Web sites need creativity.  More importantly they need to tie the photos/illustrations into the firm’s message.  To help those in need, here is what we try to avoid during our web site design process.

Photos to Avoid at All Costs

• Gavels
• Courthouse Steps
• Handshakes
• Wheelchairs on Injury Sites or Death scenes

Photos that Should be Avoided – Unless for a Specific Purpose

• Flags  (except perhaps on an immigration page to inform you help people in that country)
• Cityscapes (except on the actual contact page of the city)
• Pens, Computers, Mobile phones or other devices.
• Crime Scene Photos on Criminal Sites (I have seen a few sites that are done elegantly, but that is the exception)

What Photos To Use?

It’s simple.  The image that you place on the page must enhance the message you are trying to convey.  Otherwise, don’t have the image, just for the sake of having an image.

• Find your message first: What are you trying to say?  Your message should always be the main focus of that page.  Once your message is established, find a photo to support or enhance it.
• Repurpose: Don’t be afraid to reuse that same imagery on multiple pages to reinforce your message.  Your site does not need a different photo on each page, just to be different.  This will save time, money and further support your message.  It will make for an overall better web site.
• Custom Photography: We strongly recommend getting professional photos taken of your firm and office. Custom photos give your web site viewers a personal look at who you are and what you’re all about, creating familiarity and comfort; a valuable advantage among a sea of stock photo websites.
• Use alternatives: Consider using better typography, instead of photography.  Consider using illustrations too, as they are usually unique to your firm.

3 Myths about Photos

• Every page needs its own photo, or my site will be empty.  Don’t go for quantity over quality, as then quality always suffers.  Many successful sites have no or little photography.  For example:
  • Google.com – no photos, just links.  LOS LINKS!! – as Bing would say.
  • Amazon.com – photos of the products only – not generic book photos.
  • CNN.com – photos of the actual stories only – not newspaper photos.
  • Realtor.com – photos of the houses only – not random fake photos.
• Photos impress clients. Not true, answering the questions and providing information to your visitors impresses them.  The photos need to support your information.  A gavel, skyscraper, courthouse, or handshake does not impress your web site visitors and sometimes it can detract.
• It’s easy to find photos and they are cheap!  With stock libraries it is easy to find lots of photos. However, finding the perfect message that goes along with the photo takes a lot of time, energy and creativity.  Photos can range from $5 to $150 per photo, which means you need to budget $250 to $7,500 for a 50 photo site.  Factor in your designers time to find the photos, your time to review/approve and you end up with a time-consuming and expensive task actually.  Let your designers be creative on a handful of photos and you will end up with a better site and less expensive.

One Lesson to Take Away

Quality suffers when quantity increases, this is especially true when you are dealing with the creative arts.  Let your creative team focus on your message and tie that into a few key photos.  You don’t need a different photo on every page of the site – you just don’t.

What are your thoughts?  Let us know other bad photos you have seen and should avoid.

Adjectives to Describe Most High-End Brands

• Exclusive
• Powerful
• Successful
• Sophisticated

Brand Appeals to…

• Emotion of the viewer

Technical Aspects

• Large Photo Elements are almost always used.
• Less Copy is used as the photo dominates.

I would tend to think that a lot of our law firms would fall into this category, so its something to always consider for your law firm and its web site / advertising.

1. Have a goal.
2. Have a clear message.
3. Have a clear benefit.
4. Have a clear call to action.
5. Put it all above the fold.

Simple, but a lot of designs miss these factors.  Here are four sites that get it right to show you some nice examples.  We have even wireframed them (albeit quick and dirty) to showcase how simple the designs really are.  Again, the beauty is in the details, art and message, not the layout.

1.  MailChimp.com

Mailchimp Design

MailChimp Wireframe

2.  Base Camp

BaseCamp Design

BaseCamp Wireframe

3.  Rackspace

Rackspace Design

Rackspace Wireframe

4.  Freshbooks

Freshbooks Wireframe

Conclusion

As you can see, each site had the basics above the fold:

1. Logo
2. Menu
3. Contact Info (except Basecamp and Mailchimp)

They also had the following which make them great sites:

1. Call to Action
2. Key Benefits
3. Art tied to the Theme / Benefits
4. Secondary Benefits (if space available)

Does your web site do this?

