 All right. Well, it is three o'clock. So let's get started. My name is Shelly read. I am the manager of legal services national technology assistance project. And we are here today for an open forum. We're in our website series and Laura Quinn is with us today to lend her expertise. But this is an open forum for you in the audience and then the community to ask questions about website projects and learn a little bit more and commiserate or whatever you want to share with us today. So I'm going to turn it over to Laura fabulous. And I'm just going to introduce myself and then invite maybe I'll, I'll call on people just in the order I see them on the screen to introduce themselves and share. Maybe just a thing that they're hoping there they might leave today with a little more understanding about. Hi, I'm Laura Quinn. I am a consultant specializing in website strategy and being a coach and guide for websites for nonprofits. I am. I do a fair amount of work in the legal services in the late world. And that's what brings me to LSN tap. Rachel, just a word about yourself and what you're hoping to get today. I'm with legal action of Wisconsin our development and communications manager and we just started a website rebuild project so that I would come listen and I think specifically I would love to know how people incorporated like client feedback and input in the development of the website because that's something I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to do so. Nice to see you all. I can use all as well. Molly, if you're willing to introduce yourself. Sure yeah I'm Molly rate I'm a project manager for Urban Insight we build a lot of custom legal aid websites and tools as well as built and now maintain D law and open advocate for legal aid websites so just always listen hoping to get new ideas about what features would be helpful for legally organizations and kind of think through our road map. And happy to provide any insight I can. Hi everyone I am. And I'm really just looking to get more information on how to manage a website for a nonprofit, because I know that there tends to be a lot of work and sometimes I don't have the tools to get people to do the work that needs to get done. So those are some questions that I have. Thank you very much. So I'm Mary poker ruler I am working on the developing the Wisconsin law help website. We're actually working with Urban Insight and Molly and actually also with with Rachel. So I know several of the people on this call. I kind of want to see what other people's questions are I'm not sure I came with specific questions. It's my first time being a project manager that person so everything's new. Thanks. And Christie, if you're willing to introduce yourself Christie. Let's get Christie move on to you bet. Hi, I'm Yvette, and I work with Michigan Indian legal services located in Traverse in Michigan. I just got hired on as the pro bono coordinator. So, I know I'll be working with the website but we also have another person who I thought might be on today, who has been working with the website. But I'm here to learn all that I can so that I can actually help him with it. So, great. And Aaron. Hi, my name is Aaron Riker, and I am the technology based legal services attorney at the Center for Elder law and justice. I do web development with regard to the resources that we give to attorneys that staff our legal advice helpline and a couple of our other brief legal services platforms so I'm hoping to get some more information that I can apply to that. Perfect. Fantastic. And Christie coming back around. Are you able to introduce yourself say maybe what you're hoping to hear. I maybe I'm Kelly I work with Christie but maybe on a call or something I don't know if we're both on here I actually don't see your screen but maybe I'm here in place of her. That's the case. I'm from Empire Justice Center we are. We're kind of in the middle of what wasn't a very successful website restructure experience taking into second chapter, hoping for a better results this time around. So, this seemed just like a really good group that maybe could bounce ideas off of. We're currently we have an RFP outstanding currently to get. Another firm to work with so we're hoping for a better result from that. So I'd be interested to know if there's any tips or tricks or advice for. And kind of looking at RFPs and like what to prioritize and that's a big question. And then also for anyone who has experienced between being like point person between practice groups and legal information and making an accessible website that one can understand. So, again, two big things but yeah, let's be back. And it kind of over so I've got, I think I have four topics at the moment. So that kind of overlaps with. Sorry, I didn't mark down names very well but it might have been you that mentions I know I think it might have been Evelyn, and the idea of trying to essentially hurt all the cats to try to get everybody to agree to manage all the people who are writing content and doing things, which is certainly. So I kind of heard that a little bit in what Kristen mentioned as well, or yes with Kristen mentioned as well. In my name, which is the right name Kelly Kelly, what Kelly mentioned as well. So, from Rachel right at the beginning, kind of how to think about incorporating client feedback. So the people who will eventually be the visitor of the website how to incorporate that. And Aaron mentioned yes as well, tips for looking at at RFPs. Definitely something that I suspect we got a few thoughts on between us. And let's just we'll take one more introduction that will let other people fend for themselves as they come in, but Dana has joined us when and Dana, would you be willing to say a few words and about yourself and what you're hoping to hear today. Hi everyone, I'm Dana Nelson and I am a program officer at the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, we're the idol defenders for Texas. And we are really interested in learning more about effective websites as we analyze and try to help our grantees have more effective website. Fantastic. Well, I think there were kind of two votes for the this idea of the managing people and content piece of things which I also imagine has a lot of overlap there is not very many of us that have a website that doesn't need to think about where will the content come from how do we balance the, the legal versus the plain language versus other things. I certainly have a few things I can share a couple of processes that I've seen for this. Some folks have just kind of off the top of their head, some things that either more detailed questions or things they want to share as we kind of embark upon the topic of how to manage content so it is both obviously accurate and it's plain language and how to get that all written by the right So at the top of my head. One of the things I think is the most important thing that