Case study: Russell Jones & Walker solicitors                               PDF Version

Russell Jones & Walker is a large UK law firm with 600 staff in ten offices across England and Wales.  They began using Crossbow Media’s Crossbow Web, in December 2001.  Their site is large and active, with hundreds of pages including features like their Family Law and Libel Express interactive forms and a Health and Safety newsletter.  There are also doorway pages to client sites hosted on the RJW website.  The site is always growing, with new sections being added regularly. 

Arabella (“Bella”) d’Oyly is the firm’s Senior Marketing Executive, based in the London main office.  She spends about 50% of her time working on the website, and is responsible for developing website content and posting to the web via Crossbow Web.  All of these pages are currently created using a single page template.  Bella says “The law changes frequently so it makes sense for us to use the web as our primary marketing vehicle”.  Most of the firm’s partners don’t have the time to write or edit content for the web, so Bella helps them.  “I sit with a partner and go through new content with them on the screen, then immediately publish it to the web with [Crossbow Web].  I like [Crossbow Web] because I don’t have to get a third party involved to help me publish new material.”  Bella did an HTML course to help her take advantage of Crossbow Web’s advanced features; this knowledge was not mandatory but gives her more flexibility to edit images and tables.  Before starting with Crossbow Web, RJW formerly used Microsoft FrontPage to edit their website.  “With FrontPage it took a long time to save and publish pages”, says Bella.  “[Crossbow Web] sped up the process”. 

The firm’s market researcher also uses Crossbow Web – to analyze the website’s traffic statistics.  Tiffany Rimmington presents information on traffic statistics at a partners’ meeting once a month.  She tracks how many users are visiting the site and where they are coming from – either direct to the site, via a search engine or from another site.  The firm has done some search engine optimization over the past few months and has noticed their referrals from search engines have grown as a result.

RJW’s IT director Jason Mangan and his staff use Crossbow Web only to monitor usage and administer usernames and passwords.  He can set up a new user account through Crossbow Web’s intuitive user interface in a matter of seconds.  He likes Crossbow Web because the marketing department can handle their own changes to their website without getting his busy IT department staff involved.  Previously there was a big risk around version control, as one person could easily overwrite the work of another, but Crossbow Web solved this problem.  Crossbow Web’s simple monthly service fee was more economical than using a web agency, and improved predictability of cash flow.