• How will a customer or consumer interpret my new brand?
• Does it reflect my companies target market?
• Does it fit the style that we’re trying to convey to our target audience?

In order to answer these vital questions we have to go through what is known as a logo design process.  We have taken one of our logos and walked you through all the steps.

The Design Brief

A majority of all designers will agree that the first step in developing any new branding is figuring out what the client is exactly looking for.  The first part of this process is typically known as the design brief.  This is when the client will give an initial accumulation of information which should give the designer an understanding of what direction to take.  We always provide the client with a logo design questionnaire which provides me important initial information on where to start.  Once the questionnaire is completed we will often have further questions for the client in order to fully understand their needs and goals.

Research and Brainstorming

The next step in the process is the research and brainstorming phase.  This is when we take all the original information we’ve accumulated from the client and begin analyzing.  We will research the client’s competition, history, future, current branding, trends in the market and what could set the client apart from the rest of the crowd.

Sketching & Conceptualizing

After we’ve finished the research and brainstorming phase we will begin sketching out our ideas on plain paper.  This allows us to generate a large amount of possible ideas which most of the time can become quite redundant after a while but the goal here is to not rule anything out.

Prototype Design

Once we’ve completed sketching out my ideas we will then begin transferring the ones we think will work successfully to the computer.  We call this the prototype design phase.  We will render the logos in a vector program such as Adobe Illustrator and we generally don’t incorporate any color at this time.  If a logo works in black and white then it will typically always work in color.  We regularly try to provide at least three unique logo concepts for the client to review.

Client Review

The next step once we’ve completed the initial round of logo prototypes is to prepare the files for the client to review.  We will compile a PDF file with the logos laid out nicely and formatted in either a black-on-white or white-on-black which helps the client concentrate on the shape and form of the logo.  This allows the client to not become distracted by easily editable aesthetical elements.  As we mentioned before, we only present the logos initially in black and white until the final stages where we will then begin to introduce color.

Revisions & Polishing

Following the review from the client we will begin finalizing the logo.  At this stage we will begin making any revisions the client has asked for or suggested and depending on the extent of the revisions may submit another round of logos for the clients review.

Conclusion & Final Product

As you can now see, creating a unique branding is very complex task.  It takes time, experimentation and exploration to come up with unique ideas which in the end will produce a great brand.  Hopefully this article gives you a good idea of why it takes time to produce and develop a good branding.  Here is the logo the client finally picked.

Why Every Page as a Landing Page?

The reasoning is that search provides over 67% of our traffic to our site.  Those visitors not only hit our home page, but hit every page imaginable on our site.  Some hit the home page, some hit our logo page, some hit our support page. We had to provide a good user experience and make a great impression instantly.

Home Page Design vs. Sub Page Design

Most designers spend a ton of time on the home page of a site.  For good reason, it is usually the entry page and sets the tone.  However, 2/3 of our visitors may never see the home page!  Wow.  So their only impression of our site is the sub pages.

Traditionally, our sub pages have been solid, not great, but good.  They focused the user on just text.  Just the facts.  Not very creative for a creative agency.  So we decided to use the same text, but spice it up, as you would a home page.

Sub Page as Your Entry Page

If your home page is your entry into your site and you design that for a specific reason to impress and guide users into specific information, then why shouldn’t every page of your site do the same?

Why shouldn’t the user be provided with a unified design with a theme to the page?  It just makes since.  Instead of having the same sub page template (Logo, menu, small photo, and mostly text), we want to have imagery, lots of imagery, with focus on what is important – just like most home pages.

Did this take a lot of work?

