Legal Aid / Ministry of Justice D

I noticed today that the Ministry of Justice of Justice has gone a replaced a very workable directory of solicitors with an inferior version. Making it harder to find your solicitor no doubt. For example see this listing I do hope they revert, because its going to need alot of improvement to get back to anything like the old functionality. Sometimes theres no need to re-invent the wheel.

WOWCity Review

Today I am going to review the website of WOWCity which is another business pages website.

The first thing to come to mind is obviously the theme, or lack of one I might add.
The design is very circa 99' and is unlikely to trouble many of the alternative business pages out there.  For businesses though they can't afford not to be listed everywhere possible out there in the internet.

Common sections include Reviews
Contact
Coupons
Gift Certificates
Promos & Events
Products
Map/Directions
Photos
Videos

I suppose at least there is more than a single webpage devoted to each business.

Given the right amount of time it is probably a very useful website for driving customers to your chosen website.  The website link and other contact details being very visible.

I rate the website 5/10.  More for functionality than style.

Alexa

Although not strictly classified listings Alexa is quite an important internet company.  Most usually referred to in terms of website stats rather than information.

Alexa - mortons-solicitors.co.uk

I've chosen Alexa for todays because they do allow you to register and allow your users to give reviews of your business which is always useful. Admittadly the site is designed like an accountants spreadsheet so its not the prettiest, but few websites would manage to get that much information onto a page.

I'm going to rate Alexa 2/10.  Its probably the last place people would go to find a classified listing.
Like many of the Web1.0 generation have been arguing for years, Alexa is widely overrated.

Overall the website probably has more appeal to be as a webmaster in giving my the detail of websites who are backlinking me, what terms are people finding my site with etc etc.

BtTradesSpace

As part of BT I am surprised that this website isn't more properly advertised.  BtTradeSpace provides a decent page for details to be posted about a business. In some senses it is actually an improvement over the phone book version of the site.  It has a few nice features but is sadly lacking reviews and ratings.

It always the proverbial link to the website and detail about the business etc.  The map functionality doesn't appear to be working at the time of writing but I am sure that is only temporarily.  Only because Bing or Google maps (or whatever the site uses) is so easy to configure its hard to break their widgets. *Laughs.

Overall rather basic and simple, not much more than a base index contact would have (citing example)

Design wise 4/10
Functionality 4/10 - we want ratings and the other widgets including social and non-social.

WOWCity

This week I discovered WowCity in a recent web search and therefore was looking to create the page for the business.

In order to register I had submit sufficient detail as I presume they don't want half complete profile pages and I suppose it may be enough to persuade some businesses to pay for automatic approval of their listing.

So anyways I registered and submitted as much detail as I could provide in a single sitting.  The webpage was friendly enough and straight forward.  I didn't have much problems unlike some of my more recent experiences with various websites etc.

It has the ubiquitous website link, and detail about the business .The ability to rate is also handy.

I'm not convinced by the layout/design which to me seems to be a bit of an afterthought.  But this may be the initial design by a relative new comer so I don't want to give low marks just yet.

In terms of functionality I'll give it a 6/10 but for design a 3/10.

I think thats a fair reflection of where things stand at the moment.

Legal Advisor

In alot of industries there are member organisations or clubs that are specifically relevant to the business and can generate a wealth of customer base.  Here is one example where persons seeking legal advice can find and search for the details of solicitors/legal representatives to assist with their issue.

Having found our details on the system I emailed them to get them updated with our website link, the contact email address and to correct the type of business conducted to be criminal matters only.

Once this was completed it has been used by at least one client who told us they had.  So we leverage these types of free listings to our benefit.

For a government page it is as basic functionality goes, but it doesn't need to be spectacular.  It fulfills its job and points them in the direction.  Yes we would often like comments and ratings but government type websites wouldn't always want to allow unmoderated comments about a criminal defence firm to be posted.

So 4/10.

Hopefully it shows you the type of specific related organisation directories that you should be included in.  I'm not talking about crappy link directories, but all the business pages that i've reviewed over the last couple of months.

Bebo

Another social network this time, Bebo.

We have taken the time to register because social networks are the future of obtaining clients.  They will create fan pages and allow instant feedback, positive or negative straight to other clients and to the bosses.

Alot of businesses have been embracing social media and the rate is only increasing.  Bebo is more commonly associated with a younger audience which may not initially be to our target market, but people of all ages may require the need of a solicitor.

Sadly the design chosen at the minute isn't the best in the world. Unlike Facebook and Google+ the page currently doesn't look professional enough for business. When we get some more time we will go back and update the page with some fresh content and information to keep it real for our clients.

Overall the functionality is there, but we need to sit down and get it how we want it.
For the most in design terms its admittadly shocking, but its got all the details there.

So 5/10 for now.  May increase or decrease later. But i'll keep you all updated.