As a law firm digital marketing agency, we love seeing clients of all sizes succeed. We love seeing the results of our collaboration with them in the form of charts, and there’s nothing better than seeing clear results in conversions when we make a strategic change to a website.
Of course, the best way to get leads is to get as many people to click the button and submit a form as quickly as possible, right? It’s not always so simple.
It’s easy to miss the bigger picture by chasing the biggest number. Sometimes law firms and marketers make the mistake of over-optimizing their website content with strategies that flood a site with keywords or links simply to attract any and all leads, or aren’t specific enough in their content and lead form to better qualify a lead before the prospective client clicks ‘submit.’ When it comes to effective law firm SEO and website design strategies, there’s a human factor that’s hard to measure or trace that must be considered in order to create a good user experience.
At Hennessey Digital, we consider the impacts our work has on our clients’ entire businesses, not just a single metric. One of the ways we do this is conversion rate optimization (CRO).
When optimizing websites for conversion, it’s easy to focus on driving leads and maximizing contact form submissions. While larger firms have the resources to sift through leads and only pursue the most qualified, for small or niche law firms with limited intake teams, this strategy can backfire, leading to an avalanche of unqualified leads. This results in overwhelmed employees, longer wait times for prospective clients, and ultimately, a poor first impression. The goal of broadly generating as much leads as possible is a waste of time, for our clients and theirs.
The Problem: Overburdened Intake Teams
A flood of unqualified leads can strain intake teams, especially in small law firms. Overworked staff sifting through spam and poor-quality leads may struggle to provide the empathetic and attentive service that new clients expect and deserve. Your team may also struggle to respond to lead form submissions in a timely manner.
Longer wait times can quickly snowball into significant issues when it comes to turning leads into clients. With the median response time to legal forms being only 13 minutes, your intake team only has a few minutes to capture a lead before your competition does. Remember you’re probably not the only law firm the user has contacted! If your intake team is late to reply and exhausted, you won’t be the one to win the highest-value cases.
If the “car accident” page form on your website doesn’t specify that you only help clients who were injured in a car accident, your intake team may waste their time chasing down people who haven’t been hurt, tragic as it is that their new car was totaled.
Maybe you’re a boutique firm that only takes specific kinds of cases, or you only take cases of a certain monetary value. If your form only has a few fields, your intake team won’t get the kind of information they need to evaluate if that lead is qualified or not, leading to another wild goose chase emailing and calling people who have likely already moved on by the time your team gets that far down the list. That “message” field isn’t doing them any favors either, most users simply don’t bother with sufficient details.
The Financial Toll
To manage the increased volume of leads without a focused lead generation strategy, firms may need to hire additional intake staff. This added expense can significantly cut into the firm’s bottom line, negating any potential gains from the increased lead volume. Worse yet, the law firm’s reputation may suffer if the experience leaves clients feeling ignored.
Solutions To Improve Your Law Firm’s Lead Form Conversion
- Hire website designers who understand CRO: This is not a place to take shortcuts and gets you started on the right foot. When you work with the Creative Services team at Hennessey Digital, you have access to experienced graphic designers with industry expertise who understand design elements that lead to conversions.
- Revise Form Language: Use clear, specific language to set expectations with potential clients. For example, if you’re a personal injury firm and are getting leads where the prospective client is not injured, try mentioning “injury” above the fold of y our website and/or in the lead form. Use dynamic text to ensure every page on your website uses the relevant language.
- Add Extra Fields on Lead Forms: Include additional qualifying questions to help filter out unqualified leads. Ensure all the information you’re asking for is helpful and relevant to your intake team. However, be aware of the burden of expertise. The language you use needs to be user-centered and free from legal jargon. A dropdown menu asking the area of practice can help your intake team, but the user may not know how to categorize their problem. Confusing the user will likely cause them to leave the page without filling out the form. Instead, try asking “What happened?” and offer options like “I was hurt in an accident”, “I got hurt at work”, or “I can’t work due to my disability” Avoid legal jargon that users may not understand intuitively.
Try user-centered language that still helps your intake team stay organized!
- Move Website Forms Below Critical Information: Though common wisdom says to have a form above the fold or as soon as possible, a form right at the top may not be right for every law firm. If you’re a very specialized firm, you may not want to sift through impulse-submissions with very little information that frequently turn out to be outside your desired niche. If this is you, consider moving the form lower on the page, and putting more information alongside the form that will help users self-select.
- Great Typography & Accessibility: Speaking of reading, it’s much easier to read text when it’s properly sized and spaced with good contrast. Make sure your site is readable to your audience, regardless of their device. It must also be accessible for users with disabilities, especially if you’re a disability or personal injury lawyer.
Strategic de-optimization isn’t going to be for every firm. Smaller firms might benefit from adding more selection criteria if they’re already overwhelmed with form submissions, but if they’re already struggling to get enough leads, traditional CRO techniques may be necessary to get more people through the digital “door.” A firm who has a large team or a trusted intake partner may have an easier time dealing with a large volume of leads, but could also afford to be more selective.
Though a site’s conversion rate may go down, law firms could still benefit overall by keeping their costs low and maintaining a high standard of customer service. By refining your website’s lead generation process with nuance, you can balance conversion goals with a high-quality client experience, ensuring long-term success for your law firm.
You need a legal marketing partner like Hennessey Digital who doesn’t just chase the high score, but who understands the nuances of the legal industry and considers the health of your entire business. Contact us for a no-commitment evaluation of your website performance to see if you’re over-optimizing in the wrong places and if there are conversion rate optimization opportunities you’re missing to attract more qualified leads.