But IE 6 Sucks!

Yes, it does.  But losing business sucks more.  Spending a few more hours on a site can help the client.  For each client, I think we need to check their server logs and determine their traffic.  It takes about 3 minutes of work to determine their audience and will help our clients. 

• If a client has a HUGE population of IE 6 users (like 10% or more), then we have to still code for them.  I could easily see this happening if our clients have older customers, lower socio-economic customers, or customers in developing countries.  Why?  Because they probably have older computers.
• If they have a 5% or less share we can just drop features and make small work arounds.
• If they have a 1% market share we can just ignore completely – just like we do for poor Opera.

My Gut Feeling

I have a sneaky feeling that it will be not a dramatic drop as we want.  I would love to see our server stats go from 4.6% to 0% in the next few months.  I just don’t think it will happen. I think it will continue trending down, but by next year we will only be a few percentage points lower.

Big Question – Our Web Site and Our Clients Sites

The big question is should we cater to 4.6% of our audience.  I ran our numbers and that is the number of visitors that came back – see attached chart.  I say yes, we should still provide a solid experience in IE6.  However, we can kill any fancy features and just do basic things.

In the last month we had 700 visitors in IE 6.  That is quite a few people (20 to 30 a day).  We had an inquiry just today from an IE 6 user.  Yes, I know a mere coincidence, but still there are people who don’t use it.   Would you design your store or restaurant to exclude 5% of your traffic?  No.

I did run a report and since August we have had 40 inquiries with IE6 as the browser (about 8% of our overall inquiries via the web form).  So, would we want to lose 8% of our business?  At this time, I don’t think we would want to do that.

So, says the Zen Master….we’ll see.

UPDATE (December 24, 2010):  Good news, as you may know by now, the Bar has a moratorium on the advertising rules.  You can read the full opinion here.

The committee acted at the request of Ft. Lauderdale lawyer Peter T. Boyd, who owns PaperStreet Web Design, a company that designs Web sites for other lawyers. Boyd asked the committee whether parts of lawyers’ Web sites could be made “information upon request” through the use of a disclaimer page.

The committee said lawyers could set up the section of their Web sites dealing with information on request as a disclaimer page, a pop-up, or any other technological mechanism. Which option would be up to each individual law firms as long as the guidelines were followed and no information could be found without viewing the disclaimer page and making an affirmative acknowledgement of receipt of the information.

……………………………………………………………….

As you may know by now, the Florida Bar has required that all law firm web sites comply with the advertising regulations of the Florida Bar.  This means that if you practice in Florida, your web site can no longer:

1.  Have testimonials.

2. Have past results.

3.  Have laudatory statements.

You can see more detailed information and our thoughts on this post.  We were thinking of new solutions for our clients this week and are proposing a few to see if they will pass with the Florida Bar.

1.    Disclaimer Page.
Create a page before any testimonials/past results, that would require the user to click on a disclaimer.  They could only view the text if they actively click on the disclaimer.

2.    Disclaimer + Contact Form Page.
This would be the same idea as a disclaimer page first, but also allow the firm to capture important contact information.  This would help them create a list of potential leads, but also prove that people in fact clicked on the disclaimer.

3. Pop-Up Overlay with Disclaimer and/or Contact Form
A new technology that we have been using lately is a pop-up overlay.  Using javascript the pop-up screen comes online at any interval you set, including on page load.  We use this at a 5 to 10 second interval to prompt people to contact us on our web site.  This technology could be added to any existing page easily, which is great if you have to modify an existing site.  Moreover, the overlay can be full-screen or any size you dictate.  Thus, allowing you to completely block only the testimonials area or web site text area.  Nice!

Anyways, we are prompting the Florida Bar for a ruling and will let you know the results when they are available.

What is the Big Idea of the New Rules?

Law Firm sites are no longer “requests for information”.  Therefore your web site must comply with all advertising rules, except the filing requirement.

What does this mean to my firm?

1.  You can no longer have testimonials on the web site.

2.  You can no longer have past results on the web site.

3.  You can no longer have laudatory statements.

That is all you need to know for now. If your site has any past results, testimonials and laudatory statements you must change by January 1, 2010.

Our Thoughts

Below is our analysis and quick thoughts about this rule change.

Is a Click a Request for Information?

The Supreme Court fails to recognize that clicking on a link is a request or action on the users part.  Put simply, this wrong.  Just because it is easy to make a click, does not mean it is not a request for information.  A user is actively requesting information when they make a click.  It just happens to be easier than picking up the phone.

