Intendance Ltd has just published the results of its 2004 survey of solicitors firm websites, which follows a similar survey of barristers websites published last month. The sites of 100 firms of solicitors and 100 barristers chambers were reviewed and scores awarded in three categories: content, usability (ease of finding and extracting information), and design (clarity of text, colour and the use of images). The winner amongst the solicitors was Coller-Bristow with 91%, and amongst the barristers, Hardwicke Building with 88%, the lowest scores being around 20%.
Intendance’s sampling method is not given. However, as all the solicitors firms surveyed have 20 or more fee earners, the sample represents approximately 10% of the top 1,000 or so firms. Of the barristers chambers, only 4 in the survey had less than 10 tenants.
One of the most significant findings was that 13 of the solicitors firms and 5 of the barristers chambers had no website at all (or one under construction only). Free pdf copies of the reports are available from Intendance. As well as reporting results, there are also useful pointers to good website design. However, a couple of comments under the Usability heading (ease of finding the website) dent our confidence:
- “Each website was assessed on its appearance on – or absence from – the first page of … Google”. What does this mean? What search term was used and how could this possibly be a useful comparitor amongst firms that a) have different names and b) do different work?
- “Only 35 websites had adequate meta-tags on their homepage”. It’s true that the meta Description tag is important as it is displayed by many search engines as part of the results. However, the usefulness of the meta Keyword tag in influencing results did not last long after 1997; experience showed it to be much abused and a veritable spam magnet; most search engines consequently stopped indexing its content.
