the other domain and because they can put a face to the name.

Risk Vs. Reward

In the end, I found that I didn’t need to worry about switching. My team has never been more involved or excited about what’s happening on the site.

We have reaped the benefits of branding our site and had none of the fallout I thought we would. And, to be honest, I’ve never been prouder to have my name on a website.