I would start with if it's a new process and obviously a lot of you aren't managing a new process is to try to think through who is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting on writing. So this could be I think people typically default to lawyers. So like for instance legal aid lawyers are doing the writing. And that certainly is a model that could work. I do also have options like saying there are advocates who are associated with the project who are familiar with the legal issues at hand but aren't necessarily lawyers, which can be really interesting because the advocates often have a more kind of user centered approach. There's also something I find is an underused approach here which is hiring basically a freelance journalist or a technical writer. So someone who's used to dealing with really complicated issues and making them plain language. And having them interview lawyers or use source materials to get at the issues at hand. They tend to be a lot a lot cheaper than lawyers. So even if there's a lot of time invested in them the time is cheaper. Yeah so there's that then who does the bulk of the heavy lifting. Then there's the how does it get to plain language ask the answer to that is probably not through a lawyer. There's probably unless it's a very specialized lawyer that you know works a lot in that space. Which could either be, you know, you hire somebody you've got somebody in house you hire service like that transcend is pretty well known for doing that work. And then there's a whole review process at the end which actually can be as painful as anything else in this process to try to figure out. Okay, you had great legal information, which may have not been very plain language, you've now plain language that you now may need three different people to agree on what it should say. It's going to be really painful. So to, I think this is absolutely part of the planning process to try to think through. Okay, who has all of those roles. You know who owns all of those roles, and how is it going to flow and, you know, where is the formal responsibility and where can you just jettison if you need to where can you like who actually needs to say yes to an article, and who can you get a response from, can you like if you know the state courts are in theory, approving your content, but you can't get a response from them. What happens, do you need to like that article can't go up until the state court says yes, or do you just get to ignore them. You are running this type of process which I think is a number of you. Are you willing to share kind of what you're doing and how you're managing kind of how you set this up to. I don't think anybody's going to have a perfect process so certainly don't say hey and mine's fabulous. I just willing to share whatever you have and what's working and not working about it. So, um, when you mentioned using a outside writer it made me think because I don't do that for many. I don't do that really often at all, like throughout the process but what we did do when we rebranded was we also developed a message guide and we used an outside writer who interviewed a ton of staff, and sort of wrote this like, I don't know if it was 10 pages or so but it was like media of our core message guide, and it completely like redefined for us how we talk about our project and how we're talking about it based on projects or areas of law we talk about it in these buckets of like we maintain safe and affordable housing, we help people access and maintain public benefits instead of saying we have the elder rights project and this is what they do and we have this and you know like so it really helped us streamline what we do and I think that was something that, you know, was tricky with staff but then eventually because it was this overall we started implementing it across everything and I think now like, you know, three, four years later people are a lot more comfortable with like this is how we talk about our work and maybe it would see the value of an outside writer so if it feels like oh how do we just one off hire an outside writer for little things and like they won't know us and they won't like because sometimes it's, I feel like our firm is so big like you hire someone to write something and it's like it would take me so much time to explain us to them that it's not worth it but to do like this overarching thing I think really helped frame for us the buckets that we want to talk about our work in and the language that we want to use so I would second that that can be helpful I guess fabulous. Well, I just want to ask Rachel so do you think that's something that you couldn't have done in house in other that you didn't have the expertise to have done with the outside writer did or the time or something like that like it really needed to be an outside person. I think it did need to be an outside person because I think there, there was like a lot of pushback I like to be worked with because she, she was willing to push and like say like no this is confusing like trust me I've been in PR for 25 years you know like this or like writing articles and all of this and for me I was new to legal action and so it was overwhelming for me to piece through all that we did and everything but then also staff who have been in trench for a really long time couldn't see maybe the benefit of reframing like felt like really married to the way that we had framed it so I thought the outside perspective was really key. Did you have trouble getting funding for that from management. No. But also I would not have had the time I mean she did many, many interviews like hours of interviews. So that was something it would have just delayed our whole rebrand process by a lot. If I was going to do it. Just a quick clarification and then yeah definitely I see a couple hands. I feel like we're we're talking about two related but separate things. There's kind of the idea of creating content for your own websites, like so legal content, which you might well want style guide copy guide all of that great stuff. I think we're where Rachel is mentioning is a little more of a brand messaging project, which also is super relevant to our topic. So, but I think they're on the audiences are somewhat well they're both internal audiences, but for the brand work. It's a really it's kind of a holistic look to say all right what messages are we saying to for instance our donors and to external people in addition to our clients, and that tends to be thought of in kind of like a fundraising or like an overall organizational strategy way and funded to Mary's point in that way, as opposed to a more operational we need to get website content on the site, which is more a programmatic expense and funding. Kelly. I was just going to ask Rachel and I guess if this isn't related to this we don't need sidebar. I was just going to say what, what was the name of that project like I know