Clio the law firm practice management software that I recommend recently released a Google Chrome Extension. This addition to the Google Chrome browser allows you to stay in your Google Email window while creating a timed session or task in Clio without having to leave the email! This is a very cool enhancement to your productivity and I recommend installing it right away.
Last week there was a significant announcement that a core feature of Internet security was vulnerable to being compromised. The feature is known as OpenSSL and the name of the vulnerability is known as Heartbleed. You can read more about it here.
Unfortnately this affected Clio a Law Firm Practice Management service that I have talked about many times. The good news is that they have fixed the vulnerability and the even better news is that they announced it to everyone on the Clio blog.
I made a quick video explaining the vulnerability and how Clio fixed it and their recommendation that you update your Clio Password just to be on the safe side of things.
In a perfect world there would never be situations like this but in the real world things happen. The most reassuring thing for me as a Clio Consultant and for my clients is that Clio resolved the issue quickly and made a public announcement about it.
Big news in the law practice management software realm today as Clio announces it has closed a Series C funding with Bessemer Venture Partners for $20 Million. This will be used to expand their features and hire talent to make things happen. I have been working as a Clio Certified Consultant for almost a year now and have been very impressed with the system. I made a quick video talking about the announcement and my first interaction with the Co-Founder Rian Gavreau:
It will be very interesting to see what happens next as Clio spends some of this cash!
Disclosure – I am a Clio Certified Consultant. If you are interested in trying Clio out they offer a Free 30 day trial, click here to check it out.
I get asked by clients and colleagues a lot about how many words there should be on a webpage. This question is generally focused on organic search engine rankings and how to get more traffic. Sometimes it also focuses on the aesthetic appeal of the page. These are valid concerns but should not be the primary one that motivates you to create a web page.
I did a Google Hangout talking about this, its only 18 minutes long and gets into the details as to why and how:
My suggestion is to focus on whether your content fully answers the question that the page wants to answer. If you can answer this question in 500 words thats great but keep in mind that the average english speaker talks at a rate of about 150 words per minute – h/t Quora That means that in 500 words or less than 5 minutes you are expecting to completely answer someones question about your service, how it applies to them, and how you can help. If thats enough then go with 500 words. My bet is that you are going to need a bit more content to get your points across completely.
Once you answer the question then you can be concerned about aesthetic appeal which is a part of conversion optimization. This is the process where you format the text with bold or italics and create
for what they need.
Dont expect that they will need all of the content but don’t leave anything out as that might be just the piece they are looking for.
Finally if you can answer the question and optimize for conversions then the organic traffic will follow.
Here are some great posts from Neil Patel on the subject:
How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions
7 Simple Copywriting Tweaks That’ll Shoot Your Conversion Rate Up
Google Hangouts on Air are Google’s answer to webinars except you can broadcast them to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. If you own or run a business you should consider doing a regular Hangout on Air which you can schedule ahead of time and invite people to. Watch this video to learn more:
Also here is a great article going into more detail: