How Not to Start a Website: The Case of RateMyAttorney

Some time ago, my contractor (the person who referred me to the Mangisi website that recently was launched: www.mangisiunderwear.com) had another job for me. This job was for a website where people can give ratings to and review attorneys, much like RateMyProfessors. The website was to be called RateMyAttorney (or something similar; the client never finalized the name). Finding the idea intriguing, I sketched up interface mockups for it, got my money’s share of that phase, and last week began work on the Photoshop mockups.

I wanted to redo the interface sketches a bit because for some reason, it didn’t fit my vision any more. So I looked to similar ratings sites like Yelp and Epinions for inspiration, when a sudden thought struck me:

Is there already a ratings site for attorneys?

Sadly, there is: Avvo, a ratings site for lawyers. It has everything that my client (the person who wanted the website done) asked for: review forms, search, and resources – and there was more that my client never considered: Q&A. Much like Yahoo Answers or LinkedIn Answers, users can post legal questions for free, and legal experts will answer them. Founded in 2006, Avvo covers every state in the country, in every discipline, whereas my client considered only divorce attorneys, with plans to expand to other disciplines “in the future”. To add salt to the wound, Avvo already has press coverage from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It’s even recognized as an Official Honoree of the Webby Awards for 2009.

I wasn’t about to work on a website that has a competitor with a well-established userbase and database and a highly-recognized Web presence, especially when RateMyAttorney has the exact same idea and features, minus the Q&A section. So I did what was right in my book: I told my contractor.

We immediately stopped work on the rogue website, and he was to forward the competitor’s website to the client.

What struck me dumb was that the client didn’t do her research well. According to my contractor, she, a schoolteacher, thought RateMyAttorney was a great idea, and hired lawyers to check whether her idea was original. She must have hired quite a few lawyers, and, dare I say, incompetent ones at that, because all of the lawyers returned to her saying she faced no competition. Avvo did came across her at some point, but very fleetingly, and all she heard about it was some negative review or something like that. (My contractor said Avvo actually did have a couple of lawsuits in the past, but they are settled now.)

So what did she do? Under the advice of the lawyers, she founded an LLC just for RateMyAttorney. She had no website, not even a mockup, when she founded it. And all this time, no one, absolutely no one, knew about Avvo, apparently.

It took just one simple Google search, from a mere freelance web designer, to ruin it all. That’s right. Not a lawyer who “knows his stuff”. Not a veteran entrepreneur. A web designer fresh out of college.

My contractor hasn’t actually contacted the client about Avvo. But he said he knows that once she finds out, there will be one sh*tfest of a legal battle between her and the lawyers she hired.

So…

With this story, here’s my very, very simple advice to those who have supposedly wonderful ideas for a website:

Don’t fork over the cash for “research”

If someone offers to help you do research for your idea, stop. Put that wallet down. Do it yourself.

Take at least five minutes of your time to search for competitors

I cannot emphasize this enough. All it takes is a simple keyword search on Google to find out if you have competitors in your field. You don’t need $500/hr lawyers to do the work for you. It’s a waste of time and money. Google it, Bing it, Ask it, it doesn’t matter. Use the right keywords. Learn how to search better. All the major search engines are free, so there’s no excuse for not using them. Five minutes is enough to get a good grasp on your field. It took me less than fifteen seconds from typing in “attorney review” to looking at a lawyer’s ratings page in Avvo (would have been quicker if it wasn’t for the sluggish wireless I was using at the time).

If you find competitors, figure out their features

This goes hand-in-hand with the above advice. Go deep into your competitors’ sites. Read through their features page. Watch their screencasts, or at least introductory ones. Try out their demos, or sign up for a free account, if they provide the option.

Take notes on what works and what doesn’t

Even if you have a competitor in your field and you both have the same feature ideas, the competitor might be approaching their ideas the wrong way. Is it easy to go from A to B? Can you get help fast? Are there fallbacks for when you make a mistake (e.g. an option to cancel a test while it’s in progress, a confirmation message)?

Sit down and think “Am I different enough?”

This isn’t just about features you’ll provide. This is about the value you could give to customers, that no one else can give. Do you have enough differences from your competitors that people can clearly point out? And finally, do you have enough value to begin with?

As always when I give advice, don’t take these points as expert advice. I’m no entrepreneur, no businessperson, no marketer. These things just came from common sense. Just keep them in mind when you’re dreaming up your next big idea so you don’t waste too much time and money.

(I feel sorry for the RateMyAttorney client. She’s in for some bad news…)