How Legal Marketing Firms Can Help Turn More of Your Website Visitors Into Leads

Getting people to visit your law firm’s website is no easy feat. The legal field is a very competitive space, especially when it comes to online and digital advertising, so for smaller firms and sole practitioners, being found on the web takes years of writing content and promoting it with paid ads on the Google advertising network, on social media and on other channels. For many, bringing in Legal Marketing Firms to help build the right website, craft the right messaging, and ultimately help turn website visitors into legal leads and cases, is a solid investment.

Even if you have succeeded in getting a good, steady flow of visitors to your website, that’s only the beginning. The next question is, how do you convince those people who have landed on your website to fill out a lead form, pick up the phone and call you, or otherwise enter your lead funnel? That’s generally accomplished through a process commonly called Conversion Rate Optimization.

Conversion Rate Optimization Overview

The main idea behind Conversion Rate Optimization is to clear a path for website visitors to quickly and easily take the action you want them to take, with as few clicks and obstacles as possible. That action could be submitting a lead form, downloading an eBook or other content asset, signing up for a newsletter, or some other action. Once you determine the primary conversion point on your website, your job is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to do it. That can mean placing the main call to action (“Request a Free Consultation”) and your phone number prominently on all pages of the website.

If you or your legal marketing firm are running ads or paying a Search Engine Optimization agency or marketing company to generate more traffic to your website, converting as many visitors as you can is of the utmost importance. Otherwise, you are paying for traffic that you are not converting into leads or paying clients.

There is no standard or universal conversion rate, since the number varies widely depending on your industry, location, competition, and other factors. But a general rule of thumb is that a conversion rate (calculated by dividing the number of conversions by your website visitors) should be in the 3-5% range, although some websites convert much higher or lower than that range.

Data shows that on even the most popular websites, visitors spend only a few seconds before making a decision whether to move along through your site or hit the “Back” button on their keyboard and go back to the list of Google search results to find another website to explore. That means you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression and convince those potential clients that your website is reliable, legitimate, and trustworthy. That makes conversion rate optimization that much more important, to help make sure people clearly understand how to do what they came to your website to do.

Good Legal Marketing Firms Test, Test, and Test Again

Conversion Rate Optimization is not a “set it and forget it” project. It requires you to be constantly monitoring the conversion rate of your website and elements of the website design and looking for opportunities to improve. That means constantly testing new messaging, placement of your calls to action, and other elements of your website. Sometimes, simply adding a value proposition to your call to action (fast, free, quick, easy, etc.) can move the conversion needle a few points, bringing you more leads for the same amount of visitor traffic. Good legal marketing firms also test images, headline copy, the location of your calls to action on the page or blog posts, and more to determine how to improve your conversion rate.

Many website owners conduct an “A/B Test” to see which element works best. For example, run a call to action button on your site that reads “Request a Free Consultation” for a month and then change it to read “How Much Can You Get?” or some other variation for the same amount of time, then compare the performance of the two variations to see which performs best. Then do that over and over again until you are confident that you have fully optimized your conversion rate that will better convert traffic into leads for your law firm.

Conducting Conversion Rate Optimization to maximize the value of your website visitors can generate more leads, clients, and revenue from your digital marketing efforts, and should be a piece of any marketing strategy for your law practice. Try a few tests soon to see if you can squeeze more out of the traffic you are already getting.