Building a website isn’t a one-time thing. After a site launches, our clients often find the need to add or remove sections, or build in new functionality. We’ve found that building websites on the Fusebox framework provides valuable flexibility early on for potentially large updates down the road.
We like the Fusebox framework so much that we’re spreading the word. We’ve recently published “Fusebox Case Study - Maintenance Advantages for Large Sites,” a whitepaper that provides a few examples of how and why we use Fusebox as a framework for many of our clients’ websites, including the Chicago Park District (CPD) and Successories.
Both CPD and Successories have grown in size and sophistication from their initial inceptions. Since 2001, eight Duo developers have worked on code updates for CPD. Five developers have worked on Successories in the last three years. The fuxebox framework is so consistent that developers (some even new to ColdFusion) have been able to pick up on the code very quickly.
We’re always thinking about ways to create flexible websites, and tools like Fusebox make the task that much easier.
Download the case study on the fusebox website: “Fusebox Case Study - Maintenance Advantages for Large Sites”
Online forms are useful for checkout processes, subscriber registration, and customer inquiries. Unfortunately, spammers have abused forms to bombard unsuspecting businesses and individuals with unwanted and often illegal mailings.
CAPTCHAS alleviate most fraudulent form submissions. A CAPTCHA is a small block of text that must be verified by the user prior to submitting a form. Spammers work through automated processes to send thousands of messages at once, and thus never see nor verify the CAPTCHA text.
No verification, no spam.
We recently implemented a CAPTCHA for Duo client Lipkin & Higgins, whose online "Do You Have a Case?" form generated dozens of spam submissions each day. Lipkin staff were forced to spend valuable time identifying authentic submissions, thus reducing efficiency and nearly rendering the online form useless.
The CAPTCHA results are remarkable. According to Mitchell Lipkin, spam traffic from their online forms dropped from roughly 50 messages a day to zero. The Lipkin & Higgins CAPTCHA worked so well that we implemented it on our own site as well as other client sites, such as Shutts & Bowen LLP.
Spammers are constantly devising new ways of sending their malicious mailings. Fortunately, new tools such as CAPTCHAs are constantly emerging to turn the tide.
That’s what Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog asserts, citing dismal website evaluations of 1000 corporate websites conducted by Forrester Research. More specific to law firms, a recent study commissioned by Content Pilot LLC gave a slightly better than fair rating to the AmLaw 100 firm websites as a group, with over 36% residing in the poor to unacceptable range.
Is it true? Do most law firm websites stink? Here’s what I think: we don’t know. We don’t know because law firms don’t effectively measure the performance of their websites. Quite frankly, they don’t know what to measure.
At a recent law firm web analytics seminar I presented, a paltry show of hands revealed that few law firms regularly gather any website performance data. Of that small subset who check their stats, most simply assemble the mass of data into a meaningful-looking report which is passed to members of the marketing committee, who are mostly pleased to see that someone (or something) is visiting their website.
This is not a sin. Gathering useful information is hard to do, and producing true performance metrics begs the terrifying question, “How do we improve website performance?” and, “Just how does our website relate to our firm’s business objectives anyway?”
In my opinion, law firm websites stink a lot less than they did 5 years ago. But the air may remain a little malodorous until firms adopt an effective online strategy, which could include:
- Identifying key performance metrics for your website that relate to individual firm business objectives, as opposed to a quixotic quest for non-existent industry standards & baselines;
- Building sites around firm business objectives and not the managing partner’s favorite color;
- Regularly measuring the performance of the website against objectives;
- Investing in testing website adjustments to achieve performance improvement.
Our own Jim Thaxton and Tim Yager will be speaking at Serena xChange: A Revolution in Development in Chicago next month.
Their talk, "Size Doesn’t Matter: How to build and maintain huge Collage projects" provides practical solutions and insights about known challenges with Content Management Systems (CMS) in general, and Serena Collage CMS in particular.
Duo has implemented Serena Collage CMS for several of our clients, including the American Library Association, the Chicago Public Library and Becker CPA Review. As a result, our development team has learned the product inside and out; Jim and Tim’s talk will illustrate the creative ways our team has learned to handle data transfer, client requests and project scope.
An abstract of their talk:
"Moving from an existing CMS into a new one is always a challenge, but where do you start when you’re faced with moving over 60 independently-run organizational sites and 40+ GB of data in one project? This session will address real-world problems: how to allow contributors to update content in the middle of the migration, keeping existing URLs intact, and much more. Size doesn’t matter, even if you’re building the largest Serena Collage project to date — see how you can leverage Collage effectively for your own project."
Conference information:
Serena xChange: A Revolution in Development
September 9 - September 12, 2007
Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers
http://www.serenaxchange.com
