Rowboat Media | Thesis Designer | WordPress-Based Website Designs

Why We Love Designing Websites for Lawyers

Rowboat Media — Thu, 20 May 2010 02:33:53 +0000

We get a lot of questions from our colleagues – and some prospective clients – about why it is we get so much design work from the legal community. I thought it would be interesting to address here what it is like designing websites for lawyers, and why we enjoy it so much.

Lawyers are good people with a bad PR problem.

If you’ve ever been misunderstood and had people think they know you from just a tiny piece of information about you, you get this one. Over the course of my career, I’ve worked in 3 law firms – as an assistant and paralegal – from the gigantic to the boutique – and there’s no better way to understand that lawyers are people, too (a shocker for some), than working shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

They spend a lot of money on schooling and have the student loan burden to prove it, they have families and children who get sick, and most have a stronger sense of ethics than the population as a whole. And a work ethic. The work ethic most lawyers have would make the rest of us just want to lie down.

Rather than treating me poorly as a support staff member, most of the associates I aided would encourage me to go ahead home, while they wearily opened the file that a partner had just slapped on their desk at 6pm with an 8am deadline.

We help our client overcome perception issues with designs that don’t look like everyone else’s, and coach him through copywriting and photography choices – particularly through his “About Me” page, in order to convey his actual personality and help prospects feel comfortable hiring him.

Solos and small firms are underserved by the technical community.

Contrary to popular belief, most lawyers don’t earn six-figure salaries, and the current economic situation is making that even worse – big corporations hurting means they aren’t paying the big law firms who drive those salary perceptions.

There is a vast network of companies that has formed over the years to make money serving the legal community, in terms of technology services, marketing, case law research and more. Unfortunately, most of those companies have set their rates at a level that is out of reach for the lawyer who is practicing on her own, or who has only 2 or 3 associates.

As a consequence, many of these solopreneurs are finding themselves lost in the weeds when trying to find competent, cost-effective vendors to provide marketing services to them. We love helping them convert techno-speak to English, figuring out what they REALLY need, and providing them with the necessary hub for their marketing wheel without hefty monthly fees and restrictive contracts.

Lawyers embrace outsourcing and value specialized knowledge.

As a profession, lawyers know the value of specialization – they choose an area of the law to practice, they refer work to associates who know more about an area of the law than they do, and they employ paralegals, assistants and clerks to help them get the job done.

Therefore, you’ll rarely hear from a lawyer, “I’d code it myself, but I just don’t have time.” They’re clear on the difference between saving money (doing it yourself) and making money (doing what you’re best at). As part of that, they’re comfortable with delegating, which makes for a good partnership in a web design project. Because they charge their own clients based on their specialized knowledge, they value ours as well.

Lawyers are clear on the goal of a website – “Get Me Some Clients!”

We find that the most difficult type of clients are the “ego clients” – the ones who want a website that is all about them – and want us to find some magical way to convey “the essence of moi,” much like an interior decorator.

Lawyers are businesspeople, and as such are clear that a website is not about seeing their name in lights – it’s about getting clients in their offices. This means we get to discuss cool concepts like conversion rates and email marketing and information flow, instead of whether this shade of mauve matches their couch.

Lawyers don’t get freaked out about revisions.

Some clients think that if the first draft isn’t the perfect draft, maybe you’re not the right designer. Lawyers live in a world of revisions – revised pleadings, briefs, markups from colleagues, etc. They’re super-comfortable collaborating in an iterative fashion.

Lawyers pay their bills promptly.

There may be some exceptions to this rule, but we have not encountered them. We find that when lawyers make a purchasing decision, it’s usually not until they know they already have the funds. Bankruptcy lawyers, in particular, tend to walk their talk and run debt-free practices.

Lawyers understand the value of referrals.

Do a good job for a lawyer, and she’ll not only be a repeat client, she’ll tell everyone she knows who is looking for a similar service. They get all sorts of unsolicited marketing aimed at them as a profession, and as such, tend to lean on the referral system more heavily than others – just to screen out the white noise. Win her trust, and you win a solid referral stream of clients just like her.

Client Spotlight – Richard S. Feinsilver, Esq.

Rowboat Media — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:39:24 +0000

Back in ‘09, (read that with an old-timey squeaky voice), we did two satellite website designs for Rich Feinsilver, a bankruptcy and real estate lawyer in Long Island, New York. They were pretty simple projects with a lot of context-sensitive video integration.

When Rich got ready to revamp his flagship site, Feinlawyer.com, he came back to us – which is about the most gigantic compliment a client can give.