Anytime someone picks up the phone, asks a lawyer for information, they can respond with testimonials, past results and laudatory statements.  If asked, a lawyer can tell the person about their verdicts, so long as it is all true.  However, because a user clicks on a link, wanting the same information, the firm cannot give that out online.

This seems at odds with common sense.  Every click should be considered a request for information.  If a person is wanting information and trying to compare law firms quickly online, should they not have access to that information?

Is the Consumer Even Really Hurt by Testimonials or Past Results?

This is more of a theoretical question.  Are consumers hurt or helped by testimonials and past results on web sites?  If they are truly hurt, then should they not be banned in all situations?

The main reasoning for Florida Bar Rules on advertising by lawyers is to protect the consumer and the practice of law.  How is the consumer hurt by testimonials and listing past results though? The bar states:

“[Testimonials] are extremely troubling because they have the most potential for abuse, as well as the most potential for further denigrating the justice system and the legal profession in the minds of the public.”

That is a really bold statement and no citation to a study that says testimonials are abused or denigrate the justice system.

Yes, there are always going to be firms that poorly market themselves and market unethically.  This will happen even after these rules.  Those firms will make false claims, get odd testimonials, run up the scoreboard with big verdicts on their site, and make outlandish claims like they invented the question mark.  However, when lawyers cross the line, we have the misleading / false information rules to slap them around with.

Why is there a need to disadvantage firms that are actually good at what they do and have happy clients?  Testimonials and past results are great resources for any business, including law firms.  I believe it actually increases the standing of lawyers and improves their image if done properly.

Instead of empowering good firms, we are now stating that all firms are equal, when that is not the case.

I Want a Winner.

If a firm does consistently win, wouldn’t you want to know that?  I sure would.  When I hire a lawyer, I want the best.  I want to know who has won, settled, or helped the most clients.  I want a firm that has verdicts, trial experience, and can organize their information effectively to showcase their talent.  This proves to me that they know what they are doing.

Yes, wins do not always equate with being the best, but it is a good indicator.  Yes, big wins make an influence on a consumer, and may lead them to believe they will get the same result in their case.  However, there are ways to combat this with informed disclaimers (a la the financial system “past results are not an indicator of future results”).  Moreover, the law firm itself will always want to match expectations with realities of a case.  So if a firm lists huge wins only, then they do so at their own peril.  Otherwise, they are always going to have dissatisfied clients, even with successful outcomes.

What this rule change does is level the playing field.  Now all firms are as experienced in the eyes of the public, when we know that is not true.  Now the best firms can’t actually advertise that they are the best.  Imagine if Audi could not advertise that it won 8 of the last 10 LeMans 24 hour races.  Imagine if Toyota could not represent that they consistently win consumer awards and races.  Imagine if doctors could not represent that they performed thousands of surgeries all with great outcomes and great testimonials from their patients.  They would be on the same playing field as other inferior car brands and medical quacks.  Only in the legal profession do we limit the ability to advertise when a firm is in fact great at what they do. 

This Puts Florida Law Firms at a Competitive Disadvantage

With this new opinion, every law firm in Florida is put at a disadvantage to firms in other states.  The internet creates a new marketing bubble, one that allows any firm anywhere to market nationwide.  No longer are Florida firms only competing with other Florida firms.

Firms in other states target Florida with their marketing efforts.  Those firms who sign the client may ultimately co-counsel or refer the case to a Florida firm, but smart firms are target their practice area nationwide.  They use web sites, blogs, and social media as their tools.  Their web sites, blogs and social media tools are not bound by Florida’s more stringent rules.  Because those firms are in another state they  do not have to comply with these rules.  This puts a significant disadvantage to all firms in our state.

Moving Forward

All Florida firms must comply with this ruling and strip out testimonials, results and laudatory statements from their web site by January 1.  We are working with our firms to comply with this decision and one possible idea is to create an actual request for information contact box.  This may allow firms to comply with the ruling, allow users to gain access to the information, and also be a win-win by capturing great contact info.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading our thoughts.  Feel free to comment as this is a work in progress on our opinion of this ruling.  I know my team will be busy next month on advising clients.

Designers or clients, beware when someone offers a design for free.  They may not own the actual copyright to the design.

