LawyerCasting

What Law Firms Can Learn from the Healthcare.gov Website Debacle

By now, everyone is familiar with the Healthcare.gov website debacle - the multiple glitches and technical defects that stymied the efforts of individuals to sign up for health insurance via the new federal online health insurance marketplace that launched on October 1, 2013, under the Affordable Care Act.

But what use is failure if we can't learn from it? To that end, the usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group have penned an article, entitled "HealthCare.gov’s Account Setup: 10 Broken Usability Guidelines," that walks through ten key usability guidelines that the Healthcare.gov website violated, and that should be avoided by other organizations launching new websites and other web applications.

7 Best Practices for Law Firm Website Carousels

First, what is a website "carousel" you might ask? Briefly, "carousels" are the navigable slideshows frequently displayed on law firm homepages through which visitors can scroll to learn more about a firm's practice areas, recent accomplishments, and/or other distinguishing qualities. Each frame of a carousel typically consists of a large bold image, a small amount of descriptive text, and a link to learn more about the subject of the frame. The key advantage of carousels is that they allow multiple pieces of content to simultaneously occupy prime real estate on a website homepage. Here's a link to an example we deployed for one client.

But the usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) warn that carousels are a double-edged sword that can do more harm than good to a company's image if not properly designed. In a recent article entitled "Designing Effective Carousels: Create a Fanciful Amusement, Not a House of Horrors," Kara Pernice, Managing Director at NNG, cautions that, among other issues, the designer of a carousel may intend it as a collection of images that togther tell a story, whereas many visitors may only be focusing on the first frame without navigating further. However, the image and copy in that first frame, taken out of context, may give users the wrong idea about an organization.

To help companies design more effective carousels, Pernice offers up 7 best practices along with screenshots of sample carousels illustrating her points.

Four Poor Navigational Choices for Law Firm Websites That Drive Visitors Away

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is perhaps the leading guru on Web page usability, and so when his firm, the Nielsen Norman Group, criticizes certain approaches to website navigation, webmasters should pay heed.

Recently, Jen Cardello, a director at Nielsen Norman Group, published an article entitled, "Four Dangerous Navigation Approaches that Can Increase Cognitive Strain," that describes four different approaches to website navigation that cause mental strain and distress for site visitors, thereby causing them to become irritated and frustrated, and thus more likely to leave the site prematurely.

Nielsen illustrates each of these poor navigational approaches using "Before" and "After" case studies of companies that employed these approaches, and then fixed them with guidance from Nielsen's firm.

Client M. Robinson & Co. Launches New Tax Law Blog Running on WordPress

M. Robinson & Co. is a leading Boston tax law firm that represents businesses, individuals and non-profit organizations in connection with Massachusetts and federal tax law matters.

The firm recently launched the Massachusetts Tax Alert Blog. Running on WordPress, the blog will analyze recent Massachusetts and federal tax law developments. Among the plugins installed is one that helps the blog administrator manage the photos and bio links of the blog's multiple authors.