Book Review: “The Big Red Fez, How To Make Any Website Better”, by Seth Godin

Disclaimer: this “book” is nearly ten years old. Furthermore, it probably shouldn’t be qualified as a “book” given that it is really an “ebook” with a new cover slapped on it. But, it’s worth a read if you – like me – are developing a lawyer website and starting a law firm.

I’m no guru and I’m still learning about building a markatable website. It’s fun, but I’m a newbie. I’ve learned some stuff and I’m going to share it – FREE! (did i sell you?).

Here is another marketinging technique – summing up the book in one easy sentence: “when designing a website, make it simple, right leaning, and show the viewer where you want them to go.” Essentially, as Mr. Godin posits: show the monkey where to find the banana.

Every website has a theme of some kind. Most lawyer website are designed to be quasi-informational but, more importantly, call the potential client to action. Thus, the banana of lawyer websites (generally) is the “call me” or “contact me” portion.

To be fair, some lawyer websites are less about selling the “call me” banana. For instance, I would guess that big law isn’t all that interested in people calling them off the street. Rather, they would like to show off there impressive website with the listing of lots of impressive looking attorney names. Maybe that is the prestige banana?

As I stated, Mr. Godin originally wrote the ebook in 2002 or thereabout. The ebook then became a real book which can now be bought. However, in 2002, many websites were just getting off the ground. A lot of them were bad. Furthermore, there was no concern about sizing the websites so they were easily viewable by smartphones.

Basically, the banana has changed a bit. It may be true that Mr. Godin’s book influenced website designers to such an extent that many websites are now much better at selling the banana than they were in 2002. I think back to some of the websites I used to visit ten years ago and I can’t help but laugh.

In sum, if you are designing a law firm website without professional help (like me), you can’t go wrong by reading this book. At the least, it makes you think in terms of proper design and clearly selling what you want to sell. The book costs $4.00 used, so you don’t need to worry if you buy it and realize it’s a little soft on the substance.

November 7, 2011May 16, 2012

Creating a Law Firm Website: Part II

I’ve promised this post for a couple weeks and I’m finally getting to it. Better late than never.

My Minnesota lawyer website is up and running. It is not finished and I am still adding content, but the homepage is almost done. In the main, I’m satisfied with it but I keep tinkering. Most importantly, it loads fast.

From what I have read, a law firm’s landing page is the most important aspect of the website. My current homepage setup is directed towards getting hits from potential clients. It should make a strong sell with my phone number and free case evaluation “call-to-action” in the upper right-hand corner. If potential clients come to the website, they should know right away what I ultimately want them to do: call me.

I thank lawyer website developer Karin Conroy for commenting on this blog in my previous lawyer website post and clueing me in to the important of the call-to-action. My website is meant to be informative to all potential clients, but it is also meant to sell my legal services and how the client can ask for those services. Thus, the phone number.

How did I get the lawyer website set-up?

I posted about my efforts to create a lawyer website previously. However, since that post, I’ve learned a lot and I hope to share some of that with my readers. Below are the three main tools that I used to create my website:

WordPress.org. Wordpress is a wonderful, user-friendly, and FREE resource. It is a web design platform that focuses on aesthetics and ease-of-use. I love it. The learning curve isn’t overly burdensome and, once you learn how to use it, the rewards are great.
Thesis Theme by DIY Themes. I’m still a little undecided on this one. I like it, but I don’t think the look of the theme is quite as good as other themes I have sampled. I should, however, give kudos to Lawyerist.com for cluing me in on the Thesis Theme. It cost $164.00 for the developer’s license. I plan to use it for multiple websites so I went with the more costly developers license. A single-use license costs half as much, at $87.00.
Winhost.com. Winhost is a website hosting provider. I signed up for the “max” plan at $4.95 a month with two months free. I don’t think I needed the max plan and could have gone cheaper, but I’m just starting out and wanted room to grown. Winhost is a shared hosting service and this means a lot of different things – namely there are a lot of other people using the server and your website load times can be slow as a result. This also means you better know something about website optimization if you want to build your own site and use a cheap, shared-hosting providers like Winhost, Godaddy, or Hostgator. Winhost allows you to purchase a domain name (usually about $8.00 to $10.00 a year for a domain name). Winhost also has a nice, user-friendly control panel that was easy to learn and navigate. My favorite part about Winhost is that it was very easy to install WordPress through their “application installer”. Just follow some simple steps and your website is up and running in under an hour (if you know what your are doing).

That’s the list. Essentially, you only need these three basic things to get a lawyer website up and running. I didn’t say it would look good or load fast, I just said you would have a website.

After choosing a domain name, hosting provider, and setting up WordPress, you then need to figure out how your new website is going to look. Once you get it up, WordPress installs a “default” theme which is basically a blog format. You are not going to want to use a blogging format for your website.

