I first noticed how effective my new website was when I started getting leads right after it went online. Shortly later, I got a request to reprint a blog post in a legal magazine. Then I received a positive comment within minutes of publishing a new post. That's when it hit me that I hadn't merely switched website platforms – I was using potent kind of marketing software.

My site at www.LarryBodine.com has been online since 2003 and has been visited more than one million times – but this new level of response was impressive. I give credit to LawLytics and its mobile-friendly responsive design, search engine-optimized platform and wonderful customer service.

I don't make recommendations lightly, having worked as a legal journalist covering legal technology and marketing for more than a decade. A LawLytics website is ideal for lawyers who like having direct control of their online presence and want to post new content themselves. And LawLytics is superior to Wordpress for lawyers.

Online legal marketing suite

Recently I moved my base of operations to Tucson, which has an active high-tech community. Through LinkedIn, I discovered a company called LawLytics, which has an online legal marketing suite for web site building and hosting. Its co-founder Dan Jaffe is an experienced trial lawyer who is now focusing full-time on websites for lawyers. The company's investors are also attorneys from Seattle and Atlanta. Importantly, the management hierarchy at LawLytics is made up legal marketing and technology experts with JDs.

LawLytics is the most effective law firm website design and legal marketing software that I have ever used. I've tried a lot of platforms, including MovableType, WordPress and others. LawLytics is a cloud-based service built from the ground-up for lawyers. The software a lawyer uses is always up-to-date and never requires an upgrade. Here is why I think it's a great choice law firms ranging from sole practices to 20+ lawyers:

• Ease of use: LawLytics is easy for attorneys to learn and use. It is intuitive and designed around the way attorneys use the internet. The content management system is flexible and full of features.
• Style of publishing: The look and feel is attractive and contemporary. Importantly, everything that LawLytics produces is mobile-compatible and built on state of the art responsive design technology.
• SEO: From the standpoint of search engine optimization, LawLytics also gets high marks. The legal marketing software automatically infuses specific search engine markup directly into lawyers' websites, and facilitates the kind of high-quality content creation and engagement that works with search engines.
• Service: The service at LawLytics is just terrific. Every email and phone call was promptly answered, and every request was met swiftly. You haven't experienced great customer support until you've talked to LawLytics.
• Social Media: LawLytics allows a lawyer to connect a blog with their LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts. When a new blog post is put online, an update is sent to all of the social media. LawLytics even has its own built-in URL shortener to create trustworthy links to share things via social media.

My direct experience with LawLytics

I am delighted to live in Tucson, AZ, and not just because of its perennially sunny skies.  LawLytics co-founder and CEO, Dan Jaffe, moved the company's headquarters here in 2012. I have been to their office several times, and have gotten to know Dan and his staff on a personal and professional level as they helped me transition one of my primary website to LawLytics.

I received one-on-one training from their Director of Operations. After one quick lesson I immediately knew how to update my LawLytics site.

As you might expect, I requested a number of tweaks and modifications to personalize the site. Every request was responsively and cheerful carried out.

Making comparisons

WordPress is a platform that I have used a lot, including two years as Editor in Chief of Lawyers.com, operated at the time by LexisNexis. As I approached LawLytics, WordPress was the gold standard against which I would compare all platforms. I was not expecting to prefer LawLytics over WordPress, but that's what happened.

WordPress is clunky and buggy at best. Believe me I know, because I worked with a team of 20 writers and video producers to post thousands of articles a year at Lawyers.com. There were occasions when user logins didn't work and other times when WordPress just crashed.  We had to call in a hired specialist to get Wordpress working on numerous occasions.

Most attorneys will not have the patience to puzzle out the difference between Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com. Wordpress is general use because many website developers are reselling it after they heavily modify it for customers. A basic WordPress blog is extremely plain and requires additional plug-ins to be useful. However, many plugins conflict with each other and will cause a Wordpress site to malfunction. And have you ever tried to call WordPress for support? Good luck getting one of their “happiness engineers” on the phone.

Value of LawLytics for Attorney Website Design

When it comes to design, LawLytics is the best value for attorneys.

The company doesn't ask for long-term contracts, and the typical term is month-to-month. According to founder Dan Jaffe, the LawLytics philosophy is to align their interests with their customers, and to earn an attorney's business each day.

LawLytics is an excellent value, starting at $200 per month for a website, including responsive technology, hosting and support. The monthly fee also includes coaching and strategy from their team of experts.

Ease of use

Any attorney, with little time and effort, can publish their own website and blog content, manage blog comments, post to social media, and create and manage forms. It is easy to rearrange the primary navigation links of the site simply by dragging and dropping elements in the management system. It is well-adapted to a lawyer who knows something about about web technology but who doesn't want to get into the weeds of style sheets and HTML.

For lawyers who want to delegate their legal marketing, LawLytics makes it easy. You can use outside providers such as content writers, and easily assign them a user name and password. You can limit their access so that they can bank articles for you to review first, and then edit and publish on your own timeline. Or you can empower them to do everything for you.

Effectiveness of SEO for lawyers

One thing I appreciate is that with LawLytics, you can basically ignore all of the SEO hype you see online. There are many examples of high-traffic sites hosted by LawLytics. In fact, LawLytics powers some of the most highly-ranked legal websites on the internet without stooping to tricks, gimmicks or plug-ins. If you create high-quality content using LawLytics, the system does the rest of the work for you.

How LawLytics Compares

With LawLytics, attorneys don't have to compromise like they do when they work with agencies or when they use general DIY website software that's not built for lawyers. See how LawLytics compares to agencies like Scorpion Marketing, FindLaw, Avvo and Martindale, and also to website software like WordPress, Wix and Squarespace.

Conclusion

To sum up, LawLytics is an excellent choice for lawyers who want a website the gets responses, is easy to use and is a bargain to operate. A LawLytics site looks great on a PC, a smart phone or any other screen. Their customer service is very responsive, and their advice comes from fellow lawyers and JDs. It's a much better choice than WordPress or generic sites offered by national web companies.