Observed

Creating humankind may be one of the Divine Spirit's greatest acts of faith. It's comparable (in a small, small way) to the hope you and I demonstrate when we risk rejection, uncertainty and everything else that comes with sales and business development.

Cathe Dykstra recently began an excellent essay about the organization she directs with an analogy.  She wrote in Louisville’s Courier-Journal that the things that make the rooftop garden at Family Scholar House grow and prosper can be likened to the things that the single, working, college-going participants at Family Scholar House need to grow and prosper.

I’ll extend Cathe’s wonderful analogy.  In addition to support and guidance and patience and so on, many things we do also take hope.

Or, perhaps, faith.  As in, leap of faith.  As in, be prepared, minimize your risk and then…jump.

I realized that what Cathe wrote about is also true of sales, fund raising and business development — and of many, many other things many of us do every day.  Such as having a child, matriculating to law school or making a cold sales call.

So, while I hope my readers get this far in this post (148 words), I know (from plenty of user-habit studies) that a lot of you won’t.

Nevertheless…

1. I write and post anyway, confident that if I don’t (or rarely) post anything, I predictably reduce my chances of Getting Found.
2. I make what I write as engaging as possible.  Such as leading with an interesting bit about Cathe’s rooftop garden and how it’s like the worker-scholars she plants and tends to.
3. I leverage the visual and ensure that I bake my main message into the caption under my post’s main image.

Get it?  I hope so.

Maybe it's never taken much to launch a concept. But snarky comments about interior decorating? A random post from The Unhappy Hipster reads, "The door, pushed to depression by neglect and an unwarranted preference for plush, sadly inched closer to the end of his track." Really?

I read a piece about The Unhappy Hipster blog in yesterday’s New York Times and got the sense that the story of the two funny, smart and talented women behind it unfolded over years.

Then, I went back to the top of the article. “It was early in 2010.” In other words, the whole damn thing BEGAN about a year, year and a half ago, right?  From boredom to blog to book to gray eminence in 12 months or so.

Maybe it’s my Boomer DNA. I tell myself, Things take time.

Not anymore. Things don’t take anything. Molly Jane Quinn, Jenna Talbott and their followers have proven it, yes?

Toy first? Or, reach for the french fries instead? So, too, with the choices visitors make as they navigate Web sites. Paths tend to vary with the type of site and countless different objectives, whims and other variables. Acceptance of this understanding offers several valuable lessons for how we might write and deploy Web content.

Nutritional analogies aside, Web sites are like Happy Meals. Some people like to start with the french fries. Others go for the toy. And, so on.

Same with Web site user experience. While most of us land on the home page, after that, it varies. On law firm Web sites, studies show that visitors tend to head to the bios. If we’re on a merchant’s site to shop for pewter floor lamps, we’re liable to let the internal search function take us where it will do us the most good.

The lesson here is to realize that the average person is NOT linear when they visit a site. We graze.  Or, as some put it, (more…)

In order to relate better to the marketplace, a law firm Web site ought to do more than brag about the lawyers' credentials. So, instead of looking like a long resume, more and more new or re-written law firm sites now more accurately reflect the reason most people visit them in the first place. In short, they strive to be more relevant.

Law firms have always known that their Web sites were there to provide a sense of assurance to others.  The question has been, What’s the best way to do this?

Until recently, lawyers typically weren’t in the habit of asking clients or prospects what they think or want.  So, the default for content has been what worked for lawyers themselves.  Since they tend to be competitive and impressed with credentials, their sites – especially their bio pages – looked like scorecards.

People come to law firm Web sites for three reasons when they’re looking to hire a lawyer.  This list is based on growing evidence that pinpoints how firms and their lawyers can best instill a sense of confidence in others.

Visitors to law firm Web sites are asking themselves: (more…)