obviously it was like brand messaging but like was that did it have its own, because we went through a brand refresh and we do have a new brand guidelines, but we are looking for more development with like our messaging and our audiences and this specifically like how we talk about ourselves that we found were kind of this, we have the building blocks for we want to develop that more. Like if there was a name for that project, like if it was considered something specific or. We did it in connection with our rebrand so like in connection with our visual rebrand but we thought of the rebrand kind of overall not just visually so the message guide was part of that message out and call it a message guide. Yeah. Okay, and it was like the remarketing agency that you did it with. I think she's kind of freelance her name was Pam Castner. And she does work remotely. So, you know anyone can use her but yeah she's kind of her own person I think she does a mix of PR and articles and like ghost writing articles and stuff like that. Okay, cool. So I've also heard of that as brand messaging. Molly, is that something that you recognize by that name. Yeah, yep, kind of brand positioning and value statements we just walked Mary and the team through similar kind of like, where do you fall on this spectrum of like joking and serious and like how do you kind of just like determining that tone of voice because it all connects into your logo and the, you know, the language use on the site that's obviously not legal language and things like that. And I was just going to say, as you're thinking of about adding all this content to the site just as I've worked and gotten to work with a lot of different legal aid organizations and I think I've seen varying degrees of effectiveness on legal aid sites, because of organization a lot of the time and how you're organizing all that content like the amount of information on legal websites is incredible. And I would say that a lot of some of the websites that we work with and organizations, their sites aren't as powerful as they could be because they're lacking that organization. And so just taking the steps to set up your guardrails and like project process while you're creating it will go really really far so, you know, you can, there's a UX exercise called card sorting that you can use that kind of helps you determine what topics you're going to use and then keep that as a guideline so that if you have an intern that comes in or if you are collecting content from other. If you're able to get a freelancer or something like that that it's you're able to clearly assign it topics so that it stays within the structure of the site you establish and so that like it comes up as in the search results when it should or in the filtering when it should and things like that and you know setting up, you can look at or happy to share like just general content moderation guidelines and process that you can set up trackers so that if I know, like there's a lot there's limited time for people that are working on these projects and it's not usually your only your main job so if someone else came in to help like, you can say like here are the steps that a piece of content has to go through before it's on our site. Just so that you kind of have it and if you set those things up for us at the beginning it'll just make your life a little bit easier in the long run to absolutely Mary. But to kind of yeah to go. You asked sort of originally about the process for the like but Molly was just talking about the process of getting. So we I'm, I'm, we're before that like we're pre trying to figure out that content process, and since no one has put forth anything to start with what I have started to come up with, which is I so I have like an air table database that I've made of started to collect like subject matter experts. And then. So I guess what I'm thinking is that I think of a process by which things get farmed out to once they're written and we still have to think we know who's writing things but we get farmed them out. So with a timeline like if a farmer piece out, give that subject matter expert a certain amount of time to make sure that the law is right, then it has to come back for a plain language review, and then maybe, or maybe it's plain language review first, then sent out for the legal review after so it doesn't need a second review, or something like I don't know does anyone have that process set up what's the timeline I don't know. And then offer some thoughts is so you already have the content, and it needs it all needs review know you don't have any content at all. Okay, yeah, so I feel like there is yeah there's the three main steps there's a heavy lift of actually creating something and logically there's something to start with. Other sites, you know legal documents stuff like that. There's then a lawyer review, there's a plain language edit, and then there's some kind of final thing so there's actually four steps. So, a couple of thoughts would be yeah figuring out who's going to do that heavy lift. And the project managing of that heavy lift is really important do not underestimate how tricky it is to farm out to a bunch of subject matter experts who perhaps are all volunteer and are all need to drop it to go get their client, you know, not be evicted. Because there's always higher priorities. And so it's very tricky to try to get people to commit and so it's actually worth thinking through I've been working with the client right now on the very tricky topic of trying to think through. It's not just what is the commitment, but one of the ramifications to whom like alright so there's a guy, you know, a governing council, and the governing council has ramifications that they can impose if somebody keeps saying they're going to do stuff and it doesn't happen, because somebody is bearing the brunt of that. And it's probably the organing organizing organization, if it's not defined who else it is. Sorry, go ahead. No, please. I was just going to say it is going to be volunteer subject matter experts, which is a concern of mine because it is going to be people who are going to have clients of their own and full time jobs and I don't know what I am concerned about people who are going to say they're going to do something and then not do it so. Yeah, absolutely. I have the same issue as Mary where I'm using also Microsoft planner, really get myself organized and for the most part it's good right but then same issue where I set a schedule and due date for an assigned person to do like that content. And then it doesn't get done. And so because this is a new process. I'm also understanding the way people work. And when we have those biweekly meetings where we come together and, you know, either do things in real time or discuss a little bit more about some of the content. But then there's no like accountability there. So I don't know how because it's