How to Design a Website for Your Law Firm
You are a new millenium "cyber-warrior." You know the difference between HTML, HTTP, ISDN, MHz, MIPS, IDE, SCSI and FTP. You read Wired magazine. You read Business 2.0 magazine. You own 10 shares of Google. You even have a T1 line at home, just for net surfing.
Now you want to create an internet "homepage" for your firm. Listen to me and I will tell you how.
You need to think in terms of three processes. The first is "designing." The second is "creating," and the third is "maintaining."
I’ll talk about all three, and then I’ll address some other issues.
Designing Your Site:
First off, you have to determine what you want up at your site. In internet lingo, this is know as "content." Good content generally results in a good website. Bad content generally results in a bad website.
Your firm’s website should tell a story. And that story should be tailored towards your target demographic (i.e., typical clients). Now when I say "tell a story," I don’t mean Jack and the Beanstalk, or Little Red Riding Hood.
I simply mean that you should try to transmit something about the culture of your firm. Visitors to your website are curious about you. Otherwise they wouldn’t be looking at your site.
Satisfy their curiosity. But don’t insult their patience. Give them good content.
Tell them who you are, what you do, who some of your clients are (if possible). If your firm has an interesting history, by all means, include it. Keep attorney biographies and the like to a minimum. Chances are that if you find something boring, your site’s visitors will also find it boring.
Generally, when people surf the net, they are either looking for information, or looking for entertainment. Most legal sites are not entertaining. That generally can’t be helped. But legal sites can be very informative.
Think of your target demographic. If most of your clients are small businesses, you can put up links to such things as the Better Business Bureau, The SBA, the IRS, etc.. You might want to write an article outlining legal issues that small business commonly face. You may wish to include resources on such things as collecting bad debts, securing financing, and the like. Think about what a prospective client would like to read.
If your target demographic is consumers, you can put up information that would be of interest to them. One client of ours put up over 100 public domain FTC "Consumer Information Brochures" at his site. He now gets over 10,000 "hits" per day.
Besides your target demographic, other common audiences for law firm websites can include (1) current clients, (2) employees of the firm itself, (3) government and corporate employees, etc.. Think about what these different groups would like to see.
But don’t re-invent the wheel. Often, one of the best ways to determine what sorts of things should be at your website is to simply take a look at other law firm websites. Make a list of the ones that you like, and why. Make a list of the ones that you don’t like, and why. When it comes time to create your site, try to be more like the sites that you like, and less like the sites that you don’t like.
For an excellent list of law firm websites, point your browser to http://www.yahoo.com/Government/Law/
Whatever you do, make sure that you have interesting content at your site.
Creating Your Site:
Now you have a definite idea of what you want to put up at your website. You have looked at 100 other legal sites. You know what you like. And you know what you don’t like.
Now all you have to do is to create the actual site.
Internet websites are written in a quasi-programming language entitled "HTML" (hypertext markup language). Learning it isn’t rocket science. But it does require some effort.
It’s true that there are software products that can allow you to create a website without knowing HTML. Some of these products are quite good, and we actually use some of them in our work here.
But we recommend that you learn the underlying concepts behind what you are doing.
And the best way to learn is to read. Ironically, the best HTML resources are not on-line. So to really learn HTML, turn off your computer for a while, put on your shoes, and stroll down to the library or bookstore.
First thing you need to do is to learn a little graphic design. An excellent book for -this is entitled "Looking Good in Print," by Roger C. Parker. It’s a great primer on graphic design, and although it wasn’t written especially for web design, it still contains relevant advice. If you don’t know the difference between "leading" and "kerning," "gutters" and "white space," and "ascenders" and "descenders" you will need this book.
Now that you are less graphically impaired, you are ready to learn HTML. I recommend purchasing "Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week," by Laura Lemay. This book is the undisputed standard text for anyone who wishes to learn web publishing.
Both of these books should be available at any bookstore (or Amazon.com).
Once you feel comfortable with HTML, you will then need to learn how to create web graphics. The main resource for this task is a book entitled "Designing Web Graphics," by Lynda Weinman. If you think you already know graphics, think again. Due to various factors including internet "bandwidth" limitations and the idiosyncrasies of most browsers, web graphics tend to be different than "print graphics."
Now that you know graphic design, HTML, and web graphics, you are ready to actually design your site.
Here are some general rules to follow:
Make sure your site has great content. People will not return to a boring, useless site. The web isn’t the Yellow Pages, and your website should read more like a magazine than a phone book.
