I need my website to get more enquiries
People are visiting. They are reading the pages, sometimes for minutes, and then leaving without calling or filling in the form. This page is about what happens in the ninety seconds a prospective client gives a law firm’s website, where that visitor decides not to get in touch, and what a page looks like when they do.
A firm with a thousand visitors a month and ten enquiries does not need more visitors. It needs the other 990 to find a reason to call, and most of what stops them is on the page in front of them.
Trusted by firms including
Ninety seconds, four decisions
A visitor to a matter page is not reading it the way you wrote it. They are making four decisions in order, fast, and leaving the moment one of them goes against you. Every change worth making to a website is a change to one of these four moments.
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0 to 5s
Is this the right place?
They check the heading against the problem they typed. “Employment solicitors” does not match “I think I’ve been unfairly dismissed”. The page needs to name their situation, in their words, above the fold, with the town if they searched one.
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5 to 30s
Do these people know what they are doing?
They look for a named solicitor, a sign of specialism, and something that shows the firm has done this before. Stock photography and “our dedicated team” answer neither. A face, a name, a number of years and a specific case do.
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30 to 60s
What is this going to cost and involve?
They scan for fees, timescales and the first step. Firms that hide this lose the visitor to one that does not; for regulated matters the SRA requires it anyway. “Fixed fee from £X” or “a free thirty-minute call, then a written quote” keeps them on the page.
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60 to 90s
How hard is it to get in touch, and what happens next?
They weigh the effort of enquiring against their confidence it will be dealt with. A nine-field form that promises nothing loses to a three-field form that says “we call you today”. The phone number must be visible without scrolling, on every screen.
The anatomy of a matter page that gets the call
Not a template; an order of answers. Each element below exists because a visitor asks the question at that point, and the page should have answered it before they scroll looking for it.
A phone number that is actually there
In the header on every page, as a link on mobile, with the hours it is answered. Not in a footer, not behind a “contact” link, not an image. If the firm has call tracking, this is the tracked number for the website.
A heading that matches the search
“Unfair dismissal solicitors in Manchester” if that is what they searched; “Being made redundant?” if the page is for the earlier, worried stage. One page, one situation. A page that tries to cover all of employment law answers nobody’s question.
The first sentence does work
A deadline, a right, a reassurance, a fact the visitor did not know. “You have three months less one day to bring a claim” earns the next paragraph. “We are a leading firm of employment solicitors” does not.
A person, early
Name, photograph, years of experience, what they specialise in, and a line about how they work with clients. Visitors instruct people. If the page cannot show one, the firm looks like a call centre.
The process, with times
First call, what we ask for, what we send, what happens then, how long each stage usually takes. Most visitors have never instructed a solicitor; the unknown is what stops them.
Money, openly
Fixed fees where they exist, hourly rates and an estimate where they do not, funding options, and what is and is not included. The SRA Transparency Rules require it for several matter types; for the rest it is the single biggest thing competitors hide and visitors want.
Proof that is specific
A case the firm handled this year, anonymised, with the problem and the outcome. A client’s words with a first name and a town. A result with a number. Three specific things beat thirty generic stars.
The questions they will ask anyway
Whoever takes first calls can list the six questions every caller asks. Answer them on the page, in the words callers use, and the ones who do call arrive further along.
The ask, made easy
Name, phone, a few words about the situation. A promise: “we will call you back today”. An alternative for people who hate forms: the number again, an email, a booking link. And a confirmation page that says what happens next, with the solicitor’s name.
Nobody has ever instructed a solicitor because the website said “we put our clients first”. They instruct because the page answered the question they were afraid to ask, and made the next step smaller than their worry.
Where the other 990 go
The reasons visitors leave without enquiring cluster into four kinds. A site usually has one dominant kind, and finding it is faster than fixing everything.
They did not trust it
- No named people, or names without faces
- Stock photos of handshakes and gavels
- Reviews that are old, few, or suspiciously perfect
- No SRA number, no physical address, no regulator’s badge
- A design that looks five years older than the competitors’
- Spelling and legal errors a visitor can spot
They were not sure it was for them
- The heading named a practice area, not a problem
- No mention of the town they searched for
- Business and individual clients addressed on the same page
- Jargon in the first paragraph
- No sign the firm takes cases like theirs, or at their size
- Nothing about eligibility, legal aid, or whether a claim is worth it
It was too much effort
- Phone number only in the footer
- A form with eight or more fields
- Required fields nobody needs yet: address, date of birth, “how did you hear”
- A page that took four seconds to load on a phone
- Pop-ups, chat widgets and cookie banners covering the content
- A contact page instead of a contact point on every page
They were not ready, and nothing held them
- No guide or checklist to take away
- No way to book a call for later
- No email capture for the people who will decide next month
- No answer to “what will this cost” to let them plan
- No reason to come back rather than start a new search
The form is a conversation
The enquiry form is where most firms lose the people they had convinced. Every field is a small cost; every unexplained field is a reason to stop. The form should ask only what the firm needs to make the first call, and say what that call will be.