uncomfortable to call out someone who hasn't done their work and need to get it done right. So, I just, I'm having such a hard time dealing with that aspect of managing the website. And also, you know, another question of mine probably not relevant to what we're talking about, but I'm also having trouble figuring out if we need cookies and compliance banner for nonprofits here in California as well. To also comply with the European privacy law as well. And so I'm just getting mixed feedback from people and I just don't know where to turn now. Actually, so let's just take that one. We'll just pull that off really quickly. I think almost certainly yes. Email me and we can, unless you have a reason why you think no, it almost certainly does apply to you. I would think for California. Yeah, you know, I did some research and all that stuff and bringing it up to leadership. I went to nonprofits here for legal aid in California and none of them displayed any type of privacy banner. And that is concerning to me. So then I don't know what to do. I also have attorneys who don't have full knowledge about the website, but they can give me, you know, some information, but they don't come into the meeting. So, yeah, that was my dilemma. Email me and well, yes, we can pick it there. Aaron. Yeah, I had some ideas about the issue on volunteer content creators. My, my health line is stepped entirely by volunteers and this only, I mean, the emeritus attorney program is only in I think 46 or 47 states. But if you have emeritus attorneys in your state, they are semi retired attorneys that get CLE credit and free by annual registration through your agency in exchange for a certain number of pro bono service hours per month or per year. And if you're going to have to people creating content, that may be something that you want to investigate is have, you know, these emeritus attorneys be your content creators. Because then, you know, you know that it's legally valid because, you know, I mean, you are having attorneys drafted, but it may count towards their pro bono hours because they're doing they're drafting legal content that is then going out to, you know, the underserved populations that make up our client basis. So, I mean, personally, for me, I draft all of our content and it's really time consuming. But I mean, as we're talking about this, I'm thinking about, you know, my emeritus volunteers who are way more accountable than, you know, an average, you know, volunteer, someone who I dragged off another unit in my, you know, agency, because my emeritus volunteers are big skin in the game. You know, they get their, you know, pro bono service hours, and they get their free registration for, you know, every two years and in New York, that's expensive. So, it might be something to look into if your state has that program and if you can use them as your content creators, because for us it's been really successful finding volunteers through that program and finding quality volunteers who, you know, live up to their commitment. Yeah, absolutely. I've also so I've had success on a previous client isn't going to work for every organization, but this it was really helpful for this particular organization to use the model of freelance writer that we talked about so basically to say, All right, we're going to start by sending, you know, the six crap articles that already exist about how to get, you know, divorced with children in this particular state. And, and, you know, she's a technical writer. And she's going to wade through all of that. And with six source articles, she can decide with what agrees and what is the most, you know, useful and take a stab at creating something and she'll she's kind of by default. She's going to be plain language and approachable like so, although she's not a writer should bring to her though she's not a lawyer she brings a lot of things that are the flip side of that that she thinks like not a lawyer and she thinks like more like a visitor does it obviously then needs a lawyer review. And in the case of this client, we had the advantage of a generalist lawyer who was kind of she was well known in the state who was running the project and basically she was reviewing like half these things for self for legal content and just bulldozing through the other ones through personal contacts. But that was a model that worked really well on that particular project. Another client I'm working with right now has gone through a hurting of the cats process with volunteer lawyers they just put a really long time frame on it when it put a long time for it on it and it's slid. They also had both legal aid and court subject matter experts, they had multiple subject matters expert on some articles and they disagreed with each other. So that was exciting and my client organization had to essentially moderate and in fact rewrite in some cases. So that's one of the reasons I mentioned trying to like sort out upfront. Not at all easy. Sorry, go for it. I was just going to say that, you know, it's not the right time of year for law clerks but writing is a perfect opportunity for law clerks who want a need writing examples. So having them draft, you know, have each one of your law clerks each summer draft something give them a subject and have them draft and you can use that sprinkled throughout the year. Obviously it's not going to be an in depth discussion of certain things but it will help them learn, and it will be content that you can use throughout the year. AI is, you know, a beautiful tool now to draft things. It's a great way to get something on the paper. I mean, obviously, you can tell when things have been written by AI. But, you know, it can be a great starting point a great time saver at least to use it to get an outline for something. So, yeah, use some of the tools that you have available and find new ways of doing it. The clients that I have that have experimented with the so that kind of the free ish tools like Claude and chat GPT have found that it, it's close. But it's tricky right now because it will drop important legal points. And so you need to do a very careful review. So it's right now it's not completely time saving yet but it feels like in six months or eight months. It might be particularly it might be useful right now it feels so I've actually we are we're trialing it with one of my other clients to do. So, is it any better if we're doing essentially for not doing a summary but we're doing a direct translation, and we have a very senior editor who speaks both English and Spanish who's kind of overseeing that project to see whether and what if we use a machine translation, not like a Google translation but AI translation, whether that is a useful start or whether it's easier to start from scratch. Um, sorry, Rachel, are you going to say something? Oh no I was just gonna say I find it really easy for editing because I when you do ask it to