Hell, yeah!  Creating the format, layout, design, theme was pretty standard.  We probably had the new format done in about 20 hours of design and 20 hours of CSS build.  However, creating all the unique content, icons, imagery took forever.  We probably double our time spent on the site and we already had everything written!

Does this look better?

Yes, we firmly believe the sub pages are better organized, look better, and are pretty stylish.   Each one has a unique tagline, unique photo, focus on four key “Why Choose Us”, testimonials, unique features, and of course a call to action.

Will this Work?

I guess we will see in the next week or two.  In the past 30 days we had about 100 inquiries (three to four a day).  Let’s see if the new pages get higher conversions than our old text only sub pages.  We will report back on that hopefully with the same numbers or higher.

Everyone would agree that some domains are inherently better than others. For example, smith-jones-williams-law-firm-orlando.net just does not have the benefit that sjwlaw.com, orlandolaw.com, or sjw.com has. I recently wrote an article with 25 different rules to follow when learning how to choose a domain name and here are some of the key things to keep in mind when searching for a great law firm domain name:

1. Credibility – Your domain name should exude trust to your clients. It is easy to see which domain names of the above examples would convey the most trust to potential clients.
2. Professionalism – The bar is set much higher for a law firm than for a plumber or some other types of company website. It is amazing to see that people can get a first impression of you and your firm before they even visit your site. How is this? The first impression for many potential clients starts not at seeing your website for the first time but at seeing your domain name for the first time.
3. Authority – Authority is different than credibility in that I am using this term to define authority over a certain category online. If you are a Tampa bankruptcy attorney and you own the domain name TampaBankruptcyLaw.com then guess who is going to be perceived as the immediate authority on the topic “Tampa bankruptcy law” when a searcher types “Tampa bankruptcy law” into Google? That’s right you will be perceived as the authority based solely off of the power of your domain name. This is why some law firms undertake the smart strategy of purchasing these type of generic keyword domain names and then either building their site on them or working with their SEO professional to 301 redirect them to their existing law firm domain (redirects can be a smart strategy with a generic keyword domain because many of these types of domain names have what is called direct navigation traffic or type in traffic).
4. Keyword Rich – While having a domain name that is an exact match to a popular keyword that gets searched in Google is great (i.e. FloridaAttorney.com is an exact match to the keyword phrase “Florida Attorney”) having a domain name that contains at least part of the target keyword phrase your website is targeting can go a long way as well (i.e. if your last name is Jones and your area of specialty is bankruptcy law then JonesBankruptcyLaw.com could be a great domain name choice).
5. Memorable – Sometimes the curse of law firm domain names is that there are so many named partners. When choosing your domain name plan to make the name as short and as memorable as possible. Bonus: Plan for the future and be careful about whose name you include in the domain name. If a named partner leaves then it can at times certainly be much easier to file the appropriate business paperwork to change the name of the firm domain than even changing the law firm domain because of all of the time and marketing effort that has previously already been put into the existing domain name.
6. Age – Like wine a good domain name becomes more valuable with age. This is the case because there are only a limited number of domain names, each domain name is unique (and therefore has inherent value), and Google and other search engines base their rankings in part on the age of a domain name where older equals more trusted.
7. .com/No Dashes – If you stick with a domain name that ends in .com and does not contain any dashes then you will be far ahead of the game. The .com is still by far the most trusted domain name extension and is definitely worth the extra time and effort it may take you to find a great .com domain name. Dashless domain names are also much more respected than domain names with dashes and are much easier for clients and potential clients to remember when navigating directly to your website.

Some action items that you could begin to discuss with your SEO professional is how your current domain name stacks up to some of these criteria. If you have a very new site then you may even want to ask your SEO professional if a 301 redirect to a new domain name is the best option (this is only if you have a truly horrible domain name already). Maybe you have a very strong authoritative domain name already and you want to see how a generic keyword domain name like some of those mentioned above could fit into your overall online marketing strategy.

