Patterson Legal Group is known for their offbeat commercials featuring attorney Gary Patterson, but in real life, Gary is a successful Wichita attorney, along with his son, Tyler. In addition to being the second lawyer in the family, Tyler uses his creative skills to keep the company’s brand up-to-date. Recently, we teamed up to revamp the Patterson website giving it a fresh new look with improved functionality.
At Lee Media Group, we love collaboration and get really excited when a talented client wants to take the reins on a project. “Lead and we will follow,” we say. “But we might have a few suggestions along the way,” we say, because creative types alllllways have suggestions. When Tyler mentioned the old website was in dire need of a facelift and a backlift (so to speak) we agreed.
Patterson Legal Group’s old website used a basic WordPress theme purchased several years ago. As their maintenance provider, Lee Media Group had always been able to customize the theme to meet their needs, but over time, WordPress advances caused it to become outdated and more difficult to tweak.
The new theme is completely custom built and coded by the LMG team (not a $20 WordPress special). Again, Tyler was instrumental in describing all the visual and structural improvements he envisioned for the site. This process allowed us to build something that functions in every way they need it to without extra features they don’t. In the future, we can easily add new functionality as the need arises.
One upside to a new custom theme? DESIGN, BABY! You can add all the glitz and glitter you want. Patterson is a law firm so they didn’t want glitz OR glitter, but the new site is modern and more interactive than before. The home page is well-organized, shows customer reviews, and even newsfeeds of stories from each attorney.
Cool Feature Alert – Patterson is able to control the content that feeds into each page so the information on the sidebar (including statistics) is always relevant to what the site visitor is looking at.
Patterson Legal Group has always been open to implementing new technology into their website. Creating a theme from scratch gave us the freedom to incorporate fun and functional items like a custom reviews plugin that allows clients to leave a review and rate them directly through the site. They also have a chat feature manned by a live operator so visitors can ask legal questions 24 hours a day.
Se Habla Espanol? Si – Patterson has a large group of Spanish-speaking clientele. In order to help them find what they need, the new site features translated versions of several important pages. In addition, a Spanish-speaking operator is the default chat feature option on all Spanish pages.
We’ve always had a great working relationship with Patterson Legal Group and this project was no exception. A few months ago we had the pleasure of working with Tyler to build a client relationship management program called the Go System Tool. We love the fresh look of the new Patterson website. And if they ever decide to throw some glitter on it, they know who to call.
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