The centerpiece of your law firm’s digital presence is its website. Not only will you want potential clients to readily find you after a quick Google search, but your website must combine elegance and sophistication to showcase your law firm’s brand, celebrate its team and promote its work to decisively establish your firm’s credibility.

This objective requires your website design agency to be trailblazers in visual design and user experience, strong technical experts for web development, and have grounded experience in the legal industry. Together these guarantee compliance in marketing legal services and a skillfully interaction with your firm’s internal dynamics in order to deliver your website goals.

These goals include producing an aesthetically beautiful presentation, a fluid and intuitive user experience for your clients and colleagues and, tying it all together, a story to convert highly promising leads. Whether it be new business for your law firm or high quality students and career applicants.

13 Essential Features to a Strong Law Firm Website

Your law firm’s website structure comprises of two core parts: the centralized site representing the firm as a whole and a collection of mini-sites showcasing the experience and accomplishments of each Partner and Associate. Your web design agency should deliver all of this using these 12 elements, which are the most important features for your law firm website:

1. Branding

Your website must showcase your law firm’s brand, values, goals and accomplishments in a clean, modern manner. In fact, 2 out of 3 website visitors prefer viewing a beautiful looking website (Adobe). But your agency must also guarantee that the website’s user experience is void of difficulty, and provides a clear path for the visitor. The goal is to intimately connect the visitor to your law firm’s story and to freely enable them to find information about the services they need and the lawyers who will best assist them.

2. Technology

The effectiveness of your website is contingent on the technology delivering it to your clients and colleagues alike. The website front-end must use responsive web design to adapt to different devices and screen-resolutions (laptops, phones, etc). Its back-end architecture must be powerful enough to drive a feature-rich website, but it must also be accessible enough so that your staff can easily manage and update its content without having to escalate it to your agency or IT staff.

3. Tools

Though essential, beautiful aesthetics aren’t enough. Your website must support your law firm’s business goals, which might include hosting databases to access client information and other key features. For example, Zarek Taylor Grossman Hanrahan LLP required a Private Arbitration Decisions search suite in their website, which has now become an industry standard research tool and draws in a large volume of their website traffic.

4. Integrations

Building upon the back-end functions, your new website should integrate with your law firm’s existing IT stack. In other words, you shouldn’t have to change the software managing your client information or force new IT investments.

5. Legal Rules

Since your website is an instrument for marketing legal services, it is absolutely essential that it comply with the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Code of Conduct rules 3.02, 3.03 and 3.04. Through prior experience supporting law firms, your web design agency will guarantee that your website complies with the regulations governing how you are and aren’t allowed to market legal services.

In addition, many jurisdictions, including Ontario, have laws governing accessibility for people with disabilities. Understanding these laws and how they relate to the design and functionality of your website, is critical to ensuring your compliance. Working with an agency experienced with AODA and WCAG will ensure you don’t run afoul of the law and risk fines.

6. Security

Security is integral. You have confidential client information on your website, even if it’s just form data being captured from leads, so therefore you should have zero tolerance for digital vulnerabilities and other liabilities costly to your brand and bottom-line. Your web design company will fuse beauitful front-end design with airtight security measures, such as hardened servers, encryption, firewalls and compliance with modern web security standards.

Bogoroch Associates LLP

7. User Experience

Aesthetics aren’t the only element of website design – an appealing front-end is useless if the user experience fails in fulfilling your user’s goals. Your website must be easy to navigate, empowering both clients and colleagues to readily use it. People today have more going on than ever before, and their attention spans are limited. They should be able to quickly navigate to the information they want in as little time as possible, with as little clicks as possible. If your web design agency fails in this respect, then it will adversely impact your brand.

8. Design

Your website’s design is a blend of its unique aesthetic appeal, user experience quality and depth of useful content. Is your website design agency fusing these elements in a way that best represents your law firm’s brand, credibility and achievements? Is the website visitor appreciating the high position of your firm in the legal industry, and are these reflected in the overall visual appeal?

9. Audience

Is your website attracting the clients you want? Is your website ensuring that the best employees are inspired to join your firm? Are the most promising law students and accomplished lawyers finding your best content? Your agency must ensure that the right content is available and – through an excellent user experience – be accessible to visitors.

Content

Lawyers tend to be great writers. After all, writing is a significant part of their job. But writing copy for a website is both a science and an art, and rarely follows the same formal protocols as writing up briefs, contracts, motions, and other forms of legal documents.