While it is generally true that you only want to have one main website it can however make a lot of sense to have more than one domain name and then forward all of the secondary domain names to your primary domain name so that way if people type in any of the secondary domain names then they will be automatically forwarded to your main domain name. This type of strategy is a solid defensive move when you register common misspellings of your domain name and then redirect them to your primary domain or it can be a strong offensive move when you register quality generic keyword domain names that people tend to type in on their own and then redirect those to your primary domain name as well.

Hopefully this law firm domain name guide was a help to you. Take action to find some great domain names and then work with your SEO professional to boost your search engine rankings and start increasing your online visibility today!

Check out our cool domain name tool for law firms – http://www.paperstreet.com/domain-research-tool/

About the Author

Joel Ohman of DomainSuperstar.com runs a website with tools for finding great domain names. His goal is to make it easy for anyone to find awesome domain names for business, personal, or investment use.

Clients always ask about copyrighting the web site after launch.  Here are some quick links from the copyright office.

Its pretty simple, costs $30 per application, and here is the link to the form and info:

General Information About Web Sites & Copyright
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ66.html

Copyright in the Visual Art – Form  (i.e. the graphic design)
http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formvai.pdf

Copyright in the Literary – Form  (i.e. the text)
http://www.copyright.gov/forms/formtxi.pdf.

In essence, your corporate identity is how you want clients to perceive your company.  At the basic level your identity should do the following:

1.  Portray the image of the firm.
2.  Establish a positive first impression.
3.  Build a preference for your company.
4.  Educate your client on who you are.
5.  Keep you in the top of the clients mind.
6.  Help start and close the deal.

Note that before you change the corporate identity, you should define the target market and unique selling position of the firm.  That is the starting point and will help in developing a new identity.  Who knows, maybe the old look works great for the firm.

Now, if you are sure you need a new corporate identity, then most likely you will have an uphill battle to change from the typical  "We are an old, serious, law firm" identity.  Corporations usually change their identity usually because of bad press, new target market, new product, merger, or to gain a competitive edge.

The Uh-Oh
Corporations change their images when either they gain bad press or experience bad events.  In the case of Philip Morris, it created a parent company, Altria, to rebrand the assets of the tobacco company.  In the case of Valuejet, a crash in the Everglades prompted a quick merger with AirTran.  In your case, I am hoping that nothing is terribly wrong with the firm that would promote a corporate identity change.

New Market, New Products
Corporations change their brand when they want to want to remarket their services or target a new market.  Cadillac is a great example.  In the past five years, the company designed a range of new cars to provide a more hip, youthful look.  The company has banished its old, grandfather image through a change in its corporate identity, advertising, and PR.  If you have a new target market that the firm wants to reach, then it may help to change the identity, same thing goes with a new service that the firm is offering.

Mergers
Corporations also change their brand when they merge.  When Palm merged with Handspring, the company decided to create PalmOne to embrace all of its new technology offerings.  In this case, most likely your firm is not merging with another firm, so you will not need to change or merge identities.

Completive Edge
Corporations can also change brands to simply gain a competitive edge and allow the company to stand out.  New start-up companies or new products have a major advantage in this area as they can start fresh and use an identity to create buzz.  Think of how Apple has dominated the portable MP3 player market with its unique corporate identity for the iPod.  While the iPod is simple to use, there are ton of MP3 players on the market that could have the market share that the iPod has.  In your case, while there are a ton of law firms in Central Florida, there is no reason yours could not stand out from the rest.

Most likely, you will be able to sell a new identity to your firm based on the competitive edge that it would give.  With over 600 law firms in Orlando, Florida (and over 30 law firms with 25 or more attorneys), your firm can use any edge to sign a new client.  A new identity can easily improve the image of your firm, lead to more clients, boost recognition in your community, and even lift morale within the firm.

Of course, simply saying that a new identity will lead to more clients and improve image will probably just make the senior partners cringe.  Most people will want proof of the benefits.  Monetary benefits are harder to track with a new identity, so statistics are harder to come by.  However, there are numerous anecdotal examples of companies changing names, rebranding, and creating new identities for a variety of reasons, all with successful results.
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