Choosing a Law Firm Website Theme

I talked about using “themes” in my prior posts on blogging and creating a law firm website. There are many themes to choose from and I haven’t sampled half of them. Do a quick Google search on “lawyer wordpress themes” and just try and make a decision. The three I have tried and like are:

I ultimately ended up sticking with the DIY, Thesis theme because I perceive it to be the most user-friendly, reasonably nice-looking, and it has top-notch support. Without a doubt, DIY has the best support forum that I have used. Most of my design questions were answered very quickly with good, solid advice.

In my opinion, Elegant Themes are the most aesthetically pleasing. Elegant Themes is also very reasonably priced. I paid $39.00 for a year-long subscription with no other contracts or other long-term deals. Plus, if you use Elegant Themes, you can choose from an array of high quality Themes – not just one. The ability to use multiple themes is a great feature – especially if you are going to develope multiple websites for your law firm. I may still use an Elegant Theme for another website, but, for now, I am using Thesis.

The last option I have tried is StudioPress. StudioPress has nice looking themes. Their support was good for the short time I used the theme. However, I like Thesis and Elegant Themes better and I didn’t need the extra expense. My mistake. Check out StudioPress, you may really like them.

So, after you get a WordPress website started, you simply need to follow the WordPress instructions and upload your theme. I know if sounds hard, and there is a learning curve, but it really isn’t that difficult. Best of all, you should be able to get a very nice looking website up for under $200.00 using this method.

There are many other discussion points like website optimization. There many good tools to use, but I particularly like YSlow, GTMetrix, and Pingdom.com. These websites give you scores on how your website is designed. The scores directly influence page-load times. Many of these tools relate directly to a things with names like “Cascading-Style-Sheets (CSS)”, “HTML”, and other programing tools. I know enough about some of them to be dangerous, but if you are going to get serious, you should probably talk to a website developer. I learned a lot of this on my own and bought a CSS book but I don’t necessarily recommend doing this unless you have a lot of free time on your hands. One additional website optimization tool I use is JPEG Mini. It is free and it allows you to greatly reduce your website images before you place them on your website. Optimizing images is very important for speeding up your website. I could write an entire post on choosing website images and optimizing them.

Finally, if anybody wants help navigating the process of creating a law firm website, I would be happy to lend a hand. Seriously, just shoot me an email at jflanders@flanderslawfirm.com and I’ll do what I can to explain what I have learned and what has worked (and not worked) for me. Cheers.

September 12, 2011May 30, 2012

Starting a Law Firm | Interview with Solo Attorney, Carl Taylor III

When I posted recently about start-up law firm press releases and Somerville, New Jersey Divorce Attorney, Carl Taylor III, I didn’t expect Mr. Taylor to actually notice and respond to the post. I probably should have.

After some friendly back-and-forth exchange, we determined that an interview was the best way to go.

I haven’t done an interview on this blog before so this is somewhat of an experiment. If anybody out there would like to do an interview at Solo in Minneapolis, I operate on a first-come first-served basis.

One of the discussion points was that we are both passionate about starting a law firm. I have talked a lot on here about networking and getting your law firm name out there in whatever way you can. Having an online discussion with a peer is one way to do this. It may not bring work in right away, but networking gets your name out there, it allows you to create a dialogue, and it gives you an online friend who may be able to lend a helping hand in the future – all good for starting a law firm.

Without further adieu, I hope you enjoy my first interview with Mr. Taylor:

(1) What Got You Interested in Being a Lawyer?

In a way I always wanted to be a lawyer. I was simply drawn to the profession, even as a child. My best friend growing up jokes that when we were 10 he would say he wanted to be a professional baseball player when he grew up, but I said I wanted to be a lawyer. But the goal of being a lawyer really became solidified when I was a little bit older. My background is very “blue collar”, and my parents always worked so hard. They had an unfortunate situation arise during that period in time, and they weren’t legally savvy enough to have it properly taken care off. I always felt like they were taken advantage of by their attorney and the system in general. So for me, it also became a goal of being an honest attorney, who would try and level the playing field for people in difficult situations. And to a large extent that is what I’ve done as an attorney.

(2) What’s Your Favorite Part of the Job?

As not only an attorney, but a business owner, I like that every part of my day I am building something all my own. I also like when I help someone in need, or help a client obtain their desired goals. I pride myself on only taking cases where I feel secure that I will be able to effectively work towards the clients goals.

(3) What Advice Would You Give to Solo Family Law Attorneys?

I’m a solo Somerville NJ family law attorney. As I have just started my solo practice, some of my advice would be as follows:

Expect the costs and expenses to start and run a firm to be higher than expected.

Have sufficient money set aside for the first few months/years when times are tight.

Take action, sitting around is not going to attract clients to your new firm.

For family law attorneys in particular, I would recommend trying to stay as level-headed as possible. Few areas of law are more emotional than family law. That’s why it’s best to try and be level-headed, to keep the case progressing toward an amicable resolution in the best interests of your client and any children from the relationship. This is not always easy to do, but really important.

September 8, 2011

Starting a Law Firm | Law Firm Blogging Platforms: Blogger or WordPress?

As many solo lawyers know: starting a law firm in this day-in-age means blogging. Solo attorneys are especially cognizant of the need to market themselves and garner search engine attention quickly and efficiently. Doing so means blogging for business.

