Just about everybody gets their information from the internet these days, and for a lot of people searching for a law firm or law school, their first stop is the organization's website. So what face are you putting forth to the world?

For many, to keep up with the latest trends, it's a constant cycle of website redesigns. At the Legal Marketing Association's Tech Midwest conference, three firm and law school marketers ran through their processes for undertaking a redesign in “The Right Technologies and Design Tools for Best-In-Class Websites” session. The process may be long and arduous. But by following a thoughtful process, the end result can be extremely rewarding.

1. Where are we now, and what do we want?

To get a website redesign off the ground, it takes a good deal of planning, perhaps more than some legal marketers that haven't gone through a redesign may be expecting. The first phase of the process requires looking at the preferred scope of the redesign, the current state of the website, and stakeholder and user research.

In analyzing the current state of the website, Cynthia Anne McCollough, senior digital strategist at the University of Michigan Law School, said it's important to perform an analytics review with tools such as Google Analytics and Crazy Egg, as well as a performance review with tools such as Siteimprove and GTmetrix. By establishing that baseline, she added, firms and others can make sure that the redesign has the required effect. For those doing a lot of the redesign work in-house, she also noted to look for accessibility issues (using Ally.js or Axe) or compliance issues (following World Wide Web Consortium rules).

A brand audit, using a tool such as Yext, is also crucial during this stage to make sure that web search sites such as Google, Yahoo, and even Yelp have the correct mailing and phone information. This search can also be a good opportunity to analyze competitors, even down to minute decisions such as color palette, the visual approach of the page, and typeface. There even exists tools such as WhatCMS.org to determine what content management systems competitors use.

“A lot of this stuff is really just grunt work,” McCullough explained. “Whatever our presence is on the website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, you need to take a look at that.”

But, of course, all of this research requires communication, as well as buy in from the top, especially because budgets are not infinite. “You need to have agreement with whoever the decision makers are, the champions of the website, what is worth having, and what is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” McCollough said.

2. Now we know what we want, let's make it happen.

Now you have the background research. But it takes more work to turn these goals into reality in the second phase of the redesign.

Paul Bonner, director of marketing at Venable, said this stage begins with website vendors. This includes not only the actual technology and design staff, but writers, photographers, videographers, and more.

One important consideration, he said, is, “Are you just going to have your current vendors redo it?” If not, then the firm may need to go through an RFP process that looks for talent, technology and tools, process, location, and even personality fit and understanding of the legal market.

“There are key things about a law firm website that a vendor must know, so I made sure not to include those questions. … I used the RFP not only to get information, but also as a preliminary test for screening,” Bonner explained. McCollough agreed with this point, noting that she intentionally left questions and market analysis out of her RFPs, then looked to see whether vendors would include them in their audience analysis.

From there, it's a matter of project management and collaboration. That doesn't mean micromanaging, though. “We demanded what we needed in the project plan and the updates, but we put the heavy lifting on them,” Bonner said.

For Bonner, CMS selection in particular was a function of flexibility, usability, portability and security, among other normal considerations such as cost. Search engine selection, meanwhile, focused on relevancy, flexibility, and price. And, of course, there needs to be a focus on different design priorities such as digital-first, mobile-first or accessibility.

Once again, it's a lot of decision-making, and Bonner said Venable went through numerous storyboards and potential templates to get to a final result in its most recent redesign. In doing so, though, it established a new brand and tone for the entire firm that proved invaluable.

3. Manage it, measure it, and continue to improve.

You may have a new website, but the work doesn't stop here. The final phase is constant vigilance and improvement.

“Launching a website is a lot of work, and the best advice we can all give you is to be organized,” said Jacqueline Madarang, senior marketing technology manager at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings.

For starters, this is where analytics dashboards come back into play. Madarang suggested to let tools such as Siteimprove and Google Analytics crawl the website during development and initial launch, to track both potential issues, as well as to identify early on user journeys.

She noted that she gets reports to sent to her on a regular basis, and typically, the more visual, the better. Having three to five highlights prominent on the report can also help explain the analytics to others within the firm, even if it doesn't have the full summary including heat maps, budgets, and more. Also included on Madarang's full report is a one-page glossary at the end, to explain such phrases as “KPIs,” “bounce rate” and more.

Even though marketing managers may not be managing the IT back end, Madarang also said that it's important to set up alerts about a website's performance to measure page load time, broken links, user journey and, of course, if the website goes down. “Google found that a half second delay was enough to annoy users, and turn 20 percent of Google users away,” she noted.

And of course, it's important to keep increasing personalization and enhancements to the website. “I highly encourage you to have some sort of strategy after you launch the site when it comes to enhancements,” Madarang said. At Bradley, Madarang and her colleagues are planning monthly or quarterly meetings to look at new ways to improve the site, such as recent improvements like a pro bono white paper callout and a drop-down for firm blogs.

In her opinion, this is necessary. As Madarang said, “It doesn't matter whether it's your first phase, or your second phase, or your 35th phase. You need to continually find ways to improve.”