Well Studio have been busy lately working in the legal industry. We’ve been giving advice and delivering across a number of areas related to the web. As part of that, we’ve found ourselves repeating what we’ve been saying. It’s always good to share our thoughts with clients and prospects, but we wanted to jot a few suggestions down and share them online also. So here’s five things we recommend you consider (disclaimer: most of the companies below are not clients of ours – we’re just sharing our observations):
Make some movies!
It’s easier to consume video online than it is to read online. Fact. It seems like decades ago that YouTube came on the scene, but yet the legal industry has still to really grasp the concept that video is worth investing in. Of course, quality comes with a price, but there’s never been a better time to be looking around for professional producers. The market is very concentrated plus your site visitors and prospects will thank you for it. DLA Piper and Norton Rose both promote videos on their homepage, whereas Mishcon de Reya even have a TV channel! Are you doing all you can on the video front?
Talk about what you know
Again, like video, it’s never been easier to get content out there. Although, we’d throw some caution to the wind in that it’s even easier to add noise than it is good content. But that said, your firm is full of experts. Get them talking and sharing there experiences online. Here’s a really good example of a blog from SA Law.
Get down with some numbers
With the financial troubles the world continues to face, ROI on new developments has to be at the top of the list. Sounds like a sea of Excel spreadsheets!
But it doesn’t have to be that way, web analytics can help you monitor your site and help you get the right figures in the right cells. It’s fairly easy now to track things like traffic levels and the number of new visitors. You can also set-up goals and conversion rates for specific initiatives or campaigns with the click of a few buttons. We’ve used a number of web analytics packages to help clients over the years, Google Analytics being just one example.
Some clients are all over analytics and numbers for their site, whereas as some are not. If you’re in the latter camp, here’s a discussion on Linked In that might help you get to grips with the concept.
Your site in your hands
This year in the UK over 50% of people will own a smartphone. That is staggering given that the iPhone (one might argue the smartest of smart phones) was released in 2007. This figure is only going to continue to grow, so if you’re wondering when you should be planning for mobile then the answer was yesterday.
Not having a site that responses to mobile platforms (or in fact a dedicated mobile site) is risking the chance that a prospect will go elsewhere. When the internet first arrived the technical folks of the web forgot about the user. But now things have moved on, the web is so much easier to use. The same pattern is emerging with mobile; the technical problems are being ironed out and now the users are screaming out to be better serviced. So we think that now is the time to find out what your visitors want. We’ve worked hard with Mishcon de Reya recently and have helped them move a couple of their sites to a platform better suited towards a mobile future. Thumbs up to them for taking the leap.
Social for the right reasons
OK, so we’re not going to begin to pretend that we have the holy grail of social media ROI. We don’t, but remember when you started investing in SEO and the web was flooded with SEO consultants chapping at your door? The same thing happened with social media in the past two years. The path isn’t so clear sure, but one thing is for sure, the search engines are now considering your social media presence when they rank your site.
So when it comes to ROI and getting budget, don’t sell social media internally, sell SEO and how social media is part of that. DLA Piper do a good job of embracing the new social tools – they’ve even got a Flickr page – and we’re convinced that that will have helped their search engine rankings.