Currently building a law firm site, and there is a lot of information (curriculum vitae, cases, etc…) anybody have some cutting edge ideas on how this stuff can be presented? I’m thinking a slider of some sort, or maybe some pagination. Not sure which route i’m going to take, but was seeing if anyone had some recommendations.
To make the content easier to read, I’d have a smaller-width content area (around three alphabets long at a maximum) and use headlines to separate it into sections.
You can use psychology to your benefit as well. If you have a list of items, separate them into lists of four or less, as that’s the maximum number of items people can remember.
Can you supply samples of the information required for presentation?
Is the information in tables with associated titles and descriptions?
Normally I would suggest looking at the information first, try to weed out and see if they are all necessary. However, I don’t claim to know anything about how law firms work so I would assume all of the information you are referring to are necessary. So what I would do is to prioritize information meant for casual visitors (i.e. CV, about us, services, short excerpts of sample cases, etc.) on the main nav and pages while putting the information meant for researchers/motivated visitors deeper into the website (i.e. case studies section).
First of all, I’d do some research on the competition. Although you want your information to reflect your business, you don’t want to re-invent the wheel. Visitors are used to seeing information presented in a certain way. Cater to what they want and you’ll find that on other successful sites in your market.
Second, keep your information targeted to your visitors. Have you ever had a potential client walk into your office and asked to see your C.V.? While that may be something you want to put on a back page, the information at the beginning of your site should reflect your client’s needs and what your business does to solve their problems. What do you do differently or better than competing law firms that would make a client choose you over them?
I never look at any visitor as “casual”. On the web, people are looking for solutions and they don’t want icing or even cake. They are looking for meat and potatoes. Show them up front that they are in the right place; that you’re firm has the resources, experience, and/or expertise they need to achieve their goals.
use lots of white space in your contained, bound image of what you say
Can you please restate that? I don’t know if I get what you mean.
You can use image to represent your process [like flow chart]. This way you can describe your information easily.
If I’m a customer, I will always look at the background of the firm (experience, years of service, the current clients, and customer’s feedback). You can place that in your homepage and pagination is effective for detailed information.
Have you tried storing the files in Google Documents? That’s how I manage and present my files everyday.
Actually that kind of information doesn’t belong on the home page. It belongs in a company profile or About Us section. The home page should be used to introduce the business and the site to the visitor, make them feel welcome (without saying “Welcome”) and direct them to specific areas of interest about the company and the information they are seeking.
What on Earth does any of your reply have to do with building a website? Please keep your replies on topic and in answer to the question asked.
I like this method of sharing information. When you’re building a website, you have to consider how fast everything’s going to load. And we all know that as you increase the amount of data in a single page, the loading time would increase. You can separate the information in different pages, or you can use online documents, e.g. Google Docs to share your info. If you’re going to use the “flow chart” way, I think the first choice would be good, i.e. separating info in different pages. Another thing that you should consider would be the navigation. Make it easy for the people to go through your flow chart.
Yeah, just like most of the threads here that are sharing information about something that solves their problems. It’s been a month since this thread was somewhat active. It would be a lot better if you can share something rather than just saying that you appreciate the info you found here.
As Gerald mentioned, it has been a month and no sign of the OP.
Thread Closed.