In fact, best practices for website copywriting are often in direct contrast to legal writing.

The reality is that people very rarely read Words are important, but users are seeking information very quickly, and more often than not will simply skim content to determine if it’s what they’re seeking. For this reason it’s important to work with an agency that has copywriters with experience writing marketing copy for law firm websites.

11. Photography & Video

The best presentation of your law firm must involve the use of original cinematic-quality video and photographs of your firm. Through such collateral, your website will showcase your Partners and Associates as the leaders of the legal industry, thus driving credibility to your brand and elevating your firm’s story. This is the key to attracting the best clients and talent, so look for an agency with its own creative design and development services.

Matthews Abogado LLP

12. Optimized for SEO

Through search engine optimization (SEO), your law firm can draw traffic from people seeking you out on search engines such as Google. If a potential client is looking for legal advice or information, an SEO-optimized website will bring that lead to your firm’s website. Solid inbound marketing strategies will save your firm on marketing costs while also drawing interested visitors to your website.

13. Making the Right Choice

Your website should be a rich resource for generating leads and converting them into clients. It should distinguish your law firm and establish its credibility in the legal industry. Select an agency that brings industry-leading technical skill, a bevy of legal industry experience and an unyielding desire to position its legal clients for success.

Implementing the most important features of your law firm website is no small feat, It’s important to work with a web design agency that’s fully-equipped to excel in every one of the above requirements. Pixelcarve’s proprietary guide to producing best-in-class law firm website is available for free, include it as a framework to guide your RFP process.

Update: Friday, Sept 23, 2016 – Google has confirmed that Penguin is now part of their core algorithm. Stay tuned for more insights from us as the full effects of Penguin are revealed.

If you were online on September 2nd vigorously tracking your site’s current rankings in Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP), then you might have been one of the first few people to notice the change in Google’s search ranking algorithm. The SEO community did in fact speculate that there has been not just one, but two separate updates during the day—one for the core web search and the other on mobile search results. While Google has not commented on this issue yet, John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends analyst, has answered some questions raised by curious and concerned netizens. After all, first page organic search results are (kind of) like pure cash these days.

What is the latest Google algorithm update?

Google is known for dropping phantom or unannounced updates, which keeps all of us who work in the SEO industry on our toes. The latest algorithm changes may very well go unnoticed if it weren’t for those who make it their job to stay updated with online trends.
Despite Google’s cryptic silence on these latest updates, they have previously hinted about it on Google Webmaster Central Blog. Here’s what we know about this new search engine update:

1. Google core web search update
Diverse ranking changes have been noticed in all web page verticals and across industries. Here are a few key things we’ve noticed with this latest update.

A. One of the single biggest changes seems to be how Google evaluates on-site content. Typically, websites which had many individual pages dedicated to single “topics” of keyword content would rank well. This is because Google wanted to deliver the most direct search result page for a user’s query. For example, if you searched for website design, you would likely prefer to land on a page that specifically talked about website design, rather than a bunch of services mixed together. So Google would place a high value on websites that very clearly delineated all of the content into separate pages.

However, due to the proliferation of tablet, phones and other touch devices, this multi-page architecture is now often contrary to how users browse websites. People are much less likely nowadays to want to click onto a number of different pages, since it can either be slow or cumbersome. Instead, we’re finding that users would simply rather scroll (or swipe). So this presents a huge usability problem between website user experience, and optimal searchability. Google has been delivering website search results that have been at odds with modern website user patterns. But both ways make sense depending on the given scenario. Is someone landing directly on your website’s homepage due to direct referral, or are they landing on an internal page from a search result? Regardless of the “best” way, Google now seems to be adapting to the modern way, and is evidently giving rank priority to websites that have single siloed themes of content – web pages which have much more content separated by H2 and even H3 titles. This could signal a fundamental shift in Google’s algorithm and hint and what’s to come with the Penguin 4.0 update (more on that later).

B. This might also be because Google is slowly pushing its plan to eliminate intrusive interstitials from the top of SERP.

Google has expressed their concern about the (rather malicious) existence of some content present on a web page that is visually blocked by an interstitial; something that often leads to irritated or frustrated users (read more about our thoughts on that here). When users click on a link, they expect to see the content they’re looking for, right?

However, with interstitials, the site is giving off relatively poor user experience. This becomes more of a problem when the web page is brought to mobile phone screens, which are much smaller.