write something sometimes it misses stuff but I have fed like chat GPT things and said like make this one paragraph you know like where you just have like a lot of ideas or whatever and I agree like a close read because you don't know what it's going to do but editing has saved me a ton of time using chat GPT. Absolutely. I use it a ton myself for the type of writing that I do for I'm just thinking in this particular circumstance of writing legal contents plain language it seems like a use case that it might be great at, and we haven't with the kind of experiments that I've done with my clients quite found exactly the right fit for it yet but it seems like it's close perhaps. I'm inclined to there was also interest in talking about how user research might fit into the beginning stages of a project would be people would people be interested to pivot to that so we've got multiple topics in this or do we want to continue a deep dive. I see some nodding. All right, with no one objecting to witness format. I will I will mandate a change. Let's talk a little bit about how user research might fit in in kind of the planning and strategy phases of a project. This is again a prize topic that is really close to my heart I actually am a user researcher by background. So, I'll just do a quick thought is to broad strokes as to what this might mean and we can dive into how we might use some of this more. So this could mean going out to talk to users doing needs assessment and analysis. Actually, just an insight from a actually two projects of mine fairly recently is just kind of the point that if what you're doing is a general providing information legal information to low income folks in a particular area of law. Needs are fairly well researched and documented. Not necessarily that area of law, but what they want in terms of technology how technology can help how, how they think, you know, issues for self represented litigants how they think you know stuff like that. So it's probably more likely to be worth your time to go to look at the existing literature, rather than do your own research there. And unless you have so you have a lot of money, or if you like for instance are a state access to Justice Commission, then it might make sense to figure out how your state differs from other states. So some of the things that are worth thinking about user testing really interesting so user testing, not only your own site, but other people sites. So, basically, lots of people in this space are doing relatively similar things. So taking some models of what you think you might do, and user testing them and and figuring out what's working well and not working well. Like text comprehension tests, which I can talk more about if you're interested. Do, I mean, there's lots of things you could do, maybe I'll stop there. We have done is work really closely with our development team. We also use Google site analytics, do some research as well. And mostly with our development team is because they write all our grants. So they know who you know who they're asking for also our outreach workers who are, you know, out there and actually meeting the people who need assistance like this. And they give us, you know, a lot of information on do they even use our website, you know, because we live, at least I do live in the Central Valley in California. It has a lot of disadvantage communities here. And so they don't have phones, right? So then what do we do so they can get on something like this. Do we bring tablets to our own events and stuff like that. So our outreach workers in our development team have been a bread and butter for user research. Absolutely. And that's a great point as well to think about the, so not only so interviews with actual potential clients can be very helpful, but also your outreach staff and community partners are a so community partners are probably if they're not right now, they are potentially a kind of a conduit to like they're the folks who are working with folks on the ground, you know, folks who need housing who need social services. And so talking to them about their clients and what might be needed there as you're thinking through the more complex and unique problems you might be facing. I agree. Central Valley definitely had me. Yes, I've definitely seen. So it gets kind of particularly challenging to serve places where there is no cell signal. And where there's also logically probably not broadband in a lot of cases. So, but in, I mean, most all the rest of us should just assume that you know their, their folks are, you know, 80% on mobile phones. Things need to be, they need to be accessible, not just because someone might be blind or deaf, but because somebody might be trying to figure out how not to get evicted while, you know, washing dishes in a super busy restaurant, you know, like there's just everything is going on, you know, like, I feel like this. You know, those of us and certainly including me who work primarily and a, you know, quiet office space can forget what, you know, just trying to find information in a busy the middle of kind of a hectic life of, you know, somebody who's not necessarily working in an office. What that could be like. Exit interviews with clients can be really helpful on the user experience, said Shelly, absolutely. I, and five to $10 gift card can boost participation. Yes, absolutely. If you, if you want to do user testing. I, and you're doing it with a low income population, I would suggest doing it in person. So that's either with your own clients, or doing it with community organizations could be, I worry a little about doing, doing it with your own clients because then you are potentially biasing the results to people who already know and work with your organization. So people who already know you and already have the needs that know they know you already know they know you. So, but if you go with community partners you don't guess they don't necessarily know you already, but doing things like asking your community partner and potentially paying them, the partner, an honorarium to set you up a like two days of, you know, eight, half hour. No, that's too many. So basically if you're just doing a set of user tests. So something like six to eight is probably sufficient for a, you know, set of one to two key things that you are testing. And to do like 20 minute user tests. So to ask your partner to set up the schedule for you with their clients, and then to offer like a $10 or $20 gift card, like, often people do just kind of like a selection of gift cards here here are gift cards selected at the beginning of the user test is important. So it's not a, it's not a prize for having gotten the right answer to the user test. It is a thank you for your time that you offer at the beginning of the user test. Here's a fantastic book. Don't make me think. Steve Krug. This is a an oldie but a goodie. It's, it's, they do versions of