Investigative Group International (IGI)
Project Description
In the world of legal investigative work, IGI is a legend. Founded by Terry Lenzner, who began his career at the Justice Department under civil rights chief John M. Doar, investigating the “Mississippi Burning” killings and the “Bloody Sunday” attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama. He later took on organized crime in New York City with U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau, investigated former U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal with the Senate Watergate Committee, and exposed cost overruns in the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline before founding IGI.
Although Mr. Lenzner passed away several years ago, the firm continues as a leader in the legal investigations industry. I met the firm's legal counsel in late 2023, when he asked me to review the firm's website and make some recommendations for its redesign. After several interesting discussions, we decided to move forward together.
IGI has a lot of content but it also cannot show or go into much detail about its work. This meant that the site had to really convey the firm's character, its mission, its services and its reputation succinctly and in an appealing manner. It also had to cultivate trust as well as demonstrate the firm's deep experience so that future clients immediately felt that they are the best choice. After several months of highly collaborative work, we did it! IGI's new site is beautiful, easy to navigate and well SEO'd.
Project Details
Client Investigative Group International (IGI)
Services Website Redesign, Copy editing, Content Strategy, Image management, SEO
Resources Rapidweaver
Website igint.com
Creating a modern, clean-looking site that generates trust immediately
One of the greatest challenges of working with a legal investigative firm is that it is close to impossible to show its actual work. There are a lot of people and documents and issues that need to be kept out of the public eye. And there are privacy issues that need to be respected, too.
We agreed to highlight the firm's services, explain them as thoroughly as possible without bogging down visitors, and inserting testimonials wherever and whenever possible.
The IGI team, unsurprisingly, is meticulous when it comes to details. We had many discussions over the wording of copy as well as its editing. And we also had many meaningful discussions about imagery and how to best convey the firm's work through visuals.
The Leadership gets a new look and display style
As with most high trust professional services providers, the About page - in this case, the Leadership page as well as the About IGI page - were very important. Each member of the top level staff is very accomplished, and each had (unsurprisingly!) a long biography which had to be included. With the site users in mind, we decided it would be best to create bios that can be clicked on, opened in a lightbox and had scrolling text. The user can then decide to close the biography, and read another on the same page if desired.
The Positive Outcome
An updated website that is user-friendly, gorgeous and makes visitors want to browse it all. That's what IGI wanted, and I'm pleased to say that's what, after working hard together, is what we achieved.
Know, like and trust factors are self-evident, and I'm certain that visitors will come to admire the IGI team as much as I do. They were terrific to work with and now possess a website that will do a lot of the talking for them so that they can continue to focus on the important work they do.