2. Mobile search results

 It has been several years since Google has added a mobile-friendly feature as a means to help users who prefer to browse on their phones (a staggering 70% and counting). With this feature, people no longer have to zoom into pages so they can read text. Currently, over 85% of all web pages have embraced mobile-friendliness. More than ever, it seems that Google is keen on making sure that all web pages are mobile responsive. If you are a web owner or developer and your site is not mobile responsive, then you should totally reassess your goals for your business.

What are the after effects of the latest Google update?

Since the latest changes made by Google, we’ve noticed a number of things happen. Here is a quick overview:

1. Big ranking fluctuations.
The search engine results page looks very different today than it did a week ago. There has been a lot of noticeable swings, some very dramatic (both good and bad), for websites all across the web. This is not uncommon with a Google algorithm change, but this is definitely one of the most dramatic that we have seen in the past couple of years. Even more-so than Google’s dreaded Mobilgeddon update.

2. Google Analytics is broken.
There is also a lot of chatter about issues with Google Analytics. This started on September 7, 2016. In Twitter, Google has confirmed the complaints and admitted that there is really a problem. Their tweet goes: Some users may be experiencing issues with real time reporting. We are working on a fix and expect to have everything back to normal soon.

Google has also offered a temporary fix for the Analytics error, which is to clear cookies or use the incognito browser window. They have apologized for the inconvenience they’re causing people and promised to get a permanent solution to the problem.

As of September 9, 2016, the solution is yet to be seen. SEO experts are speculating that this prolonged action in solving the problem may be due to one of these two things: Google has launched a not-so-minor update or the company is finally pushing for the long-awaited change in Penguin 4.0 algorithm.

3. There have been crawl errors.
Crawl errors involve issues in which Google fails to crawl a site’s URL and direct web developers to an HTTP error code page. Over the past week, some webmasters are reporting an increase in crawl errors on Google’s search console. These errors include “linked from” lists redirecting to pages that are no longer existing and closed pages randomly appearing on-site and off-site.

In the first week of September, it is said that the number of crawl error reports have increased to 50,000. While many experts say that this is because of the latest updates, Google has commented otherwise. They say the latest algorithm update has nothing to do with the changes in Google Search Console.

Are these changes a preparation to Penguin 4.0 updates?

The last major update done by Google was that of Penguin. It was exactly 688 days ago. Since then, there had been reports circulating that Google would make a Penguin 4.0 algorithm update in March 2016. However, this has not happened yet. Now, people are asking questions and eagerly (nervously…) wait for the real date to be announced.
The latest updates have piqued the interest of SEO experts as they are hoping that this is finally a hint to the promised major update. Having said that, on September 6, 2016, John Mueller declared that there have been no visible changes in the Penguin 4.0 algorithm so far, putting a hold on this speculation.

In Conclusion

Webmasters and SEO experts are fully aware of how eager Google is to make minor updates to their algorithm and send the SEO industry into a frenzy by revealing no specific reason for such actions. It’s a lot of power for one company to yield – but for now, this is Google’s world, and we’re all just playing in it.

Creating an interactive and engaging website is an essential part of digital marketing and branding. It is often the trigger for transaction with your business or the first point of digital contact your brand has with a potential customer.

However, due to the changing landscape in both Google search and the user’s tendencies to access information from multiple devices, having a website that isn’t responsive on mobile devices can essentially be the same as not having a website at all.

The biggest change is the shift to mobile where the majority of search based traffic is now originating from. What this tells us though, is that the mobile experience is becoming more important than the desktop version. Usability on both has to be the focus of any web build.

• In 2015, 68% of Canadians owned a smartphone (Americans aren’t too far behind, with a 64% smartphone penetration rate).
• However, a total of 7% of Americans have no other access to internet (no broadband, no computer etc.) and rely completely on their smartphone for research, purchases, and to consume media.

But what is responsive web design?

The concept of responsive design was implemented under a W3C industry standard in June 2012 that developed Media Queries. It required that in order for your website to remain current and user-friendly, website design services should always include mobile functionality. It is essentially the practice of using fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to produce a design that adapts to the user’s environment.

What this implies is that “responsive design” means creating a website that adapts to multiple browsers, window sizes, and devices so that the website design elements are all available when you view it on your tablet or phone, and across a wide number of browsers. Despite the fact that the orientation and screen size of these devices may vary, user demands require an easy way to navigate and condensed version of the main webpage that is view-able from smartphones.

This doesn’t mean simply making everything smaller. It requires developing a site where the entire layout will change based on the environment. For example, let’s take a site that has three columns of text. As you reduce the size of the browser, it should collapse into two and can then collapse again into one. Ideally, the text should also fluidly flow throughout the columns in an intuitive and readable way.