it so it's now I'm like version four or version five. It's, it's about usability in general but it's got, it's worth the money just for it's got like two chapters on user testing, which really makes it super approachable. It's interviewing and user testing there are things to know and to consider, but it is for instance eminently learnable and coachable. It's one of the things that I do a lot as a website coach is I work with folks who are thinking about doing user research to say let's design something let's create a script let's and you don't necessarily need a consultant to do all of that you it's but it's handy to have someone to look it over and make sure you're not going too far awry. Um, questions thoughts on what kinds of user testing have you guys done and how did it go. I think that was on any of that technical Rachel I think that was your initial question yeah. Oh sorry go ahead Mary. Sorry I was actually gonna, I didn't see there were questions so I was going to introduce a new thing. So, we can come back to me. Let me just absolutely let's do that I just wanted to circle back around Rachel I think it was initially your topic yeah did this answer kind of some of the things you were thinking Yeah, I think that was really helpful because I feel like our current website is not really something I need like opinions on because I know it's a mess, and I hadn't thought about having user testing on websites that I was thinking of using and I'm like oh per like that solves the problem because I was thinking do I bring them in part way through the process and say like how is this looking but that seems like too much so I mean or like I could but I could also just use the other websites that I'm considering basing it on. Thank you. I've and I've done that a number of times yes and I definitely agree. There's unless you're looking for something in particular like you know buy in. There's no reason to test something that you already know there's a ton of things wrong with. Yeah, okay. I think it was Kelly at the beginning who mentioned that she had a somewhat unsuccessful first attempt at a project and I thought it might be helpful if you're willing to talk about it to describe if you can articulate. If you know what what didn't go well because sometimes it's helpful to hear like what what the not going well looks like and you know, you'd be willing to talk about it. Yeah, for sure. So we actually contracted. I started here in April and we already were in a contract so we were contracting with independent contractor to do to kind of restructure especially the back end of our website it was like stuck in a series of templates and just really hard to manage and and it just lacked a lot had a lot of problems. So we worked with a website consultant and she had like a good portfolio and everything but I think, given the fact that we are legal service provider. And a lot of advocates visit our resources or resource section for like legal resources it's it's just really a lot more information than like a restaurant website or another like simple nonprofit that has like the mission and then like a few items about what they do and that's about it, like ours has a search function and there's like hundreds and hundreds of pages of resources that see maybe kind of random to to maybe a developer or somebody else like just a plain just average person coming to a website, but to like the legal community there's like a lot of testimony and a lot of just legal documents that are important. So what I think happened was, I just think that she kind of bit off more than she could chew with taking on our project. And the project management was really what is what was lacking. So that's something we're trying to be transparent as when we're interviewing new firms to work with it's just like, like take us through a day in the day in the life of this project with you. You know, we can't allocate like hundreds of staff hours which is kind of like what ended up being asked of us to make this project happen that's why we're contracting with the firm. So it's not really helpful to have like a person there, if everything we have to do is between a basically a two woman show anyways, so we just decided that we took a look at everything towards the end of what we were supposed to be it got drawn out, for a very long time. But we noticed that there was some certain for search functions and things that just like we couldn't launch. And there was a lot of pressure to launch so we just told her that like okay we're going to actually we had and while we're doing this there was like another brand refresh project going on so it was like two disjointed projects. So we told her that we're just going to work with somebody else to kind of like marry those two and get it out in a better way that we didn't want to use more of her than she didn't have so I would say top things were like project management and communication we're lacking. And then just like expectations from the beginning. I think we just had different ideas about how the project will go and how much time was probably being asked the both sides. So that's something we're taking into account with our next version. And what we've been doing is like, actually giving them at like, allowing them to see where she is taking our website from the back end before they even agree to it because like hey we want to show you where we are and this is what we're wanting and then on our website we just put together like in like sites that were kind of similar to ours that we like. I think it's helpful to for firms to like they should be just as much as we wanted to be a like a well executed project they do to and just making sure everyone like knows what they're getting themselves into in a way. I'm no expert either like I'm still open to, I don't know the exact best way and I have found myself struggling like, what questions do we even ask like, I'm somebody who doesn't work in web development like I don't know the ins and outs so it's hard for me to like weigh in and decide who we go with, if that makes sense. Absolutely. I'm just one. Actually, I'll weigh it on that question that you just mentioned there but I wanted to mention as well it kind of feels to me and listening to what went awry. It also feels like there might have not been an explicit stage in which the, it's actually a bit what Molly mentioned the woman from urban insight mentioned that perhaps there was no explicit stage to define. The site would lay out and function. Yeah, yeah, which I feel like as soon as you get bigger than a, you know, like so you've got 3040 page kind of like, kind of move the pages around and it's like kind of a brochure where site for a nonprofit. But by the time you get bigger than that, it's important to have a stage and somebody who knows what they're doing to walk you through that stage to help you say, all right, how is that all of this information. Organized. Exactly. See what and why and in what way and all of that stuff because yeah, like hundreds of pay like even just hundreds of pages coming up in a search. It's overwhelming. Yeah, obviously they're going to come up in a search, but I would hope ideally they would come up in some way easier than a search or alternatively in addition to a search. Yeah. I recently implemented Ivory search, which is a plugin for a website. You can go in there and you can use indexing to even figure out how you want it organized when someone searches your content. And you can you can really take control there. But once you pay premium and whatnot, but they do have a free version. For now Ivory search is the one that I use. It's compatible with our theme builder, but use one that would be compatible with yours. Yeah, it sounds like you're in WordPress. Yeah. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and let's think a little bit in fact you mentioned this at the beginning so we can end it with thoughts about kind of what to look for in a website firm. Let me I'll just do I've actually been on both sides of this for quite some time I've actually been working for website development firms and I've hired a number of website development firms. I would certainly I would not underestimate the feeling you get from them that they are that you can understand what they are telling you and they are telling they're being transparent and are answering your questions. So if you feel like you ask them questions and you get text speak. I mean, either you're not going to be able to work with them because you can't understand them. Or I think it's equally as likely that they are trying to snow you, you know that they're they don't have a good answer and they're trying to pretend that they do. So either way, that's not a good answer so to to prioritize the idea that you can actually understand what they're telling you. That's a well and so before that just looking at RSPs that they that the process they describe resonates and makes sense to you like for the same reasons that it if it doesn't make sense then something has gone awry. Definitely make sure that they describe a process for your project you would want a would be called a user experience phase or an information architecture phase those are pretty much the same thing, technically slightly different. But that's the phase where someone defines what it is the site does. I want to think about whether how many people there are in the firm. So you have what a little boss of mine used to call the hit by a bus slash wins the lottery. So what happens if somebody gets hit by a bus slash because I never wanted to say just hit by a bus, hit by a bus or wins a lottery. If you have an independent person, they're often cheaper and they can be amazing like I'm an independent consultant, I certainly wouldn't say you shouldn't hire me. But you do have the issue that if something happens to me. And you've got an entire like, I would not recommend you hire me to build a $50,000 website, like that's not a great solution. There's no redundancy to me. So thinking through how many people and how many people are there really. So how many are actually employees as opposed to subcontractors, especially if you're looking kind of at the lower, like it's not bigger firms it's lower echelon firms. So maybe how much experience do they have building sites like yours, like when you like I always recommend simply asking for, like, and it's not like we were past this point but like three case studies of projects like this one, and seeing what you get back. If they're not really like yours, then they at least need to tell a story as to why they're related. So you can define what like yours might mean, but yeah I think in your case Kelly I certainly should be a lot of content. So anybody with a, anybody with a technical hat on would think that are I can't just give them a something that looks pretty and think that that's a site that's like that. And I don't think it's that important that it's in the legal space but I would say something that is in the public serving space where you are providing providing information to. Are you providing information to the public or are you providing it only to lawyers. That's the confusing so yes, there's both there's our three basically three audiences are potential funders are clients and advocates who use our resources. So, having that it's a little tough, it just to kind of stuff through everything. We're talking about like someone who's done something in academia to like there's that's like an intense website that would have different areas where a lot of content. Yeah, so probably have to get like sucked into just like these pretty marketing firms with like great websites and oh that looks so nice I wish it was something like that I'm like that's not even possible. We don't want that because the needs aren't they're just very different so. Oh, actually just one more thing so I know we have three minutes so I'll end in one minute so we can ask questions. One so firms often come from either like a marketing and design perspective graphic design perspective, or they come from a technical design background. Occasionally you'll have, especially bigger firms will have really solid things in both. But if it's not clear that it's very solid in both. It's useful to try to think through which perspective they're coming in from, and have they adequately short themselves up on the opposite end. So Kelly for your particular site, you so obviously you need someone who can build the darn thing and it's not, you know, not, you know, like it's not graphic design. But you also need somebody who's not just a tech development shop who's going to expect you to say, Okay, here's everything I need. You know please build this for me. It's without somebody else in the mix, you know, like you would need then another consultant to define what it's unique. Yeah, they have like, there's been like some things flying around and I just don't even know what's important like I know user experience is big and I know like wire framing is another like there's all these buzzwords and I'm like which one is even helpful for us. I don't know. Okay. Let's go to show you how much I know for all the so we are ending the time. But here let me put here is my own email address in the chat. I am happy to help anybody for another half an hour or so like to not some non insane extent. And then I also I do this for a living so would love to talk. I would love to just simply answer questions to make sure you're on a good in a good place. But then also like if you want to talk about coaching or strategy or something like that. That's what I do. Next question before we wind up. Thank you so much all of you for your time and especially Laura this was very helpful. Yeah. Thank you so much I I'm definitely getting a lot of pointers for the pro bono aspect of the legal