Peer to Peer Magazine

55 WWW.ILTANET.ORG Marketers Can Learn Digital Endurance from Tech Giants FEATURES A Shift to Gradual Improvements Facebook provides a clear example of the shi from big updates to gradual improvements. Instead of broadly scoped releases happening once or twice a year, Facebook updates its app automatically every two weeks. Improvements stream, rather than flood, to its installed base. The method of digital product design now also influences how companies design their corporate websites. Marketing teams are abandoning large redesigns in favor of gradual improvements to their digital properties. The earliest examples of organizations applying digital product design to their marketing websites come, unsurprisingly, from companies with a connection to the technology world, such as Apple and Amazon. A brief look at Apple's and Amazon's websites over the years shows how both have applied incremental changes to their sites since as far back as 2006. From month to month, the changes to their sites look modest. But aer a decade, the changes are as drastic as any full redesign. Leading consulting firms such as Deloie, McKinsey and BCG have taken similar approaches to their digital platforms. Law firms have a lot to gain in shiing their mindset to focus on smaller, incremental website improvements instead of large, expensive website redesigns. Cost-Effective Websites Through Digital Endurance Transitioning to this new approach of digital endurance instead of digital redesign requires significant changes in a company's vision, planning, skills, budgeting and measurement. Most law firms still view their websites as marketing campaigns or IT projects that they must rebuild from scratch every five to seven years. Chief marketing officers (CMOs) typically ask for a large budget in one year –– at least as much as the previous redesign, plus additional money for new features and improvements –– to fund the complete website overhaul. Taking an endurance approach means spreading out the investment over several years. This new approach to budgeting is both the greatest benefit and the greatest challenge to the endurance model. Some CMOs might worry that their firms will not agree to sustained investment. Partners could be too acclimated to investing only once or twice a decade and might not see the point without the big splash of a new website. But it is easy to point to benefits that firm leaders can recognize immediately. Benefits of Digital Endurance The first and most salient benefit of the digital endurance model is that it allows firms to respond to the market dynamically, reset strategy when needed and push their marketing and business development efforts forward when new opportunities arise. When you invest in a platform only once or twice every 10 years, there are few windows in which your firm can align its digital strategy with its business strategy. The advent of responsive mobile design presents a good example of how such limits have affected legal websites. Responsive design, which was invented in 2011, offered a radically new way to improve search engine optimization and open access across all mobile devices. Law firms have a lot to gain in shifting their mindset to focus on smaller, incremental website improvements instead of large, expensive website redesigns. EFFORT & BUDGET TIME Digital Redesign Model Digital Endurance Model

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