Doerner Saunders Daniel & Anderson LLP ("Doerner," which rhymes with burner) is the oldest law firm in Oklahoma - its founding and Oklahoma's statehood happened at about the same time. It is a fresh-thinking, contemporary firm and it has been from the beginning - working with clients who were shaping the state and region. When we met Doerner, leaders were ready for a refreshed brand and a web presence that reflected the current work and scope of this firm. Today it is also a Meritas firm.
Content Pilot conducted a focus group with firm leaders to understand their business development goals, firm strategy, style of doing business, culture and clients. Content Pilot had just completed the 2012-2013 AmLaw 100 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices research, so the top web industry trends and best practices were applied. Every best practice attribute was considered in the context of Doerner’s goals and budget.
Doerner formed a website committee of partners, associates and key staff, and the team was led by the Executive Director, Lorri Salyards and Jessica Jensen, the HR Manager. The firm has no fulltime, in-house marketing staff.
In addition to an overhaul of features, functionality and design, we worked with Doerner to restructure the practice areas (so they aligned with services that their clients buy) and add industry areas. According to analytics tracked by Content Pilot, industry pages receive three times more visits than practice pages. We also wrote descriptions for the industries and most of the practices, including detailed experience and Case Studies for many of them. The corporate description is a good example of one that is richly described - but still scan-able. Many of the others are written for the typical scanning reader, with more bullet points around "Top Areas of Focus."
The Old Site
And the New
This contemporary design features a rotating carousel that includes colorful iconic images paired with a one-word header and a snippet about the practice. With the overwhelming popularity of rotating carousels today, it was our challenge to feature one in a fresh way - one that accomplished the marketing goals of the firm, and could be easily changed and content managed by Doerner. And most importantly, one that differentiated Doerner from its fine competitors in the region.
The People Section
We rewrote the overviews for all the lawyer and key staff profiles, ensuring they were search engine optimized. Lawyers added experience to their bios (visitors to a law firm website want to know three things: what you've done, for whom you've done it and what you can do for them) and Doerner shot large-scale environmental, magazine-style photos to show more personality and approachability.
Executive Director Lorri Salyards said, "The process an organization goes through to actually realize a new Website is, well, a process. It takes time, dedication, focus, commitment, and buy-in from the stakeholders in the organization if it is to be successful. Working with Content Pilot from the time they were awarded the project through launching, and beyond, has been a delight. Our project team took time to get to know and understand our law firm and its culture and thankfully pushed us out of our comfort zone a bit, resulting in a product that has moved us from the present into the future. Our new Website demonstrates not only that are we a law firm that has been in existence since statehood, but we also are here to serve our clients’ needs into the future. We definitely achieved the outcome we wanted, although I still like orange better than blue. (Okay, we can lead but can’t control!)"
We are proud to count Doerner Saunders Daniel & Anderson among our clients.