Wisconsin Lawyer
Vol. 84, No. 9, September 2011
By the time you read this column, the first phase of the new WisBar will be in place. At press time, the State Bar is preparing for a mid-September launch of a new Marketplace on the State Bar’s website.
What does this mean for you? WisBar’s Marketplace remains a “one-stop shop” for purchasing State Bar products and registering for events, including PINNACLE™ education programs, books, forms, and Books UnBound. But the new Marketplace will have intuitive tab navigation and improved search functionality, which means fewer clicks to find information about State Bar products and events, saving you and your staff valuable time.
With Marketplace, you also can control how broadly or narrowly to extend your search as you seek solutions to your practice needs. You also can limit your search by topic, format, price, product category, or price range or combine any of these criteria to find what you need.
These days, security is a concern on any website where you input personal identifying information to purchase products or register for an event. The State Bar takes all computer and Internet security issues extremely seriously to protect your privacy. Thus, Marketplace meets industry standards for e-commerce sites, and it meets or exceeds all payment card industry compliance standards.
So what will happen with the rest of WisBar? In late winter or early spring, the rest of the re-engineered website will launch. This fall, members of the Young Lawyers Division and various sections will work with staff to design how new division and section “community” pages will look and function to promote greater lawyer-to-lawyer networking. Members also will be able to personalize their homepages for quicker access to the information that is most important to them. And that is just the beginning.
The entire process for re-engineering WisBar, including the Marketplace, was driven by member evaluation of and input concerning the site’s usability, functionality, and enhancements. Until the launch of phase two in early 2012, WisBar users will experience two different looks when using the site. The new Marketplace will have the updated look, while the balance of the site maintains the current design. During this transition, users will be able to easily move between the two parts of the site.
Marketplace will give you a taste of things to come. Try it. You’ll see how the State Bar is delivering on our promise, that Your Practice is Our Purpose.
Wisconsin Lawyer