“I want all the bells and whistles,” he said. We made loud rummaging noises in our bell box and whistle closet, and designed an elegantly simple design to present his content for both practice areas, support a blog, and connect clients and prospects with Rich via social media.

We designed separate landing pages for the Long Island bankruptcy practice:

And the Long Island real estate law practice:

It’s always a pleasure to work with Rich’s Blackberry Rich!

Nikon D700 Camera Body for Sale

Rowboat Media — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:34:09 +0000

Here in the Rowboat, we’re focusing 1000% on our website design services now, and not so much on photography. (What do you have left over after 1000% anyway?)

So – we have this gorgeous,very lightly used, 16-month old camera body holding down wireframe drawings, which is NOT what it was meant to do. It wants to create beautiful images!

If you wanna, check it out on eBay. Auction ends next Monday afternoon, May 10.

Do you recognize yourself?

Rowboat Media — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:28:53 +0000

Every couple of months, this one makes the rounds on Twitter, and it’s so good I just had to share here.

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell

WishList Membership Plug-In for WordPress – Unadvertised SALE!

Rowboat Media — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:06:01 +0000

Date: March 12, 2010

I just got an email from WishList about an unadvertised promotion they’re doing. I’ve implemented this membership management plug-in for 3 clients so far, and they all love its power and flexibility. A full review is on that list of things to do…now WHERE did I put that list?

Anyway, I could mess around until I get that review done, or I could just let you know that from now until March 17 – that’s next Wednesday people – you can get TWO sites-worth of licensing for WishList for only $25 more than ONE site worth of licensing. To put this in perspective, WishList charges $97 for a single-site license and $297 for a multi-site license. You do that happy savings math.

So – if you’ve been thinking about it, knew you wanted to do more than one site, but almost $300 was holding you back? Do it now. You have to go in through the links on this blog post or the banner below – you can’t get the special via their front door.

You’re welcome.

Client Spotlight: Florida Bankruptcy Lawyer

Rowboat Media — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:54:17 +0000

When Florida bankruptcy lawyer Lewis Roberts, who serves Volusia and Flagler counties along Florida’s Atlantic coast, got tired of paying for expensive long-term SEO/hosting contracts and ready for real results, he contacted Rowboat Media for a new Thesis-based custom website design. We were happy to liberate him and his bank account.

Rather than using stock photography of random people looking vaguely relieved or depressed, Lewis asked us to do something “different,” that set him apart from all the templates associated with the big contract companies.

As with all of our recent designs, we created his onsite contact form with Gravity Forms, which stores messages from prospects in the database as well as forwarding them to Lewis’s email, making it convenient for him to look over all of the contacts received in one location in his WordPress content management system. We love how flexible Gravity Forms makes our design process.

And what does the esteemed gentleman himself think?

“Nothing but praise for Cynthia and everyone at Rowboat Media! She came highly recommended and did not disappoint.

I had been bouncing from one website company to another over the past few years. Everything wonderful and glamorous in the beginning, but then the service died quickly.

Cynthia only had a few short weeks to put my website together before my last contract finally ended. I was worried that I would have to ask for revisions, since I sometimes have a hard time deciding on the look and feel of my website.

Well, she did not disappoint because she nailed it on the first try. The look and feel is exactly what I was looking for – which was hard since I didn’t know what I really wanted. As soon as I saw the first draft of the website, I knew it was the final draft.

Everything was quickly put together and I was online and running without any downtime after the old website went offline.

I have already recommended Rowboat Media to other attorneys and am thinking of a website for my wife’s business.

There is no better praise for a job well done than referrals to use the same service. It speaks volumes to Cynthia’s and her team’s abilities.

Thank you!”

- Lewis Roberts – Lewis Roberts, PA – Attorneys at Law

And the bottom line – search results? After not ranking visibly for anything under his old contract, his new Thesis website is soaring up the charts only two weeks post-launch – with several page 1 Google rankings for the keyword phrases he values. I am continually stunned when I see this happen for clients – it never gets old.

Nor do the Muppets performing Bohemian Rhapsody.

Lewis, thank you for the opportunity – we love working with you!

SEO Copywriting Demystified: Scribe SEO Plug-In Review

Rowboat Media — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:00:03 +0000

If you’re like me, you read a lot about search engine optimization. You go to bed with terms like keyword density, backlinks, h1 tags, etc., dancing in your head. And you’re always wondering if you did it right, if you did enough, or if there’s some magic formula everyone else knows and you’re forever going to be scratching your head and trying to figure out what the heck all this analytical stuff means.