Let’s use a high traffic website like the Boston Globe as an example. While these two layouts don’t change dramatically from one to the other, you can see that as some columns disappear and the elements start to get condensed, the information remains  laid out in a readable way.

This does not require laying out the website in a dozen different ways, there are style sheets and short codes that can ensure that your website elements adapt based on the device they are being displayed on.

Rearranging the content is the most user-friendly option, as it effectively cleans up all the excess that you want to include on your website, but don’t have room for on a mobile device. It also avoids the need for frustrating pinch and zooming while the user tries to isolate the relevant information. Sidebars with extraneous information, ads, or large navigation bars can be removed,shifted, or condensed to make scrolling through the page as clean and simple as possible as well.

Sounds complicated, but how does it work?

There are a number of tools that we developers employ when creating a website to include responsive web design. Keeping in mind that our first goal as designers is to ensure that everything is flexible and fluid and that the important elements are clear and easy to consume. This means not declaring the height and width of an object in our code, and ensuring that images are automatically adjusted to the maximums available on the device it’s being viewed on.

Through CSS Media Queries style sheets, we can input which elements to show, hide, or condense depending on the maximums allowed on the specific browser.

Throughout this entire process, your developers and designers are working to ensure that the User Interface (UI) is optimized to be enjoyable, aesthetically-pleasing, and interactive. Some best practices when it comes to creating a UI that is responsive include:

• Develop a layout with purpose; don’t just group things together so they can fit, but rather consider the readability. Think about the way that your visitors navigate through your site.
• Establishing a visual hierarchy with typography and visual elements that guide your visitor to the information that’s most important
• Test, test, test: make sure it works and make sure it’s visually appealing

ROI of Intelligent Design

The reason that responsive design has become an industry standard is because of how well it does and what people are currently demanding. Any forward-thinking web design firms in Toronto have to include this functionality in the creation of new websites or web apps.

A recent study reported that only 20% of Mac users maximize their browser windows, meaning that websites are rarely viewed at the largest screen size. Most often, they’re being viewed at a half-screen or three quarter screen size so even the majority of all desktop traffic still requires responsive functionality. For Windows users, the new Snap features brought about in Windows 7, and then enhanced in Windows 10, make it easy for users to quickly split their screen into halves or quarters, meaning your website has to be able to instantly resize to either half or 25% of it’s size in an instant without breaking the user experience.

If your website isn’t easy to navigate at those screen resolutions, users will  get frustrated and they may leave your site entirely. To emphasize the business impact this may have, a recent Catalyst report stated that 80% of smartphone users rely on their phones for internet shopping. Without a site that’s optimized for mobile, you could potentially be losing out on that business.

Additionally, people who rely on their phones for internet access do so to:

• Find new restaurants: 80%
• Bank online: 80%
• Book a flight: 75%
• Look for a new car: 80%

A report from Google even states that 71% of consumers use their cell phones as an integral part of research, especially while in-store. It goes further than this however, Google now will give preferential treatment to mobile optimized websites in its search rankings. This is a reflection of common usage since more than half of organic traffic is now from mobile. Google even provides a tool to test if your website is considered mobile friendly.

Recent reports even state that an improved website user experience can increase the number of buyers by 40% and increase their order size by 10%. Numbers that can’t be ignored.

At Pixelcarve, we offer web design services in Toronto, and we know that responsive, eye-catching, and appealing design is important in the creation of every website. So if you’ve been looking to upgrade your website, building a custom web app, or are launching a new website, check out our work and get in touch with one of our UI and UX experts today.

Last time we talked about ways to test your website for accessibility. This time we have compiled a list of tips and tricks to help others increase their websites’ accessibility.

1. Structure HTML5 content inside semantic elements with ARIA labels

Aside from the most commonly used <body> element, there are several other elements that you should have on every page of your website:

• Heading tags should be used instead of using CSS styles to distinguish section titles. Every page of the website must have a <h1> tag that contains the content of the heading to the page. Heading tags should not be used for subheadings, subtitles, alternative titles and taglines (read it here http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/common-idioms.html#common-idioms)
• Every page should also have a <nav role=”navigation”> tag, for defining section of the site containing all the menu links.

