The IMA names Oblon’s new website “Best in Class”

The Oblon website won the Best in Class Award in the "Legal" category from the Interactive Media Awards (IMA). This award is the highest honor bestowed by the IMA and signifies the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism.

Oblon.com received an overall score of 485/500. The comprehensive judging process included evaluations of design, functionality and usability. One judge noted that the site was "easy-to-navigate, well-organized and highly engaging." Another remarked that it was "impressive…[with] great attention to detail."

Oblon, one of the largest full-service intellectual property law firms in the US, enlisted Great Jakes to create a cutting-edge website intended to appeal to the firm’s target market: tech-savvy employees at the world’s leading innovation-driven companies.

Key characteristics of the website include

• Striking Homepage Videographic – The website’s homepage features a striking, full-screen “silent videographic.” This technique is an innovative alternative to traditional still photography. The videographic features a series of action-packed clips that illustrate the breadth of technologies that the firm regularly handles. Great Jakes partnered with Salted Media to develop the video.

• Expansive Page Format – The website achieves maximum visual impact by automatically expanding to fill the screen of extra-wide monitors (up to 1920 pixels wide). This is unlike most websites, which use a lowest-common-denominator approach (1024 or 1200 pixels wide). Since most of today’s high-end laptops come with 1920-pixel displays, a wider format was deemed necessary to appeal to the firm’s target market.
• Clients Spotlight – The website’s main navigation guides users to in-depth “client stories.” These profiles describe how Oblon partners with highly innovative companies to help them establish, leverage and protect their intellectual property assets.

• Attorney Microsites – The website features "attorney microsites"—a unique approach to lawyer bios that Great Jakes pioneered. Attorney microsites are, essentially, small websites for each attorney that fit within the firm’s larger website. Each microsite can be customized to the specific business development needs of each attorney and can contain any number of pages or type of content. In addition to supporting the attorney bios, microsite functionality was implemented for the Practice Areas and Industries sections of the website.

For more about the Oblon website project, click here to read a case study.