That’s where this really cool new SEO plug-in for WordPress comes in, brought to you by Brian Clark (Copyblogger). Provided you are running Thesis, Headway, Hybrid, or the free All-in-One SEO plug-in on some inferior theme (sic), Scribe SEO can analyze your body copy, titles and meta description and tell you how well you’re doing and what you can do better.

You can use it on old content or new stuff you’re writing right now, and Scribe SEO will tell you what the search engines will think you’re writing about. Which is what really matters. Sure, you know what you think is important, but since you can’t sit down across an itsy-bitsy table with the Googlebot and buy it a cappuccino and bore it silly with your elevator pitch – this gives us a peek into how the search engines will read our vaunted prose, guesses what we’re trying to say, and then suggests different ways to say it that might work better. Don’t you wish you had one of those for dating?

I decided to take Scribe for a spin, and since I had my portfolio page open when I clicked over to WordPress, decided, “What the heck?” and ran an analysis on that page.

First, before I could even get a glimpse of the happy blue Analyze button in the Scribe panel, which resides in the upper right corner of the WordPress screen, I saw something that looked like this:

I admit it – the first time I tried this I thought the plug-in was broken. Where was my Analyze button? I posted a ticket on the Scribe SEO support forum and found out that you have to first satisfy the requirements above before you’re allowed to run an Analysis. Oops.

So I copied and pasted my title from the page title field down into the Thesis Custom Title Tag field below the input window, and scored another green checkmark. I had already filled out the Meta Description field on that page, so as soon as I did that, the Analyze button magically appeared to reward me for good behavior.

Then I…clicked it. It went away and cogitated for about, oh, 10 seconds and then I saw this:

Click to enlarge

I scored a measly 52% for this page. I don’t think I’ve seen a grade that low since Chemistry 102 at the North Avenue Trade School. Now I admit, I have spent a lot more time thinking about keyword optimization for my “sales copy” pages rather than my portfolio page – I mean, aren’t people there to look at the pretty pictures? But here’s the beauty of Scribe SEO – it got me to thinking…am I missing out on business by not carefully optimizing every single page of my website? It’s not like I’m in the Yellow Pages. The website is it, baby.

This page told me that I don’t even have any primary keywords that it could find on this page. I got points for word length and hyperlinks, though, so that’s something. Intrigued, I clicked the Keyword Analysis tab:

Click to enlarge

It told me that it found the phrase “law firm” to be significant, with six appearances, whereas “website designs” appeared only once and was “not emphasized.” Oops. What is it we do here again? Clearly I need to go back and look at the on-page copy wrapped around all the pretty pictures and make an actual effort. This is extremely eye-opening about how we can easily neglect key portions of our real estate – this page is, after all, the second-most viewed page on our site.

Checking out the Change Keywords tab revealed these suggestions:

Click to enlarge

Decent SEO copywriting is not rocket science, people, and there has been at least one blog post suggesting that Scribe SEO is not “worth it” if you just “follow these eight steps over and over,” but who DOES that on a regular basis when it’s not your primary job? I certainly feel my hind end getting kicked all over the place by the seemingly harmless Analyze button. I won’t be able to sit down for a week! Small business owners and professionals, what IS free is the lasting effects of actually getting this right.

The Tags tab recommends a list of what it found to be “semantically relevant” terms in the content, and suggests adding them to the tags in your post. Of course, some of these are good and some are completely unintentional. I don’t really care so much about ranking for rowboats, believe it or not:

Click to enlarge

The SERP will show you how your search results will look in Google:

Click to enlarge

This got me to thinking, too – even though my description is concise, I do have a few more characters I can use – so I could use the opportunity to say more here to help get that click.

The last tab provides a list of SEO best practices, and also a glossary for those who don’t go to bed thinking SEO (lucky you), so you can learn what all these gnarly terms mean.

How much does it cost?

Scribe SEO is a monthly service, based on the number of times you hit the “Analyze” button. I’d plan on hitting the button an average of 3 times for each piece of content I produced – first to see where I need to make changes, and twice to see the effect of my edits, to judge the best package to purchase. You can get anywhere from 30 evaluations (button hits) per month for $27 to 300 for $97, with the Advanced package. The recommended package is the middle one – 120 evaluations (good for 40-50 pages) for $47.

It’s month-to-month – you can cancel any time if you find you’re not using it enough or getting the value – but if it helps your website draw one more prospect who becomes a client per month? Even if you offer housecleaning services, you just made a profit. Also, if you find you’re using it more than you thought – say, if you got the 30-hit package – you can always upgrade.

Money-saving tip – you don’t have to hit the analyze button just to see the results again – after you have run it once, there’s a “Review” button. If you haven’t made any changes, use that.

