Edward Poll, The Daily Record Newswire
You did it. You finally developed your website, and you are - understandably - proud of your accomplishment. It took a long time and a lot of thought. You have succeeded in creating a perfect marketing tool. Now you can relax, right? Right?
Wrong. Website maintenance is just as important as the initial development and creation of the site. Many law firms make the mistake of treating the website as a static document, and, once it is published, they believe that their work is complete. This is a mistake because the Internet is an important feature in most people's lives, and vibrant, updated websites are the draw that pulls in the business of many customers - in this case, clients.
Firms need to maintain and update their websites regularly, even if only to update their lawyer biographies. Sites that contain obsolete information reflect poorly on a law firm because visitors to the site base their perception of the firm on the quality of the site that they are visiting.
Webmasters
Maintaining a website can be troublesome if the law firm has to hire an outside webmaster to make all of the changes to the site. Not only is it expensive over time, but often outside webmasters are slow to respond to the firm's requests or fail to make the changes at all.
Alternatives to webmasters
An answer to this dilemma is to train at least one person in the firm to act as the webmaster who makes the updates to the site. Currently, most sites require the use of file transfer protocol (FTP) to make changes to the site. FTP is not a terribly difficult Internet communication protocol. However, it is not a tool with which most people are familiar, and the firm must pay for a special FTP account with the firm's Internet service provider as well as invest time and training for someone to become familiar with the process.
Another alternative to hiring a webmaster allows nontechnical people to easily add or change site content without knowing the technological details required by hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and FTP. Individual lawyers or other personnel having responsibility for the content in various parts of the site can manage their area of responsibility by literally dragging files to the website through their browser. For example, a lawyer who publishes a weekly newsletter on the website could easily add the document to the site directly from his local computer or network drive. This solution may be appropriate for lawyers who want to create an information-hub site but do not want to expend the resources required to hire a webmaster. Even more important, by eliminating the prior barriers to web content management, a firm can more easily encourage the lawyers within a firm to create a dynamic hub of information in which new content can be added on a daily basis by all lawyers wanting to do so.
Conclusion
Websites are extremely important. Potential clients might visit a law practice website to get an impression of the law firm and its lawyers and decide whether to engage that firm. Current clients might visit the website of its law firm to check out what new and interesting information has been posted. In both cases, an unmaintained site will turn off clients and turn away business. A small investment of time and money in upkeep will reap rewards in new and repeat business.
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Edward Poll, J.D., M.B.A., CMC, is a law practice management thought leader and contributor to this publication. His website is at www.lawbiz.com.
Published: Wed, Dec 10, 2014
