A firm of record, finally on the record online.
Ostrand & Wells is a 14-attorney commercial law firm with 30 years of practice and a website that read like a legal directory listing. We rebuilt on custom WordPress with editorial design, attorney profiles that earn trust, and an intake flow that converts — lifting consultations 61% and dropping CPL 42%.
Outcome
Organic
Stack
Engagement
The brief
Take a 30-year-old firm and put a website around them that reflects what the firm actually is.
Ostrand & Wells had earned the kind of reputation a website cannot manufacture — and a website that didn't reflect any of it. The previous build was a templated theme with stock attorney photography and practice-area pages copied from a competitor. The brief: rebuild as a credible firm of record, with editorial design, attorney profiles that read like the firm sounds in the room, and an intake flow that converts the kind of clients that actually retain a commercial firm.
What we hear most
The starting state.
Templated build with stock everything
Stock photography of attorneys who weren't theirs. Practice-area pages with text the previous agency had copied from another firm.
Intake form was hostile
Long generic form with no qualification. Most submissions were noise. Partners were doing intake triage themselves.
Local SEO was unbuilt
Two offices, no city + practice landing pages, no local schema. Lower-tier competitors outranked.
Bar advertising compliance was improvised
State-bar disclaimers missing. Testimonials handled wrong. Performance numbers stated without context.
Mobile UX was hostile
Most prospect research happens on mobile. Most legal sites are designed desktop-first. Bounce rate on mobile was 71%.
What we deliver
What we shipped.
14-week build covering design system, attorney profiles, practice-area architecture, and intake conversion.
Design system
- Editorial type with serif/sans pairing
- Attorney photography direction (real, in offices, with intent)
- Practice-area iconography system
- Trust signals: bar admissions, recognition, results (compliance-aware)
- Mobile-first patterns across the funnel
Architecture
- Practice-area + attorney + city/jurisdiction structure
- Editorial content hubs for thought leadership
- Per-attorney page with case sample, voice, photography
- Multi-office architecture with local SEO
- Programmatic city + practice-area landing pages
Intake conversion
- Intake form designed for serious decisions, not retail
- Phone, scheduled-call, secure-message options
- Per-practice-area conversion paths
- Compliance-aware testimonials and case results
- Tracking that respects privileged communication
SEO + compliance
- LegalService, Person, Article, FAQPage schema
- Internal linking by intent and authority flow
- Bar-compliant disclaimers and content review
- Multilingual (English + Spanish for Texas market)
- Real-user CWV monitoring
Process
How this service runs end to end
The same six-step shape we use across every Haxtiv project — adapted to the specifics of this scope.
01
Discover
Audit, intent, and the part nobody is saying out loud
We open with a working session — not a deck. We pull analytics, crawl the existing site, audit the brand, and interview the people closest to revenue. We surface the friction inside the team, not just the friction on the screen.
02
Define
Sitemap, story, and the metrics that actually matter
We define the audience journeys, the commercial pages we are willing to defend, the SEO architecture, and the measurable outcomes. You get a shape of the project that survives feedback because it was built on evidence.
03
Design
Editorial system, art-directed, never templated
Type, grid, motion, and tone built as a system. We design the hero, the long pages, the unloved corners, and the empty states. Every screen looks like it belongs to the same studio. Nothing is parked for later.
04
Build
Production code your team can keep
WordPress, Shopify, or page builder — we build clean, accessible, performant, and documented. Component-led, naming you'll recognize next year, and a changelog your in-house team can read.
05
Launch
Migration without losing rankings or sleep
Pre-launch crawl, redirect map, schema and metadata cutover, performance baseline, and a launch playbook. We run the deploy with you, not at you.
06
Grow
Care plan, CRO sprints, and quiet improvements
We stay involved. Monthly performance reports, security and core updates, and CRO sprints that compound. The site gets better the longer you keep us.
What this looks like in production
Numbers we earn, not numbers we round up.
Sites shipped
across 27 countries
Studio hours
delivered since 2019
Avg conversion lift
post-redesign clients
Client retention
into year two
In their words
Senior teams who chose us.
Haxtiv replatformed our marketing site without losing a single ranking. We saw organic leads up 38% inside the first quarter and the editorial team finally has a layout system they don't fight.
Mara Iglesias
VP Marketing · Lumenwave Health
Headless WordPress redesign
Our previous Shopify build was a Frankenstein of apps. The Haxtiv team simplified the stack, rebuilt the PDP and CRO patterns, and our store is faster and more profitable than it has ever been.
Daniel Korver
Founder · Northbound Goods
Shopify Plus rebuild
Frequently asked
Answers worth asking for.
Don't see the question you're holding? Send it to [email protected] and we'll answer the same day.
Brief us
Have a law firm site that needs to read like the firm? Let's talk.
30-minute call. We'll review the firm and share an honest scope.