Rush to Judgement

Not talking about whether O.J. was paroled today or not, but the fact that Visitors and Prospects will make a snap decision about your firm in the first 20 seconds. Think about that! Scary, huh!

Think about your own reactions when visiting other websites. Now, go to your website and answer the survey questions below:

Are you happy with the “first impression” your site delivers?
Is there some flair to the design? Or, is it a cookie cutter design pulling info from your Martindale listing?
Does it exude strength and competency?
Are the words unique?
Do they deliver the right message about your firm’s capabilities and the accomplishments of your attorneys?
When you access it from your phone are you able to effectively find your contact information without needing to resize the screen with every new page?
When was the last time the site had a good scrub to update new information, update attorney listings and biographies? We are not talking about updating the date in the footer here, but real updates.
Is there anything on your site that is interesting? That people will actually take the time to read, which can be pointed to as a point of differentiation?

Were you:

Happy with your survey answers? Or
Embarrassed by the results?

Most fall somewhere in the middle of this range of emotion. We refer to this type of internal review as “the mirror test.”

Can you honestly look in that mirror and answer you do not need to address the state of your website in some form or fashion? Many firms know they fail the mirror test, but are trapped in the inertia zone and do nothing about their situation due to concerns about:

The costs and effort involved;
Not knowing where to start or how to select the right vendor;
Not knowing how much it will cost, or what is fair;
Doubting people even visit their website; and
General worry about the time commitment, balanced against ROI.

We understand these concerns and have developed a process that makes it so simple, minimizing cost and time commitment. We see website updates as just one aspect of a long-term support relationship with our clients.

Investment Case Study: As an example, we recently did a proposal for a fairly substantial site (approx. 45 pages.) This client had legacy content that was solid and like most firms, the brunt of the work will revolve around creating a unique design and repurposing existing content with updated information. We also had to migrate a bunch of prior alerts and newsletters.

We created a project timeline and estimated the firm’s time commitment to be 12 – 16 hours over a 5 week project (approx. 2.5 – 3 hours per week), with a budget of close to $ 6,000.

Our process and experience working with law firms allows us to be very efficient with our client’s time and keep the cost of a website update down. Most projects we do have a significantly lower investment in client time and costs.

Our client’s will attest, we know what we are doing and provide exceptional value versus their total investment.

We posted some thoughts on approaching these types of projects in a recent series. They are all quick reads and contain several points that apply to most website update projects.

You can read the series from the links below:

Contact us for a complimentary website analysis. We will analyze your site in detail, identify opportunities to enhance/differentiate your design and content, and be prepared to discuss cost and budget estimates.

We typically request a 20 to 30-minute call to present your customized analysis findings.

As time permits, we will also visit example sites to help you visualize what we are recommending. We will also typically visit some of your favorite sites as well to get a feel for what meets your eye.

I am biased, but the information you receive in these presentations, whether you choose to work with us or not, is worth your 30-minute time investment.

Break out of the inertia zone, contact us now to schedule your complimentary website analysis.

We look forward to hearing from you!

The ProfessionalWORX Team

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