Last November, after the announcement that Norton Rose would combine with U.S.-based Fulbright & Jaworski, the global behemoth set out to re-design a new worldwide website. People from around the world came together to develop a sleek, simple and customizable website for the newly named Norton Rose Fulbright.
The new site launched this June after around six months in development.
Precedent spoke to Sean Pratap, Norton Rose’s global head of digital based in Toronto, who oversaw the entire project, about the site’s philosophy, design and creation.
Tell me about the initial planning stages last November.
We met in Houston with a team of experienced people from around the world, including team members from the U.S., Canada, London, Australia and South Africa. We combined all of our expertise to develop a collective philosophy for the website.
Can you describe the philosophy that came out of those meetings?
We concluded that the website is the hub of everything we do. Whenever we send out communication — whether on mobile devices, through our strong social media presence or by email marketing — it flows back to our website.
What are the key pieces of information visitors are looking for?
At the outset of this project, we measured visitor behaviour of our previous websites from around the world. This taught us that people are coming to our homepage for three main reasons. First, people simply want directions to our office. Second, they want to access lawyer biographies. And third, they want information about the firm.
For a global firm, how do you decide what information to highlight for visitors?
We try to tailor our content to local markets, so firms around the world are able to control the content that appears on their website. The template for each site is fairly static, but each region has full autonomy to modify their site based on local and global needs.
The website has a very active blog. Why did you make this a priority?
Many of our clients want thought leadership targeted to their needs — they want information that is relevant to them and their business. Blogs are a great way to showcase our expertise. We plan to double the size of the blog over the next year.
Do you have any pet peeves about other firm websites?
As a visitor to any website site, you want information that’s relevant to you. If you don’t find what you want, you’ll quickly turn away and seek that information elsewhere.
Does your firm have a great online look? Tell us about it and we may feature your website next month!