The reason legal marketers care about conversion rate optimisation is that if you can figure out how to increase your conversion percentage you’ll get more cases from the same traffic cost. But in this blog we’ll show you why the conversion rate metric might not always be the answer to your problems. 

P.S. In our latest legal eBook we look at five ways you can increase your conversion rate, so why not check it out today.

A higher conversion rate doesn’t always mean better performance

Conversion rate and website performance aren’t as co-habiting as you may think, just because you increase your conversion rate metric doesn’t mean your firm's website performance has risen. Here’s a simple example to illustrate what I mean:

Day 1: 5% conversion rate (7,000 visitors, 350 conversions)

Day 2: 10% conversion rate (2,500 visitors, 250 conversions)

At first glance your law firm's conversion metrics would suggest that day two was far more successful as you’ve got double the conversion rate of day one, but when you look further into the data and look at your actual web traffic you notice that not all seems to be right. Day two saw a loss of 4,500 potential claimants, and though conversion rate would suggest nothing is wrong, such a drop off of website visitors would indicate a possible issue with your legal website, such as pages not working correctly.

More engaging VS conversion rate

Though you legal firm’s website goal is to convert visitors into claimants, it’s likely your plan to do that is to increase the engagement of your website through relevant and interesting content. But by doing so you will do a number different things, firstly you will increase the usability of your website meaning that users are likely to visit more regularly to check in on your content and spend more time on your website, all of which are indicators of a well performing legal website. But with increased frequency of visits it doesn’t mean conversion rate will increase, if anything it will decrease unless your potential claimants begin to require your services as frequently as they are visiting your website, which is unlikely due to the nature of legal services.

So there you go two important reasons why using conversion rate as your sole metric of website performance isn’t a good idea for your legal firm. Conversion rate as with many other metrics is influenced and affected by other elements and so it is important to take a holistic approach when measuring and reporting your legal firm's performance.