Legal industry conversion rate trends, statistics and benchmarks

LEGAL INDUSTRY OVERVIEW

Key conversion rate insights for the legal industry

Wondering what makes for a high-converting legal landing page, and how you should spend your paid media budget? Let’s break it all down. You’ll see how your law firm’s conversion rate compares to others (including different specialties like family or immigration law), and what your marketing team can do to raise the bar.

Paid search is your best channel by far (Google specifically)

Paid search converts 3x more than email and 2x more than paid social, and Google converts 3x higher than any other paid search channel.

Mobile optimization is a must

Mobile drives 7x more traffic than desktop in the legal industry—the largest gap we’ve seen across all industries. If your pages aren’t well-optimized for mobile, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

Longer, more advanced copy can still work in legal

Legal landing pages can get away with higher word counts and more complex words than any other industry, but use them wisely.

Accelerate results with simple CRO

Access the full Conversion Benchmark Report for detailed industry benchmarks, in-depth conversion rate insights, top-performing channels, and more.

KEY INSIGHT: INDUSTRY SUBCATEGORIES

Legal landing pages have a 6.3% median conversion rate—just below the baseline

The median conversion rate for legal landing pages is 6.3%, which is in line with the 6.6% baseline for all industries.

Across each legal subcategory, the conversion rates are fairly consistent. Disability law and family law are each at 6.3% as well, while immigration law is trailing the median slightly at 5.6%.

Conversion rates by industry subcategory

Don’t get discouraged if your conversion rates are stuck

The data shows the conversion rate range for most pages is fairly wide. In disability law, for example, most pages convert between 0.8% and 21.4%—a massive range. If you’re on the lower end right now, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed. The high ceilings on each conversion rate range means you have plenty of space to boost your numbers with the right optimizations.

KEY INSIGHT: OVERALL TRAFFIC CHANNELS

Paid search is the top performing channel by a mile—nearly 2x higher than paid social

Paid search significantly outperforms other traffic sources with a median conversion rate of 8.3%, nearly 2x higher than paid social (4.8%) and 3x higher than email (2.7%).

While email is a top-performing channel across most industries covered in this report, it doesn’t appear to be the case here. This can potentially be attributed to the buying process for legal services. The timeline between identifying the need for legal services and the decision to buy is often quite short, and search is a great channel for fulfilling an immediate need.

Conversion rates by traffic channel group

Consider your competitors

Since legal services often come at a high price point, clients often spend more time researching options online. Understand what motivates their search, and tailor your ad content to address their concerns. Make sure your ads speak to the needs of prospective clients to show them that your law firm is the best fit. Match your landing page copy with the search terms visitors use to reassure them, build trust, and increase conversions.

Factor in the cost of paid search and diversify your inbound search traffic

The data doesn’t lie—paid search is where conversions are coming from for legal landing pages. But given the high competition levels, each click from PPC campaigns is typically quite expensive, potentially reaching ~$100 per click for some search terms.

While this doesn’t mean you should turn off the tap entirely, it is a good reminder that building up an organic search traffic acquisition system could pay dividends over time. If high-intent searches are happening (which the conversion rates suggest they are), why not also try to capture a share of the organic clicks channels like Google are sending?

KEY INSIGHT: PAID SEARCH TRAFFIC CHANNELS

Google is the best paid search traffic channel with 3x higher conversion rates than Bing

This isn’t necessarily surprising, but Google is the place to be for legal PPC campaigns. Google’s median conversion rate is 8.6%. That’s 3x higher than Bing’s (2.8%), and Yahoo’s was so low we didn’t bother to include it. Google also sees fairly consistent performance with the majority of landing page traffic converting at 4.3% or higher.

Conversion rates by paid search traffic sources

You can confidently go all-in on Google with your PPC budget

The data for other industries leaves the door open to experiment with other paid search channels. In the legal space, though, Google is dominating by such a wide margin that we believe you can confidently narrow your scope to just Google and be set.

If your budget is quite small and the estimated cost per click numbers are prohibitive for you, you may be able to achieve a positive ROAS elsewhere, but Google is still the ideal channel to put that budget toward.

KEY INSIGHT: SOCIAL TRAFFIC CHANNELS

Paid traffic from Instagram (13%) converts almost 2x higher than Facebook (7.3%)

Instagram is the top-performing paid social channel with a conversion rate of 13%, which is ~78% higher than Facebook, the second-best option. Instagram traffic also converts more consistently, with the majority of landing page traffic converting at 3% or higher.

Conversion rates by paid social traffic sources

KEY INSIGHT: MOBILE VS. DESKTOP

Mobile drives 88% of the traffic and converts 32% better than desktop

Mobile is a must in the legal industry.

Of the visits we analyzed, 88% of the traffic was coming from mobile devices—a theme we’ve seen across all industries. In the legal space, though, conversion rates on mobile (21%) are actually higher than desktop (15.9%)—something far less common across other industries.

Plus, of all the industries analyzed in this report, legal sees the most significant difference between mobile and desktop traffic volumes, proving that optimizing for mobile in legal is a must.

Conversion rates for mobile vs. desktop visitors

Build your landing pages to be mobile-first (seriously)

With nearly 90% of visitors coming from mobile devices and mobile conversion rates higher than desktop, your page’s mobile version is the most important.

Sure, you hear “optimize for mobile” get thrown around all the time with landing pages. This time, we really mean it. Build your pages to be mobile-first. This means literally design the mobile version first, then flip to the desktop view and modify as needed. Building a beautiful, high-converting desktop version won’t do you any good if the mobile version (where all of your traffic will be) is just an afterthought.

KEY INSIGHT: READABILITY

Testing your landing page copy is a must (there’s no silver bullet)

Our data on ideal word count and complex words is clear, but how reading ease scores affect conversion rates is inconsistent. This shows why testing is so important.

Reading ease impacts conversion rates less than other industries

In legal, college/university-level copy actually converts the best at 7.2%. This finding isn’t in line with the trend we’ve seen in other industries that simpler = better by default which is what makes things interesting.

The difference in conversion rates between different reading ease scores is much smaller compared to other industries. Conversion rates range from 5% at a professional reading level (the worst) to 7.2% at a college/university reading level (the best), a total difference of 36.1%. Compared to other industries, where the range from worst-to-best varies between 84% and 144%, this difference is quite low.

Conversion rates by reading ease score

Readability still matters, but there’s no clear “best” level to target

When looking at conversion rates by reading ease scores, we see less variability in legal than any other industry we’ve analyzed. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, but it does mean that you need to test what works best for your subcategory and audience

Higher word counts convert better in legal than other industries

The recommended word count for legal landing pages is ~600 words, which is the second highest of all the industries we’ve analyzed. Legal can also get away with more difficult words, with a recommended count of 66-149 to hit median conversion rate, which is also the second highest of all industries analyzed.

Conversion rates word count and number of difficult words

Use copy to build trust and demonstrate expertise

We are seeing similar trends regarding word count and difficult language in legal and health and wellness, both highly specialized industries where a high degree of trust and expertise is expected. It’s not just about trying to drastically simplify everything on the page—there’s more nuance to it than that in the legal space.

That said, just because you have more wiggle room doesn’t mean you should write long, complex chunks of landing page copy for the sake of hitting conversion benchmarks. Be strategic.

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