Scribe SEO makes on-page search engine optimization and SEO copywriting a whole lot easier – you still have to engage your brain, but at least it speaks a language you can understand.

Worth it.

Next, I’ll annoy you about off-site search engine optimization – backlink creation – and how to get a better handle on that.

As with all my product reviews, the unofficial official Affiliate Disclaimer applies.

Client Spotlight: TriBeCa Therapy

Rowboat Media — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:56:57 +0000

New York City therapist Matt Lundquist contacted us to develop a Thesis website for his TriBeCa practice that reflected who he was and his particular approach to therapy. His tagline, “creative therapy for creative people,” let us know that he wouldn’t want the typical psychotherapist website, or, as he so colorfully put it, “I don’t want to be mistaken for the podiatrist.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Lie down and let’s talk about your mother’s feet…yes, we admit, we wanted to hire him, as we were directly in his target market.

He came to us with some excellent logo choices from a professional designer and a mania for modern design, and we helped him choose the one that fit his goals best. After that, we created a harmonious design that presented his static and blog content, as well as media mentions, right up front.

“What drew me to Rowboat Media was my sense that they didn’t just understand design or the technical aspects of getting my site done–they understand what it means to use the internet to maximize the marketing of a service-based business. As a psychotherapist, I’m always concerned that my marketing use a delicate touch (I’m not selling office products!). Cynthia and Deborah understood that.

Another strength of their team is that they know how to listen to my ideas, but also when to step in and assert their point of view in a way that I could really hear; they’re the experts and I needed them at times to gently guide me away from some of my own ideas that just wouldn’t have worked.”
- Matt Lundquist, LMSW, MSEd

Matt, it was a unique pleasure working with you and we’ll definitely book an appointment look you up next time we’re in the Big Apple!

Client Spotlight: Senior Alert Network LLC

Rowboat Media — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:33:29 +0000

This design, launched in December 2009, was an interesting project for Rowboat Media. We were called upon by this client to update their 90’s-looking direct-sales website for Medical Home Alert, and take it from a static HTML site to Thesis on Wordpress. As the client had seen some slippage in Google rankings over time (from first page to second), a framework like Thesis with great SEO was a huge priority.

Since the product is aimed at seniors and their caregivers, we gave a lot of thought to how to create a pleasing and readable website that answered a lot of the questions potential buyers might have up front, while maintaining a strong call to action. Based on the client’s research, we incorporated large font sizes, discrete navigation tabs and high-contrast colors for increased readability and navigability.

The client is using aWeber email marketing heavily for both inline contact and order forms, and dynamic lightbox and popunder forms to encourage blog subscription and brochure requests. He is also taking full advantage of aWeber’s split-testing capabilities to determine which approaches garner the highest conversion rates.

We found ourselves thinking through every single aspect of the project – each font choice, color, and placement of elements, with utmost care – and also having to keep in mind, “pretty isn’t necessarily what sells.” However, when all was said and done, we like to think we accomplished both goals – a strong sales-oriented site that is also visually pleasing.

The client seems to think so, too:

“Cynthia went above and beyond the original scope of work for the site redesign by digging deep into the persona of who would be using the site. She even went as far as to conduct mini-focus groups within our target audience to get impressions and reactions to designs and copy. Most importantly, she listened and was very open to ideas on both the technology and design front. She also pushed back with good ideas – it felt like a true collaboration and that I was getting the benefits of her experience while she was also learning from my expertise in direct marketing. Our results are more conversions, higher rankings and a very flexible site for our business.”
- Bryan Stapp, Senior Alert Network LLC

It was a pleasure and an ongoing learning experience, and we have greatly enjoyed our part in successfully pulling Medical Home Alert back onto Google’s first page for its target keyword phrase!

Client Spotlight: Bankruptcy Law Network

Rowboat Media — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:49:46 +0000

Last fall, the Board of Directors for the Bankruptcy Law Network contacted us for an update to their blog. With over 30 participating attorneys across the nation and over 4,000 posts, it is the most-read bankruptcy-related blog on the ‘Net.

Since their old design was starting to look a bit tired, and presented content in typical blog fashion – last post first, in a linear layout – the client wanted more of a “magazine-style” layout on Thesis that would show current articles in four different categories, point new users to basic information about bankruptcy, and feature a list of most recent posts in an accessible manner.

Also, since the subject of bankruptcy is by its very nature an unsettling one, they wanted soothing colors and a pleasing design to encourage readers to hang around and educate themselves about the process. In the footer, participating attorneys are linked via geographic location so readers can go directly to their respective websites if they’d like to pursue a bankruptcy filing.

It was a fun and challenging project, and we look forward to working with BLN further to keep the content rolling out smoothly.