1. Start with the website and the geography it serves
Athens city and Athens County are not interchangeable labels. Your firm may serve clients in Athens, elsewhere in Athens County, across Ohio or in more than one geographic area. The Census record identifies Athens as a municipality in Athens County and reports a city population estimate of 23,396 for the 2020–2024 ACS 5-year period. It does not show how many people search for a lawyer, which practice areas are in demand, how many competitors operate locally or how many matters a website may generate.
Recommended approach
Use geography to define the website’s intended audience and its service boundaries, then make those boundaries explicit during the hosting review. Ask which pages are essential to the firm, which locations and practice areas they represent, and whether the site contains location-specific content that must remain available after migration. Do not treat the population estimate as a forecast of traffic or revenue. Instead, establish measurable technical baselines from your actual site: representative page load behavior, availability checks, backup status and recovery requirements.