We redid the ClarkSkatoff.com web site this year.  It was a great success and boosted his search rankings, boosted the impression of his firm, and led to more clients / profits.  You can check our our snazzy detail shots in our portfolio.

I guess all of this hard work goes noticed.  Another web designer had copied our design for another law firm (see the Budin design on this portfolio page).

The firm did not choose the design according to their own comments, so the designer has now given the design away for free!  Not cool, as now other people think they can use the design.

We’ve contacted the designer to pull the design and notify everyone of the infringement.  In case the damaging evidence goes away, here is a screen cap of the site that is giving it away for free.  Shame on them.

I know about tricks with toner cartridges.  I knew the printer had toner left to at least get a 50% copy or shoot even a 25% copy.  On every laser jet I have owned, you have always been able to shake up the toner and get 10 to 50 more pages to print in perfect quality or near perfect quality.

For 2 years I have been taking HP at its word that “Replace Cartidge” meant replace cartidge.  We did this because….well you can’t print without replacing a cartridge.  Double Ugh!

We replaced cartidges as needed and as requested.  We were happy and stupid.  I did not even question this as I figured they had a fancy new system to detect and use every last drop of toner, just link inkjets have.

My bad for trusting HP.

Today, I had to force a print.  I needed the copy and did not have time to go to the store.  On an HP 2605 printer you cannot easily force something to print.  In fact, it takes five steps to override the “replace cartridge” message and get something to come out.  Luckily, I found steps on how to do this here.

What is most revealing is what actually comes out.  A PERFECT 100% PRINT JOB!

That is right.  I expected the copy to print with some grey missing, black missing or something else.  However, the test copy and my 12 pages that I printed for my meeting were perfect.  Nothing missing, no fades, no blotches.  Just perfect.

In this case, I think HP is trying to do two things:

1.  Help out idiot users who don’t know when to replace their cartridges. Yes, that is nice, but I am not an idiot user (except for trusting HPs algorithm for knowing when to replace a cartridge).

2.  Make a lot more money. Yes, I do believe they are trying to maximize profit on toner replacements.  If I can get 10% more out of my toner cartidge, then that might be 1 or 2 less cartdiges per year ($100 to $200 worth). Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of these printers and you get the picture.

I think the article above sums it up pretty well.  So stop wasting money and use all of your toner with these steps.

HOW TO FORCE A PRINT ON AN HP 2605 PRINTER

1. On the printer itself, hit the big green checkmark button to access the menu.
2. Select System Setup -> Print Quality -> Replace Supplies.
3. There is likely an asterisk (*) beside “Stop at out”.
4. Hit the > arrow once, and the display should read “Override out”.
5. Press the checkmark to confirm that (the asterisk should now be beside “Override out”).
6. Back out of the menu. The LCD should now display “Override in use”, meaning, you can now continue printing for as long as you actually have toner in the cartridges (and beyond, probably).

Thanks goes to Ryan J. Thompson for the advice and his article is a MUST for any HP.

Wow.  That is impressive and will only grow.  Read up on the full article here.

In the future, search will still be needed and Google will probably still dominate that.  However, relationships created on Facebook are going to be even more important.  Getting traffic from those relationships, creating a brand on Facebook is going to be critical.  I guess I need to start improving on my network of 200 friends.

1. Unknown Client. How can you design for an unknown client?  Seriously, this is the most important issue.  If you do not have a creative brief filled out, a goal for the site, a research period, and a get to know your client period, how can you design anything?  Your design will NOT be on point, it will suck, and be merely a canned template or a shot in the dark.
2. Unique Approach. Our agency is unique, we work on a flat fee AND we really do keep designing until the client is happy.  As a testament to this dedication, we have gone to 15 different concepts before and 35 revisions on one specific project.  So for us, the first concept may not be right, but we will ultimately produce the right concept; so why should our work be judged upon a single concept.
3. Time.  All of the prep and design takes an EXTREME amount of time.  Seriously, just researching and understanding a client can be a 10 to 20 hour project.  Then you have to design the actual concepts, which can be another 10 to 40 hours depending on what you are producing.  So now you have invested 20 to 60 hours of work (a full work week), with no promise that you will win the proposal at all (or even knowing your odds).  Which leads us to the business issue….
4. Business Failure. How can you work for free and sustain a business?  Even the most talented designers, and we have them, cannot win 100% of the time.  Every time you don’t win a proposal means that you are down time and money.  So then you have two choices:  (1) eat the time or (2) raise your rates.  Basically, most people are forced to raise rates for actual clients, to make up for the time you have lost on other projects.  This is not fair to clients who can trust in your skills.  This is no way to sustain your business.

