Behind the curtain: judging the your honor awards.

AuthorLebret, Jabez
PositionYour Honor Awards

The Your Honor Awards is an annual national awards program recognizing excellence in legal marketing including social media, websites and more. Understanding the judging criteria for this awards program is valuable not only to those who were selected as finalists, but also to those who have submitted or are considering submitting an entry. Let's take a peek behind the curtain of the judging process for the awards by examining one category: Best Total website.

To be considered as a contender in the Best Total website category, submitted sites had to go beyond satisfactory execution, such as having no homepage spelling errors or confusing navigation. It meant that the site was meeting current industry standards from a design and usability perspective.

As judges, we determined that the winners of this category should be websites that are ready to reach their clients on all mediums. This included having a mobile-friendly website. With the expectation that mobile usage will surpass desktop usage within a year, it was surprising how many new law firm websites were not mobile-ready.

Built with the user experience in mind, each of the winners displayed a professional appearance while simultaneously captivating the user. These websites should act as inspiration for your law firm's next website redesign and your next YHA entry.

This year, Winston & Strawn (www.winston.com) won in this category and captured the coveted YHA Best in show because its website was truly innovative, both in function and design, surpassing any website the judges had seen--legal or otherwise. The user-website interaction on any size device, coupled with a user-specific experience, makes this website fun and easy to use. Lastly, it aligned with their brand, culture and current client expectations.

Judging was tight for the second, third and honorable mention in the Best Total website category. Each firm's website had easy navigation, large attractive images and intuitive designs. All the winners did an exceptional job of using images that speak to their client base.

From parallax design to large, bold images, each firm highlighted its brand and messaging with images. This enhances the user experience while providing a sense for what each firm stands for.

Simplicity is an effective design strategy to capture your user's attention. Ease of navigation with big images and lots of color builds an environment where the user can get access to information without hassle.

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