Tagged with 'awards'

For the second year, Duo Consulting has been named to Inc. magazine’s ranking of the nation’s top 5000 fastest growing private companies. This year we are number 2148 (up from 2748 last year). Certainly, this gives us a horn to toot. So toot, toot. But I wanted to give this some thought and reflect on what this means beyond giving Duo a short term promotional angle.

First, in an otherwise tough economic environment, being a fast growing Internet-based company suggests that we are in a sector of the economy that remains vibrant.  Business managers should take note that even though marketing budgets are taking it on the chin, available marketing dollars are being diverted to an increasing number of Internet initiatives. So while gross marketing budgets may be depressed, Internet spending is being sustained. Check your budget allocation to insure you are moving in the same direction.

Second, I had to think about whether being a fast-growing company is a good thing.  When you grow quickly, client relationships might suffer, a growing employee head count might impact the existing intimate company culture, business infrastructure such as performance reporting or accounting may become stressed, and office facilities become tapped out.

All these challenges loom. But being in business is just a constant source of problem solving. And I’d rather deal with those problems associated with growth rather than those of stagnation. So based on surveys we’ve conducted from our client base, we’ve doubled-down our focus on client relationship management.  We have also moved to new headquarters this year which are a bit roomy today but permit us the space we need to continue our measured growth. And we’ve adopted an open-book management style to more effectively embrace everyone who works at Duo and help them appreciate how the individual efforts of each person contribute to our success.

Growth is good. But it is only sustainable if we continue to support our clients who support us. And we can only do that if we continue to have the enthusiasm, energy and creativity of the people at Duo. It’s a balancing act I’ve managed at Duo for a decade and it’s great to have our achievement receive this national recognition from Inc. Magazine. Toot. Toot.

According to this AmLaw Daily article, Still Loading: Law Firms lag behind the Rest of Corporate America on the Web, “there are still law firms of substantial size that have relatively poor Web site offerings, surprisingly poor Web sites.”

Yet as Sonny Cohen pointed out in his previous blog post, Award Winning Websites Announced By Web Marketing Association, legal websites that get their web design right are recognized and rewarded.

So what’s the real story here? Are law firms’ web designs lagging or worthy of lauding?

If you’re comparing American law firms to corporate America, apparently you’ll find lag in the area of website usability, interactivity, and innovation in design. But many law firms are going beyond “brochure-like” content towards client-centric and service-oriented site designs.

I appreciated Sonny Cohen’s comments on the AmLaw article, saying “the targeted personas for law firms are clients, prospects, potential lateral transfers and first year lawyers” and basically pointing out to other commenters that matching the needs of the users of the law firm’s website is more important than criticizing it based on their own personally-formed beliefs. Plus you need to tie the design into the firms business objectives – and being bookmarked isn’t a business objective. A persona-based approach to website design makes a lot of sense to me, and metrics for judging the effectiveness are a must.

The AmLaw article ends with a ranking list of the Top 100 AmLaw firms web sites. One note it does give you as a takeaway is that you can’t correlate web site design with revenue per partner. Yet without metrics there’s no way to prove this takeaway one way or another.

I found the AmLaw article informative but the comments were just as important – when analyzing effectiveness of a design or handing out rewards, make sure the criteria for judging the content and design matches that of the users of the site. Nicely done.