Notice I added role attribute to the nav tag above. Why use them, you ask? It creates landmarks for your pages and increases accessibility for screen reader users. There are several tags which should have defined roles. For a list of ARIA usage chart visit (http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-in-html/), scroll down until you see the chart. Let’s go over some of the suggested tags to use for every page of your site:

• <main role=”main”>, as the name suggests, it is used for the main section of the site. It contains all the HTML content that is not the header or the footer.
• <header role=”banner”>, the role banner suggests that it is the main header of the page. Notice header tags can be used throughout the page, inside <article> tags for example, the role “banner” should only be used for the header of the entire website. Otherwise, assign any global aria-* attribute.

Make sure to wrap all the HTML elements inside containers with defined roles, so that screen readers can navigate through your site without missing content.

2. Provide text alternatives for all non-text content

• All images must have alt tags. It is best to use actual text to define the image, otherwise try to be as descriptive as possible.

<a href=”blah.html”><img src=”blah.jpg” >Blah</a> instead of

<a href=”blah.html”><img src=”blah.jpg” alt=”Blah”></a>

Images that are considered decorative can be given null alt text.

<img src=”divider-line.png” alt=””>

• Add alternative text to all audio and video
• Use aria labels for buttons

<button aria-label=”Close”>X</button>

• Remember to label your icons, one trick is to hide the labels

HTML

<a aria-label=”Share on LinkedIn” href=”http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;url=http://yourarticle.com” target=”_blank”>

<span aria-hidden=”true” class=”social-icon icon-linkedin”></span>

<span class=”icon-label”>Share on LinkedIn</span>

</a>

CSS

.icon-label {

clip: rect(0 0 0 0);

overflow: hidden;

position: absolute;

height: 1px;

width: 1px;

}

3. Make your sites responsive

Make sure the site works on all screen resolutions.

4. Make sure your site works in all the browsers

That’s right. They should work in all browsers including Internet Explorer 8!

5. Underline external links

You must be thinking: “Oh no, not the ugly underlines!” They are back! To be honest, I am starting to like using them, because it is very easy to distinguish links inside a large body of text. One trick I use to make them less noticeable is using a dotted line instead of a solid line. Since text-decoration-style:dotted doesn’t work in Internet Explorer and Chrome, you can try setting the border-bottom style instead:

a {

border-bottom: 1px solid #000000;

display: inline;

}

6. Style your focus borders

Focus borders are important for keyboard users to navigate through your site so make sure they are styled visible.

• Add to your CSS *:focus, a:focus { outline: #ffffff dotted 1px; } and make sure all the <a> tags have appropriate sizes
• Use jQuery events focus/blur/keypress to show mouseenter/mouseleave/click events instead

7. Use descriptive titles

Descriptive titles not only help with accessibility, but also SEO [ link to search engine optimization ]. Make sure the titles are different for each page of your website.

8. Make sure all forms have input assistance

• Define label tag with all form input fields

<label>user name <input type=”text”></label> or

<label for=”uname”>user name</label> <input type=”text” id=”uname”>

• Highlight the input fields with a border to indicate which fields need to be corrected
• Create a popup

9. Define language of the content

• HTML language must be defined at the start of the page using <html lang=”en”>.
• If there are any content on the website that is not in the main language, add a language attribute to the HTML element. For example, <p lang=”fr”>.
• For links that are in a different language, define <a href=”http://blah.com/fr” hreflang=”fr”>FR</a>
• For a list of language codes visit http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_language_codes.asp

10. Read more, learn more and share your findings!

• For a complete list of all the WCAG 2.0 levels, visit (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/).
• WebAIM also has a comprehensive checklist with more detailed explanations of some of the rules, visit (http://webaim.org/standards/wcag/checklist).
• Wuhcag provides a detailed checklist as well, visit (https://www.wuhcag.com/wcag-checklist/).
• Easy Checks – http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/preliminary.html

Check back soon for part three of our WCAG 2.0 AA Guidelines series.

There is no hard and fast rule of thumb for how long a website can last. But wanting to maximize your investment in your freshly minted website is certainly understandable – both in time and in dollars.

The website design and development industry, and indeed the entire digital marketing world, is one of rapid change, constant evolution, and guaranteed disruption. It relies on a complex assortment of technologies, companies, organizations, and people that are often at odds with each other. Even when there is agreement and standards are created, it’s up to each individual entity to adhere to what’s been agreed upon – which can be a daunting task given the state of change.