Again, the main reason not to design on spec is that you have an unknown client and are simply guessing at what they want.  However, for your own business reasons, it may not be a good idea too.  If any other agency wants to know how we respond, this is a good example that has worked well:

If you wish to see a sample to get a feel for the quality of our work, our portfolio of 300-plus web sites is a great reflection of our design excellence. We are proud to show it off at www.paperstreet.com/portfolio.php. We do not design individual sample pages for prospective clients because of the in-depth nature of our development process, which includes a creative brief, tailored site structure, unique branding, and targeted market research. To skip this process would do a disservice to you and would not be a true reflection of our work product.  If your company is concerned about being satisfied with what they pay for, consider this: at PaperStreet, we keep designing until the client is happy.  Feel free to call up any of our clients to confirm that PaperStreet rocks!

It’s polite, helps the client understand the nature of the process, and why it benefits them to not receive free “sample” designs.  If you want to see what other people say on “spec work”, check out AIGA – http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work. Good stuff.

We were asked by a client to check their site referrals from a local TV station spot that was playing.  Here are the results from February 19 to April 1.

www.wptv.com
Smarter Stats: 303
Google Stats:  185

wptv.img.cdn.entriq.net
Smarter Stats: 96
Google Stats:  57

wptv.img.origin.entriq.net
Smarter Stats: 21
Google Stats:  8

www.cbs12.com
Smarter Stats: 84
Google Stats:  43

Google seems to consistently under report by 39% to 61% of the referrals. I would go by about 40% as it has a bigger population to report from, but still that is a lot.

Not sure why, but the program data is clear:  Smarter Stats vs. Google Data.  Perhaps it just has to do with the fact that Smarter Stats is a server program and runs on the server logs, which supposedly track everything.  Perhaps its because Google runs on Javascript and some clients may have that disabled.

Anyways, the big idea to take from this is don’t fully trust your stats program.

I am assuming this also applies to Twitter, MySpace and other social networks too. Check out footnote 3 on Page 10.

“For purposes of this litigation, the Court assigns no significance to the Facebook “friends” reference. Facebook reportedly has more than 200 million active users, and the average user has 120 “friends” on the site. The fastest growing demographic is those [users] 35 years old and older. Facebook Pressroom, http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics (May 13, 2009). Regardless of what Facebook’s apparent popularity or usefullness may say about the nature of 21st century communications and relationships, the site’s designers’ selections of icons or labels offer no substance to this dispute. Indeed, the Court notes that electronically connected “friends” are not among the litany of relationships targeted by the Exchange Act or the regulations issued pursuant to the statute. Indeed, “friendships” on Facebook may be as fleeting as the flick of a delete button.” [Emphasis added]

Quigley Corp. v. Karkus, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 41296 (May 15, 2009).  You can read up more on G4TV.com on their take too.

So there you go, Facebook friends don’t count because the relationship are too fleeting and easily deleted.

I guess by the same theory then, twitter posts and blog posts do not make you an expert or authority in your field, since they too are fleeting and easily deleted (or possibly forgotten).

I know, a bit of a leap from not counting friends, to not counting advice, but still worth discussing.

I am sure there will be a court opinion on whether someone is an expert because of their blog.  At the very least would their twitter comments or blog be used against them on cross.  That begs the question, does posting a lot on twitter or your blog make you an expert or authority in your area?

I am thinking that your work product, knowledge, and experience in the off-line world, make you an authority an expert in the online world.  You use tools from your day job to market online using Twitter and blogging.  Without the background though and knowledge, you are simply noise online when you tweet or post about your subject.

Brilliant marketing.

You get all the buzz and hardly none of the cost.  You are front page news on most major newspapers, twitter is all abuzz, and you get to hype your new product.

In all fairness, you can still show up to KFC and get a “raincheck” for your meal.  Of course, how many are going to go in, get a raincheck, wait for it to come, then go back and get a free meal.  Since most of the time rebates are redeemed 21% of the time, I would expect this is a huge windfall for KGC / KFC.

Perhaps PaperStreet, or your business, should do the same?  Offer a free web site for a day, legal consult, or your product.  Then get tons of interest and cancel the campaign due to too much success.  Finally, offer rain checks in the future and profit from the hype.

Brilliant.