Graphics should be used sparingly, and never just for decoration. Use graphics to reinforce site identity, and as navigational helpers. But don’t use them as window dressing.
Your site should be logically organized (a great book on "information design" is entitled "Information Anxiety," by Richard Saul Wurman). If your site is confusing, people will go elsewhere.
Use restraint when making your site. Don’t do something fancy just because you can. The result is often embarrassing.
Once you have designed your website, you will need a place to put it. Your beautiful website is useless unless people can see it.
If you can afford about $5,000 for a workstation-class computer and the software and hardware to link it into the net, and if you can afford about $500 per month for a leased line, and if you can spare another $50,000 to $60,000 per year for a full-time network administrator, then you might just want to consider running your own web server computer (a.k.a. "host" or "server").
Or, if you are like the rest of us, you will need to have someone else host your site.
Luckily, many ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) offer "web-hosting." These companies will host your internet website for a reasonable monthly fee that can range from a low of about $1 per month to a high of over $99 per month.
Click over here to see a few of them.
If you already have an ISP, you may wish to contact them to see if they offer web-hosting services.
Maintaining Your Site:
Once your site has been designed and created, and you have secured "webspace" for it on the internet, you will need to maintain it.
Your content should change on a regular basis. The common rule for advertising is that the person has to see an ad at least 20 times before he or she will buy. This works fine for print, radio and television advertising because these forms of marketing presume a captive audience.
The web is different. People are not forced to visit your website. If the content at the site is stale, or never changes, people will quit coming back to your site.
Site maintenance is probably the most complex part of web design, but here are some simple rules that we have found to be useful:
One person should be appointed as a web "czar." This person will have authority to make decisions. Committee designed websites tend to look like committee designed websites.
Various parts of the site should be updated on a regular basis. You may wish to have a certain part of the site updated monthly, another part updated weekly. Large firms may even wish to update certain content daily.
When designing and creating your site, make sure that you think about maintenance issues. You do not want to design a site that is hard to modify. Make it easy to change your content. A concrete example would be designing your site so that new articles and the like can be "plugged in" without having to re-code 5 or 6 other HTML pages.
Advanced users may wish to consider using "server side includes" for page templates. We recently had a client change their firm name. Because we weren’t using SSI, we had to manually re-code 250 webpages (their name appeared on every page at the site).
Pulling it all Together:
The above material is merely meant as a starting place. Each topic above can be discussed ad infinitum. But if you are serious about creating your own website, and you read the books that I suggest, and visit the websites that I mention, you will be on your way.
You may also wish to look at Figures 1 and 2.
Figure 1 outlines, by order of performance, the steps needed to create a website. Figure 2 outlines how these steps are functionally related. As you can see, each step is seamlessly intertwined with the others.
As a last bit of help, I’ve come up with some common questions that people always ask us. Hopefully these will address some of the questions that you may be having right now.
Q. Isn’t a website considered to be advertising? Can I get in trouble for doing this?
Some jurisdictions consider internet websites to be advertising, some do not. Check your local rules. You may also wish to visit http://www.legalethics.com/ and take a look at what they have to say on the issue.
Q. If I create a legal website for my firm, will I get new clients?
No. Yes. Maybe. You should not rely on a law firm website to generate clients. Your firm’s website should be part of an overall marketing plan. Not the only part.
Q. How do I create those fill-out "forms" that everyone is talking about?
Buy the book entitled "Teach Yourself CGI Programming with PERL in a Week." Then take a week off from work.
Q. What software do I need?
Obviously, you need the basic internet software (a TCP/IP stack, a web client, ftp, etc.). To actually make the pages, you will need a text editor and a graphics editor. As for the text editor, there are many standalone HTML editors available. We like Dreamweaver (http://www.adobe.com/
products/dreamweaver/)
For graphics, we recommend "Photoshop" from Adobe. If you don’t have a spare $850 dollars for a graphics editor, email me at kevin (at) seamless.com and I will tell you about a free Photoshop clone.
Q. Should I hire a consultant?
It depends. Sometimes it is less expensive to out-source your website to a firm that specializes in website design. Many larger firms have in-house expertise in such areas as graphics and systems administration. Often larger firms will bring in consultants to simply "pull everything together." Very small firms usually can’t afford consultants, and end up doing the work themselves.
Q. How do I get started?
Well, reading this article is a good start! I suggest that you purchase or borrow the books that I have mentioned above. Take some time, and really learn graphic design, html and web graphics. Right now there are millions of people who have access to the web. Your firm’s website should present your firm in the best possible light.