Speed, Security, and Compliance on a Global Scale
Lift Legal Marketing migrates hundreds of websites to WP Engine’s enterprise WordPress platform for improved site speed and security.
Industry: Digital Marketing, Legal
Site: liftlegal.com.au
Challenge
Migrate more than 1,200 websites across three global hubs with an emphasis on standardization, uptime, and GDPR compliance.
Solution
WP Engine’s enterprise WordPress platform and its network of global data centers. Lift Legal Marketing hosts a growing number of sites on servers located in each of its global hubs—Australia, the UK, and the U.S.—reducing latency, improving page speed, and providing clients with highly secure environments that comply with local data privacy laws.
Results
Smooth migration of sites to WP Engine’s enterprise WordPress platform. With speed and security improvements across the board, Lift Legal Marketing has standardized its digital footprint on WordPress, allowing internal teams to focus on client success while WP Engine handles site optimization and maintenance.
Lift Legal Marketing is the leading online marketing solution for law firms. Combining deep industry knowledge and effective law firm marketing strategies with cutting-edge technology, Lift Legal Marketing helps law firms around the world grow their revenue and achieve success.
“In the past, we hadn't received this level of support from hosting providers, but it's why we were confident throughout the process with WP Engine. We knew from the start that we’d get the level of support we need as we grow.”
—Natasha Chandra, Marketing Manager, Lift Legal
Meeting Massive Growth With Scale
Lift Legal Marketing is a Sydney, Australia-based agency that provides law firms with digital marketing expertise. Founded by two former lawyers, Lift Legal Marketing helps its clients succeed by combining legal and technical expertise with a team of experienced marketers who know how to develop income-producing marketing strategies.
In its infancy, Lift Legal Marketing’s sites were built using a variety of content management systems (CMSs). While this allowed for client needs to be met on a one-off basis, it didn’t provide enough consistency for Lift Legal Marketing to grow at scale.
“As we looked to standardize our sites with a single, universally-used CMS, WordPress jumped out as the obvious choice given its familiarity and open source flexibility,” said Natasha Chandra, Lift Legal’s Marketing Manager.
But even with the added agility that came from building exclusively on WordPress, provisioning adequate server resources for high-performing sites remained a question mark as Lift Legal Marketing grew.
The issue came to a head in 2021 when Lift Legal Marketing entered into a joint venture with LEAP, the world’s largest provider of legal cloud software.
As part of the venture, Lift Legal Marketing took on the management of more than 1,000 LEAP client sites, which represent law firms across Australia, the UK, and the U.S.
To accommodate the significant increase in server requirements and needed migration support, Lift Legal Marketing began looking for a hosting provider that not only had enterprise WordPress expertise, but also the ability to assist with different data privacy laws across three separate continents.
“Our goal was to ensure that customer sites were not only unaffected during the migration, but that they performed even better once it was complete,” Chandra said.
Prepping for Online Prosperity
After researching numerous hosting companies, Lift Legal Marketing identified WP Engine’s enterprise WordPress platform as the best option for meeting its project goals.
Lift Legal Marketing had already migrated 60 sites to WordPress prior to setting things in motion with WP Engine, and as the joint venture with LEAP was solidified, the migration of a larger volume of websites quickly became priority #1.
To accommodate the large number of sites, the team at Lift Legal Marketing worked closely with their counterparts at WP Engine to find a solution that could meet their requirements for security, scalability, and support, while offering plenty of room for future growth.
Once the joint venture between LEAP and Lift Legal Marketing had formally closed, a dedicated team at WP Engine assisted with necessary upgrades and the process of migrating the new sites managed by Lift Legal Marketing.
“In the past, we hadn’t received this level of support from hosting providers, but it’s why we were confident throughout the process with WP Engine,” Chandra said.
“We knew from the start that we’d get the level of support we needed as we grew.”
To facilitate the first 30 days on the platform, an onboarding manager from WP Engine helped ensure all parties had the necessary information to successfully operate and update any site that was migrated. Paired with WP Engine’s renowned 24/7 support, the few inevitable hiccups that arose along the way were easily overcome.
“Even with the typical complications that come up in a major migration like this, there were always solutions provided when we needed them,” Chandra said. “No problem was ever too big for WP Engine.”
The Results
Lift Legal Marketing’s most important metrics for success include site speed, security, visibility in search, user engagement, and conversion rates.
With initial sites migrated over, all of those metrics have ticked up across Lift Legal Marketing’s client sites.
“Since the migration, we’ve received some really encouraging feedback from clients and their consultants about the speed of their sites,” said, Lift Legal Marketing Co-founder and Director Brian Hicks.
Another important piece, he noted, was the improvement to site security that comes with hosting client sites on WP Engine's platform.
"A lot of the sites we’ve migrated did not have SSL certificates and were being penalized in search results, which affected our ability to attract visitors and create conversions,” Hicks said.
With WP Engine, Lift Legal Marketing is able to easily add SSL certificates to its client sites at no extra cost, while hosting those sites with an enterprise provider that has successfully completed a SOC 2 Type II examination for security and availability.
WP Engine’s enterprise WordPress platform will undoubtedly play a key role as Lift Legal Marketing continues to grow, serving as the global authority on marketing for lawyers and law firms.
The team at Lift Legal Marketing is confident that they’re set up for continued success on a premium, secure hosting platform that’s helping facilitate incredible outcomes for its growing list of clients.
“We’re just booming;” Chandra said.
“It's crazy. Despite the ups and downs of the last few years, we've been able to thrive with WP Engine.”
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