To make matters more challenging, the technology companies, including the big guys like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, never support a product forever. They eventually End of Life their software, forcing consumers and businesses to upgrade at some given point in time. You may have noticed this when running Internet Explorer in Windows XP lately, or tried to download the latest iOS on your iPhone 4. Or sometimes, companies simply discontinue products completely with little to no warning, as Google did with Reader.

Then there’s the rare instance – when one company discontinues another company’s product, as was the case for Adobe Flash.

When it was released Flash empowered designers with a level of rich interactivity and animation that was previously impossible in a web browser, and unleashed a completely new type of website interface design. During the height of its popularity there was simply no alternative if you wanted that type of interactive experience. But with all monopolies, come disruptors. In this case the disruptor was a goliath in the form of Apple, which refused to allow Flash into the web browser on its mobile devices for fear of it damaging their mobile app business model. Suddenly the most ubiquitous technology the world has ever known, installed on over 99% of computers, would start it’s fall from grace. Without an adequate replacement technology in place it would not happen overnight, but eventually it would happen. Flash is now primarily used to develop mobile games and apps (the irony) as well as some uses with DRM video and 3D animation where there is still no adequate alternative. It’s successor HTML5 has since enjoyed a surge in popularity once the W3C finally announced it was a finished specification last year. We used to build a lot of the best, most awarded websites in Flash, and now we built a lot of the best HTML5 websites.

Are we worried that HTML5 will also be replaced by something new and we’ll have to evolve again? I’m not worried about it – I can guarantee it. If you’re not prepared for that then this isn’t the industry for you.

When we start a project with a client we begin by determining the overall business goals and objectives. Business goals and objectives always exist within a certain time frame. Pixelcarve is sought out because our work delivers a certain type of experience to allow those goals to be met. If we didn’t leverage the common technologies of the day then we would become paralyzed and would never produce anything – never being of contribution to our clients in any way. We stand by the decisions we made to build websites in Flash in the past, and we stand by our decisions to build websites in HTML5 now. Because the reality is that we would not have been able to deliver the exceptional product that we’re known for without those choices.

All technologies have faults – none of them are perfect. HTML5 still suffers from cross-browser compatibility challenges and weak rich-media features such as video and 3D, and Flash was so weak with SEO and mobile that we had to build an entire custom platform around it to overcome those issues to ensure that the solutions we built for our clients delivered maximum value.

Let’s look at another example – there are several large institutional-type companies such as banks that still use Windows XP and IE8 even though Microsoft has End of Life’d them and discontinued support. Those platforms were used to achieve a certain result that only those products could do at the time, and so now they have to be rebuilt for modern standards and that can’t happen overnight. They will no doubt have to be rebuilt again in 5 – 10 years as technology leaps again. Knowing that eventually Microsoft would not support those products – should those banks have not built the platforms they needed to operate on? Of course not – you use the best technology at the time to produce the result that you need.

And you’re certainly not going to walk around naked because you’re afraid to buy pants that will go out of style next season.

This is the nature of the business, and there’s really no fighting it. Times change, technologies evolve, marketing adapts, and the world pushes forward – some technologies win, and some technologies lose. There are currently hot technologies that can be used to build websites, perform SEO, increase conversions, be responsive, etc. – some of them will exist in 5 years and some of them will not. There is no way to know what will be disrupted, what will fail, and what will succeed. But it would be irresponsible marketing to not leverage the ones now that can help your business now if the ROI is there.

Currently websites are a critical part of marketing any business – but maybe they won’t be in 5 years. Maybe a vertical platform will take over and websites won’t even exist. Wired Magazine prematurely predicted that 5 years ago. Perhaps people will only use in-app ecosystems to find what they’re looking for? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe people will only browse websites on watches. Maybe screens will disappear entirely and we’ll only look at things through virtual or augmented reality. Will conventional, 2D websites built in HTML5 (or 6, or 7 for that matter) even be relevant?

Unfortunately, I can’t predict the future with any real certainty – no one can – we can only do our best to focus on creating design that is timeless, building technology solutions to achieve business goals and objectives, and work with our clients to help them define, communicate and realize their visions.

So back to the original question – “Can I future proof my website?”. A website, and in fact all of your digital marketing initiatives, are living breathing things that will require constant change and adaptation. If you’re not comfortable investing into an industry filled with this much change, evolution, and disruption, then I would encourage you to find alternative methods to help you grow your business.

I hear radio is big.

Until next time,

Curtis

Curtis Priest – Founding Partner / CEO – Pixelcarve Inc.
“Curtis is an entrepreneur, creative, techie, new father, loving husband, and summerholic who can’t say no to a great event.”