Drafting success for Lionbridge using Digital Foundation Blueprint

Lionbridge partners with brands to break barriers and build bridges all over the world. For more than 20 years, they have helped companies connect with global customers by delivering marketing, testing, and globalization services in 350+ languages. Through their world-class platform, they orchestrate a network of one million passionate experts in 5000+ cities, who partner with brands to create culturally rich experiences. Relentless in their love of linguistics, they use the best of human and machine intelligence to forge understanding that resonates with their customers’ customers.

The Project

Through the use of Core Components, Experience Fragments, Editable Templates, and out-of-the-box features, we organized the tools so that their content team could begin to create the experiences they wanted. Let’s outline the highlights of how Lionbridge used the Digital Foundation Blueprint for their AEM implementation to demonstrate what can be done within a 90 calendar day scope.

AEM Focused Team

Hoodoo utilized a small surgical team of 2 full time AEM developers and 1 half time AEM architect for about 10 weeks of concerted AEM development.

Content Migration

We ensured content continuity by migrating all previous blog content from WordPress. This included over 1300 pages of content from 10 different languages.

Existing Lead Capture

Lionbridge has been using Marketo for some time and has found quite a lot of success with it. Wanting to continue to use it, Hoodoo set up the embed component to allow them to keep using Marketo forms throughout the website, avoiding a costly and overly complex setup.

Out-of-the-Box AEM Functionality

Core Components were used for the entire site. Specifically 70% of the site uses the teaser component with style systems to make it look unique for each content presentation. This shows the enormous flexibility of the core components and initial success that Adobe took to launch a power implementation tool.

Lionbridge Translation Services

Configured the Lionbridge Connector for Experience Manager to facilitate translation for all future content. The connector allows marketers to easily translate web content without ever leaving the familiar UI of AEM.

Launch Project

After the AEM core components were styled and organized, the content marketing team was able to build 128 content pages throughout the site, before the go-live date.

Adobe Managed Services

Taking advantage of having the site hosted on Adobe Managed services, we were able to set everything up to flow through Adobe’s CI/CD pipeline tool, Cloud Manager. This helps streamline and simplify ongoing code deployments and site enhancements.

Building Structured Data with AEM

Created a Microdata schema tool, put in place on the page properties, and improved searchability and classification of their content page types by search engines, based on schema.org best practices.

How does something spectacular like this happen? First and foremost, you must have excellent partners, and Lionbridge was fantastic to work with. They understood the value that came from utilizing the Digital Foundation Blueprint approach, and they weren’t so rigid in their plans that they couldn’t make adjustments where it made sense. Second, you need to make sure that you are working with a team of engineers, like Hoodoo, that understands everything about Adobe Experience Manager Sites, and how to leverage its core functionality.

Rather than looking for ways to customize or build something new, our AEM engineers and architects look for ways to succeed with the product as it exists, using the wealth of out-of-the-box capabilities. And lastly, both groups have to work together. Both teams came together to listen to the organization’s goals and understand what the platform can do. Then we formulated a plan for success that both sides were working towards, without trying to “squeeze one more thing in”.

“Our Site Health (based on SEMRush — the leading independent Search Engine Optimization platform) has jumped to an all-time high of 92%, and we have tangible actions that will bring us into the upper 90’s. Using this Digital Foundation Blueprint has given us the best step up that we could have hoped for. And we are proof that success with the Adobe Experience Platform doesn’t have to take a long time or bring a high cost.”

Jaime Punishill

CMO, Lionbridge 

The Bottom Line

Because Lionbridge took this Digital Foundation Blueprint approach, they are up and running today, succeeding at their business objectives and planning for the future of what comes next. They ended up with a site of ~1300 pages, including translated versions, and are already expanding beyond that. The tools that they have available to them allow them the flexibility to create and innovate their content and also provide them the confidence to know that they can stay up to date with the Adobe Experience Platform.

If you are looking for more information about how your organization can use Adobe’s Digital Foundation Blueprint to bring your AEM site online sooner, then contact us today.

Read more success stories