Not a big fan of the layout and design, with a look that is going stale. The navigation and organization can be cumbersome. Yet, the information is timely and up to date. But…in a city where the web site bar is so high, it fails to achieve the level of other Top 250 firms.
The home page is in dire need of a re-do. I was tempted to print it out and start marking it up myself. When it comes to searching, I like a few more choices to help me find things. The graphics and layout, with a little background on each section, would be so much better if there were some detailed search mechanisms to go along with them.
Somebody did not get the memo about ugly flash home pages. The “case study” concept, which seems to be getting overused this year as front page fodder, probably gets overlooked by the vast majority of visitors. I’m not too keen on calling practice areas “service areas”, but I guess most people would catch on. While I do not know who developed the site, it appears to be an attempted Hubbard knock-off. Sort of like buying a Folex on the streets of NYC for ten bucks. The previous version of BI online was way dated. So, anything would be a step forward. And something that rarely bothers me, page font size and layout, was strange. Still room for improvement.
IMA sees a beacon of light emanating from Cravath.com. While they could still take a lesson or two online from Simpson Thacher or Paul Weiss, they seem to want to start using the web for…dare I say...marketing. No, I’ll say the much more tasteful “business development” instead. The site is now a little better than the old brochureware of previous years. The design still stinks. But, this NYC powerhouse firm appears to realize that the web is his/her friend. Keep coming to the light…I can feel it.
Talk about a screw-up. The “attorneys” and “our attorneys” pages do not take you to the attorney bio search page. What is that? The site still does not have any searching function. Some of the sections do have searchable databases. Outside of some practice section’s good e-updates and a nice area for alumni participation, the site looks like an internal IT job. Not the worst, but certainly not up to par. There are so many well organized db systems to buy from a Saturno or Hubbard that this type of thing should not happen.
The design—especially the left-hand graphics—were more of a distraction than an addition. The top navigation was not the easiest either. When it comes to comparing labor law firms, the expectation of the online presence is higher than for other practice areas. There could be better integration of things like Visatrax—the total immigration solution site that is not hyperlinked from the firm’s immigration practice page. Now, think about that.
For the second year in a row, IMA will say it is better than last year. But, for whatever reason, the firm just does not adapt well to life online. The strength continues to be the focus on recruiting. The weakness is every other end-user audience. The “home” and “back” buttons that accompany the worthwhile “print this page” are so old school, dude. For the nation’s 26th largest firm, the failure to update the site with news is inexcusable. That was the criticism last year. On this review date, the most current “news” is over two months’ old. As I often say in my seats at Philadelphia Eagles games—BOO! On the plus side, the client alerts and seminars are not bad. And the site is moving in the only direction it could…up.
When it came time to review this site, I was near the end and on a stretch of some really solid offerings—Goulston, McGlinchey, Lindquist—which made this one sort of stick out in a bad way. Hated the home page. There is no reason to highlight things like “view our locations” when I can just click on the “locations” button. The frames and navigation structure was cumbersome. This was one of the slimmest “recruiting” sections I’ve ever seen. I have to assume there is no summer associate program or any real hiring going on (which may be the case). The “search for an attorney” box was a plus. Especially the category of “Association” which I had not seen as an option anywhere else.
There are not too many of those ancient web sites out there. What is this one, from 1998? To some degree, it still works. The firm has done a nice job with the limited back-end, keeping the news new and posting new articles and newsletters. It would not take too much to move everything to a state of the art system that would make changes more manageable, but most importantly, the end-user experience greater.
Is “Diversity” really a major navigation section? No. The site is dated in more ways than one. The “news” stuff (under “News & Events”) could have been titled “olds”. There are disconnects between things like “News & Events” and “What’s New”—which actually had new items. It is time for an upgrade.