writing. It just didn't pop up in my head. So this these conversations are important because we have some times we do have those resources that we just didn't even think about so thank you. Great. And please do take me up on a half hour free time on serious it's really useful to make sure that I hate to like just leave things like and not know that people have gotten off to you know gotten where they wanted to go out of something like this. I just want to say for Kelly. One thing that we found helpful and Rachel can disagree or agree. We created a matrix for evaluating the proposals we got and put some like weights to the different things that as to how important they were to us which did require like figuring out like what is a wire for me and things like that right but like figuring out what was important in terms of like the level of design versus the technical abilities versus like, like for us it was really important that they had created a website that was similar to ours. Like, or they're like experience with with that specifically was pretty important so we waited that pretty heavily in the evaluation. And so we use that matrix to make our decision essentially like it gave people points and use numbers and math and in the end like, you know, it helped narrow down at least to a couple. Pretty clear like winners, you know, you can. That's a great idea where I was just thinking about this is very relevant because I we just got all these proposals in and we're we're still like we still are accepting them so I've just been kind of browsing through and again back to the problem like I don't even like where we need to come up with the system for figuring out how so that's a great idea to like assign our priorities and put weight on certain things versus not on others so that's great idea. We got 13 proposals, it was a lot. Yeah, I know I think we're going to be around that number soon I'm like, this is great but a lot of information. So you could even ask people to do them separately, like maybe you could drop some obvious crap, you know, like you pull out some that are obviously no good and then two or three people to score individually. Yeah, that that was something I didn't do and should have, which was dropping some dropping some of the clearly not as good ones. Instead of wasting my time probably on doing the matrix. Yeah, you want to feel fair to you know what I mean. That's why I did it. It was to feel fair but yeah they were like single man shops that were. Yeah, that's what we're trying to get away from and I think our experience is like a good enough reason to not we're not just saying that you know, yeah. And you could do the scoring, you could just put a few override impactors. Right. Yeah, that's a good idea. I think that's what one thing I should have done is if it's like a one man or two man shop. Yeah, automatic fatal defect and they don't make sense scored. That's a great idea. That's such. Yeah, that's really helpful. I would. And then it's hard not to be swayed to like if you had calls with people like it could be an awkward call like and it doesn't mean they're not going to do a great website for you or it could be this amazing like personality connection and you're like that doesn't actually matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a great reason to score. Yeah, if you did calls with some of them or you know some of them, that's a really good reason to score. Yeah. So at the end, we then had to final to that we let each of them do like a little presentation with like the whole stakeholder group. And we did use to a certain extent you mean you're working with these people so you do I think want. Yeah, how you interact. Yeah, the report to affect that so we did we did sort of use that in the end, I think a little bit. I mean, it's kind of like anything with application opportunity is that like biases, you know, it's always going to be an effect, but that doesn't negate it, you know, it's like an in job interview. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this one. I think especially to, I wouldn't necessarily drop somebody because there was an awkward interview but to make sure that you're not referencing them because they had a really, you know, smooth initial Yeah, I feel like that's likely to be a good marketing team, you know, more than exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't know about you but I found in the RFP is like, one of them was just so beautiful, like the way they put everything together I'm like, wow. And then someone's just like a regular PDF and it's like that's obviously that some factor but it's not it so don't consider that like it's it's the marketing machine. How do you feel yourself falling into that you're like, you know, we talked about this one is so slick and beautiful like, yeah, you just love it but then we were like, if you use that's why using the makers help because like, Exactly forces you to get points to the other things too. Yeah, yeah, where is the slick and beautiful proposal writing. Yeah, yeah. I would say though picking the development firm is a one of the most important things and be one of it still remains one of the hardest things like I'm not that far in the project so there may be hard I'm sure there will be harder things to come. But I still like I still think about it, like have we made the right choice I don't know. So we're coming from making like not probably the best choice and our whole staff hearing about a website update for a year now like. It's it's low stakes, obviously. So, yeah, yeah. That's a great idea though that's a that's a really good idea. So thank you. Shelly I saw what you said I'll clean it up and send it to you. Awesome and then if it's okay I'll share with the community because just having an idea, you know for people to start with is a great resource. Absolutely I thank you for asking shall I I had thought of it and then forgot to ask. 100% agree that that would be super useful. What was it I'm sorry I missed the chat what was the Mary had talked about her matrix so I asked you to be willing to share. That would be amazing. Because not everybody will have the same criteria, but at least having a starting point of things because, you know, I don't know we all are different so we all are focused on certain things. So seeing Oh well they've asked about that maybe we should think about that or it helps to balance our own viewpoints. It's been really helpful I hope it's been helpful for everyone else would love to hear your thoughts on what kind of programming would help as we all go through these projects. You know, sounds like we're all kind of in different very similar situations, you know as far as in the process. So if we can provide programming to help, please let me know what that looks like as we go forward. I'm going to end the recording and then if anybody has anything further they can ask. But thank you so much.