Challenge
DLA Piper, a leading global law firm, approached us to create a web presence for DLA Piper Africa – a Swiss verein comprised of 21 member firms across Africa (from Algeria to Zimbabwe). These firms had previously maintained their own web presences with vastly different branding. The brief was to come up with a single web solution that met the needs of 21 law firms, while complying with strict regulations with regards to attorney advertising across the continent.
Solution
We built a single geotargeted web presence that customizes the content of the site to the location of the user based on IP address detection against a geolocation database. The site navigation, footers, legal disclaimers and meta tags adapt based on the country instance viewed. The site URL structure and mapping also adapt to meet local laws. The site boasts multi-lingual capacity with French and Portuguese language versions for certain jurisdictions. Content management The architecture of services and sector pages is modular to allow for content structures custom to each country’s offering. Resources such as news and events can be populated centrally and then distributed to tagged country instances to save on admin (making use of relevant canonical tags for SEO purposes). CMS A custom CMS workflow was coded to allow for multi-editor content checks (from a compliance and risk perspective) before an item is published, tied to a weekly notifications mailer. A pre-populated image library streamlines population for country-specific content editors and ensures that web imagery remains brand compliant.
Results
The new web presence offers a professional, coherent digital experience for the firms’ international clients. While the site is maintained by different content editors across 21 locations, it retains a consistent design and tone of voice thanks to CMS automation and a robust publishing workflow.
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