Does a picture in Avvo increase the likelihood that consumers will click through to a profile from an Avvo search results page? A review of a week’s worth of data on the search results page for Seattle Criminal Defense Lawyers suggests uploading a picture matters. A lot.

As I’m writing this, the page above lists 7 lawyers with pictures, 3 without. All of them have claimed their profile and the Avvo Ratings range between 9.6 and 10.0. Those profiles with pictures were 10 times more likely to be clicked on than those without.

Unfortunately less than 1 in 4 attorneys who claim their profile add a picture. So get those pictures uploaded.

At Avvo, we spend our days (and sometimes nights) thinking about how we can improve our site, so we can help consumers navigate the often complex legal industry. We’ve come up with a few cool ideas, and we’re feverishly building them. Before we launch them, however, we’d like to run them by real people, like you.

We are currently recruiting a few people to come to our office in Pioneer Square (Seattle) to test new product features. If you’re interested, and you’ve never done this with Avvo before, we need:

1. Consumers, one hour session, Friday, 10/19. Only requirement? You’ve searched online for a lawyer, anytime, on any site.
2. Lawyers, one hour session, Wednesday, 10/17 or Thursday, 10/18

As our thank you, we’ll take care of your parking and send you out the door with a Starbucks Card. Please email us if you can make it. If not, stay tuned for some cool new stuff from Avvo.

After launch many of you gave feedback about the features on Avvo. From that feedback we realized that one of the biggest issues is the inability to merge attorney profiles. Many of you are licensed in more than one state and thus have more than one Avvo profile and that can be a real annoyance to keep up to date.

With our most recent feature release we solved this by changing the process of claiming profiles. Now, when you claim your second, third, forth, etc profiles, the system automatically merges your bar records as well as your peer endorsements into your first profile. This is great because it puts all your bar experience together in one profile (which is good for consumers to see and it can also positively effect your Avvo Rating). It also makes updating your Avvo presence much easier since everything is located in one profile.

Now, if you’re one of the many lawyers that has already claimed more than one profile and would like them merged into one, give us a call or send us a support request and we’d be more than happy to merge them for you. It won’t take more than a couple minutes.

As we add new states to our system, you will be able to find new profiles that are yours and claim them. Those profiles will then be automatically merged into your existing profile.

Hopefully this will be a much better experience for lawyers and consumers.

Keep the feedback coming. We’ll keep the improvements coming.

Some attorneys have voiced concerns on needing a credit card in order to claim their profile. Now, given the number of lawyers who have already claimed their profile, it appears that more people are comfortable with the credit card verification than not. Still, for everyone that may be concerned, I want to make sure that we are all on the same page.

It’s been fun watching lawyers claim their profiles at Avvo.com. Our research shows that lawyers like to have their photos in advertisements, just take a look at the yellow pages. One feature that we designed, which we hoped would be a fun activity for lawyers, is the opportunity to load their photo on to Avvo.com. I’ve been impressed with how quickly lawyers are updating their profile and uploading photos. By the time you view this search result, all the lawyers may have uploaded their photos. Since this morning, I have seen this search result almost completely filled up with lawyers’ photos. It’s like looking at a bingo sheet and seeing the grey thumbnails fill up with bright, colorful photos. It’s an interesting marketing opportunity for lawyers to differentiate from one another…for now. A lawyer can really standout in our search results if she has a photo. However, in time, if every lawyer has a photo, maybe the next differentiator will be photo composition, or photo background color, or subject matter.