Law Firm Blogging Options

There isn’t a lot of information on the web comparing the main blogging options. Those that I know of include:

There are other platforms, but I believe these 5 to be among the most used. All of them would work as a blogging option for your law firm. However, from what I have seen, Blogger.com and WordPress.com are the top blogging platform choices for solo attorneys.

Which Blogging Platform is the Best for Starting a Law Firm?

The answer to this question is open to some debate. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to posit that WordPress and Blogger are the two most user-friendly platforms. Both are free (if you want to stick with the basic blogging option) and both offer a great deal of user flexibility in the design and formatting options.

Blogger.com

Blogger is owned and maintained by Google. Being Google, Blogger has excellent support and tutorials. From my experience, it is easy to find answers to questions and concerns.

Google appears to be putting a lot of effort into making Blogger a good, user-friendly platform. The controls and layout choices are clearly explained and logical. When you initially log on the layout of Blogger is obvious and they point you where you need to go. If you have questions, Blogger makes you keenly aware of their ample help tutorials.

The design layout is also well-labeled and easy to understand. Blogger also ties in seamlessly with popular Google tools such as Google Analytics, Webmaster, and Adwords. This is where Blogger really has a leg-up on WordPress. I have found installing all of these desirable Google products difficult for my WordPress blogs. It can be done, but it takes some learning and tinkering. With Blogger, setting up these Google accounts is as easy as a simple click of a button.

Perhaps that is the key feature of Blogger: the ease of use by simple button pushing. You can create a decent-looking blog on Blogger within minutes by follow simple instructions and pushing a few well-placed buttons. For a technophobe, Blogger may be the way to go.

Signing up for Blogger means you need a Google account and I believe there is some tie-in to get you a Gmail account. Once you get signed up, creating a Blogger blog is easy and quick. However, for my money, this is where the superiority of Blogger ends.

The Blogger design layout is minimal. There just aren’t a lot of options to choose from and the options Blogger has look much more like children’s books than professional websites. There are some more professional looking options that are designed by outside vendors, but I haven’t found those options to be nearly as attractive and user-friendly as WordPress.

My end review of Blogger is that it is user-friendly and easy, but it looks unprofessional and lacks the content and layout options of WordPress.

WordPress

I use both Blogger and WordPress platforms, but my main focus has been on WordPress. I actually started with Blogger because it was easy and I found WordPress initial interface to be cumbersome. To be sure, there is a learning curve with WordPress, but it is worth it.

For starters, WordPress’s layout and design options are much more professional looking than Blogger and WordPress. The layout and design options are called “themes” and WordPress has many free themes to choose from. If you don’t like the free themes, you can upgrade to a WordPress created “premium” theme for various costs from $35.00 to $165.00. Or, you can choose from a myriad of professional theme designs.

As I discussed in my prior post on creating a law firm website, there are many law firm website and/or WordPress blog theme options to choose from. Wordpress theme options that I have found and like include:

The cost for StudioPress themes is a one-time fee of $24.95 for one theme or $79.95 for a developers license. The cost for the DIY Themes, Thesis theme is $87.00 for a single use or a one-time fee of $164.00 for a developers license. Finally the cost for a Elegant Theme license is $39.00 a year.

Take my advice, you always want to go with the developers license. If you like the theme you are going to want to use it again and you are going to want to have support for it.

Also, I am not making a plug, necessarily, for any of these themes, this is just what I have used. I have also heard good things about the Thesis theme from DIY Themes from Lawyerist and other lawyer blogs.

Sadly, I have gone through several options and I am still constructing my own website: flanderslawfirm.com. I am currently running a StudioPress theme on my website. I still haven’t come up with my optimal website and I continue to tinker. But, the point is that I can tinker because WordPress and the theme developers I have named allow me to do that.

Domain Names Choices

WordPress and Blogger both allow the user to create a blog domain name for free as long as the moniker “wordpress” or “blogspot” is utilized after the chosen domain name.

For example, I could choose “jlawyerblog” as my chosen domain name. If I use the free WordPress option, my domain name would look like this: “jlawyerblog.wordpress.com”. If I use the free Blogger option, my domain name would look like this: “jlawyerblog.blogspot.com”.

If you don’t like the added tag of “blogspot” or “wordpress” you can upgrade to your own domain name for both Blogger and WordPress as long as you pay for it. Therefore, if I wanted to create my own custom domain name (assuming it was available) I would create the domain name “jlawyerblog.com.” The cost for Blogger for a custom domain name is $10.00 a year. The cost for WordPress is $12.00 a year. Obviously, both are inexpensive. The expense of blogging, which truly is minimal, is if you decide to upgrade to a professional theme design.

Conclusion

For all of the reasons discussed above, I have chosen WordPress as my main blogging option for starting a law firm. The functionality and options are far superior to other Blogging platforms. The WordPress themes are also far superior in layout and design to Blogger. Wordpress and Blogger both have great support, but WordPress’s functionality, options, and professional-look make WordPress my choice for law firm blogging.