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Net Q & AView Q & A Archives.
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Question of the Month: October 1999 |
| A great deal has been written concerning the value of
law firm web sites, but have there been any studies or substantive
articles written providing hard data, such as investment made vs. number
of hits vs. actual clients generated?
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Answer |
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Would you ask for "hard data" about the number of
"actual clients" generated through other marketing expenditures like
seminars conducted by law firms? Of course not. Few people would even ask for
such figures, because we know that the expected payback depends on factors
like the industry involved, the firm's prestige before the seminar, the
quality of the program, how well the lawyers follow up, and many other
factors.
You are going to have a hard time finding quantifiable information on this topic relevant to law firms. Further, any information you do find is likely to be misleading. Law firms are not fungible. Clients are not fungible. Law firm web sites are not fungible. This is not an area that lends itself well to quantitative analysis. This leads directly into another reason why the "hard data" would be misleading: Most law firm web sites are of poor quality, and they are poorly promoted. The firms commissioning them seem to conceive of them as a sort of cross between a paper brochure and a dignified TV ad. The "content," if there is any content at all, is typically a more or less random collection of articles written by the firm's lawyers. These firms don't have a clue about the real potential of the medium and how to exploit it. The question should not be: "What is the normal ROI on a typical law firm site?" but "What is the expected ROI on a GOOD law firm site?" |