Enhancing Your Firm's Web Presence

Many law firms still don't understand that a poorly designed Web site can damage the firm's credibility and impair its image. So what's the solution? Seek the services of a Web-crafting firm that will not just be a vendor, but a Web partner and architectural strategist. The Web-crafting firm should first ask senior law firm executives to complete a detailed questionnaire or profile that encompasses these basic elements:

• Company goals/objectives;
• How this translates to the firm's Web site, eg, is one goal to provide a service to the firm's existing clients, and if so, how will they learn about the Web site?;
• What makes your firm's services unique?;
• How will you measure the success of your site?;
• Budget and timeline specifications;
• Details of the firm's existing branding and marketing strategy;
• Target audience(s);
• Analysis of your competitors' sites;
• What services/information will you make available on the site?;
• How will prospective clients learn about the site?;
• What will make them decide to visit it initially?;
• How will you convince them to return to the site?; and
• Who can they contact for assistance?

After the profile has been completed, the Web-crafting partner will be able to define your firm's immediate goals and present an effective Web site strategy and design. This will also include setting a realistic budget because there are a number of 'back-end' considerations to take into consideration:

• A purely informational static site with pictures and text is a lot cheaper than a site with dynamic applications such as a client area for secure communications;
• Two sites may appear identical, but without knowing what has been built on the back-end, it's impossible to identify how much either site cost; and
• Two sites, identical in function, may have different databases that were selected depending on how many visitors use the site hourly, daily, monthly, etc., the number of servers and how the site is served (eg, is it dedicated or virtual).

Your Web-crafting partner's proposal should include three physical 'deliverables':

• Specs. These provide a solid report of the decisions that have been made and what will go into your site;
• Flow Chart. These detail the main sections. In short, it's a sketch that will evolve during the Web site's design/construction; and
• Schematic Drawing. This outlines how many sections there will be and shows the physical layout of the interface template.

Hopefully, your Web-crafting firm will custom design your Web site, building scripts for newsletters, menu rollovers, and more. Whoever owns the source code for these elements could potentially use it to build other Web sites. While you should reserve the right to access your source code without making subsequent use of it, the legal owner of the source code should be the Web-crafting firm who developed it.

A simple analogy ' while you are the owner of your custom-built house, the architect still has intellectual property rights to the blueprints for the house, preventing anyone else from claiming them as their own and making a profit from them. The same is true for the difference between the source code used to build your law firm's Web site and the actual site itself.