- ✓Name
- ✓Phone number, with “best time to call”
- ✓Email, optional
- ✓“Tell us briefly what has happened”, optional
- ✓One line under the button: who will call, and when
- ✓A privacy line in plain English, linked to the policy
- ✓A confirmation page with the solicitor’s name and what happens next
- ✕Address, postcode, date of birth
- ✕A dropdown of twenty practice areas
- ✕“How did you hear about us” as a required field; ask it on the call
- ✕A CAPTCHA the visitor has to solve; use an invisible one
- ✕Marketing consent pre-ticked, which fails PECR anyway
- ✕“Submit” as the button text; say what happens
- ✕A generic “thanks, we’ll be in touch” page
Mobile is most of them
For consumer matters, most of a law firm’s visitors arrive on a phone, often in a moment of stress: in a car park after a meeting with HR, in a hospital corridor, at a kitchen table at eleven at night. The desktop version of the site is what the partners see; the phone version is what the clients see.
On a phone, the page has one column, the first screen is about six hundred pixels, and the thumb does the navigating. That means the phone number is a tap, the form is near the top as well as at the bottom, the text is readable without pinching, and nothing pops up over it. Google’s Core Web Vitals report in Search Console will tell you if the page is slow or shifts as it loads, and both cost enquiries before anyone reads a word.
Open your own matter page on a phone, on mobile data, and try to call the firm. Time it. If it takes more than two taps and five seconds, that is the first fix.
- Load
- Under three seconds on 4G, no layout shift while it loads
- Call
- Number visible at the top, one tap to dial
- Read
- Heading and first sentence legible without zooming
- Trust
- A face and a name within one scroll
- Ask
- Form reachable from a sticky button, three fields, keyboard sized to the field
- Nothing in the way
- No pop-up, chat window or banner covering the content
Change it on evidence, not opinion
Partners have views about their website, and the views are rarely about what visitors do. Before rewriting a page, look: session recordings show where people stop reading, scroll maps show whether anyone reaches the form, and the form’s own analytics show which field they abandon on. A fortnight of that tells you more than a year of meetings.
Then change one thing at a time on the pages with enough traffic to tell, and leave it long enough to know. A matter page getting three hundred visits a month can show the effect of a new heading within six weeks; a page getting thirty cannot, and should be fixed on judgement using the anatomy above. The conversion rate optimisation page describes how we run this properly, including what is worth testing and what is not.
- Heading
- From practice area to the visitor’s situation
- First screen
- Add the person and the phone number
- Fees
- Publish them, or publish how they are set
- Form
- Cut to three fields, add the promise
- Confirmation
- Say who calls and when
- Speed
- Fix images and scripts until it loads in under three seconds
Questions firms ask about website enquiries
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What is a normal enquiry rate for a law firm website?
It depends on the matter and the traffic source, so published averages mislead. For a page that ranks for a specific consumer matter in a specific place, somewhere between three and eight visitors in a hundred getting in touch is achievable; below one in a hundred, something on this page is broken. Measure your own by page, not for the site as a whole.
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Should we put prices on the website?
For conveyancing, probate, immigration, employment tribunal, motoring, debt recovery and licensing, the SRA requires it. For everything else, it is the strongest single change most firms can make: the visitor is going to ask anyway, and the firm that answers first keeps them. Publish how fees are set, if not the figure.
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Do live chat or chatbots help?
Staffed live chat during office hours, by someone who can take matter details, usually does. A bot that cannot answer “how much” and a chat window that pops up over the content on a phone usually cost more enquiries than they gain. Test it on your own site before deciding.
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We have a contact page. Isn’t that enough?
No. A visitor on a matter page who has to find the contact page has been given a reason to leave. Every page that answers a client’s question should let them act on it there, with the number and a short form.
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Does the design matter, or only the words?
Both, in that order of effort. A visitor judges credibility from the design in the first seconds and from the words in the next minute. A dated design loses people before they read; dated words lose them after. The page above is mostly words; the design’s job is to make them easy to find and trust.
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What will you do with the page we send?
Read it as a visitor would, on a phone and a desktop, and send back an annotated version: what the first screen says, where trust is missing, what the form costs, and the order we would change things in. If the page is good, we will tell you where the enquiries are being lost instead.
Send us one matter page
Pick the page that gets the most visitors and the fewest enquiries. We will go through it against the four decisions and the anatomy above and send it back marked up, with the changes in the order we would make them.
- The URL of one matter page, and if you have them, its monthly visits and enquiries.
- An annotated review within a week, on phone and desktop.
- A short call if you want to go through it. No obligation either way.