Personal Injury Landing Pages That Convert

Personal injury claims can result in a payment of tens of thousands of pounds and so fees of several thousand pounds can be earned by the lawyer who gets the business. That’s why companies are prepared to bid an average of £75 per click in AdWords for the keyword phrase “personal injury claims”. This means that pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is very expensive and high converting personal injury landing pages are essential to generate quality leads.

In this post I will show you how to create a high performing personal injury landing page. This includes examples of the good, the bad and the downright ugly personal injury landing pages. There are some established best practices for designing landing pages which you may find useful, but here I will concentrate on the specific needs of the personal injury market. This will ensure you get a high conversion rate.

As increasingly browsing is becoming mobile only I am focusing on the mobile user experience as this is also the most challenging to optimise. A mobile first strategy ensures users on a small screen are not overwhelmed by content designed for a desktop experience.

Begin with your audience:

Before designing any landing page it’s essential to think about whom you are targeting and what their main decision style is likely to be. There are thousands of personal injury lawyers competing for business. It’s difficult for customers to tell one company from another. This means that people searching for a personal injury lawyer don’t have the time or ability to compare lots of different suppliers.

As a result decision making in this kind of market can often be a matter of guesswork for consumers. This is why strategies relating to brand salience can help here as most prospects won’t have made a personal injury claim before. Due to the nature of the service, trust is also important. Cognitive biases, such as loss aversion and authority are also drivers of decisions in this kind of market as people look for short-cuts to making a considered choice.

For example, loss aversion means people are often attracted to the concept of no win, no fee. This is because it eliminates the risk of large legal fees that the customers is unable to pay if they lose their case.

Establish Trust and Credibility:

As the vast majority of prospects won’t have previously used a personal injury claims lawyer they are unlikely to have much, if any, awareness of individual firms. This means the landing page must quickly establish trust and credibility as otherwise visitors will go elsewhere.

First impressions count and so it is important that your landing page looks professionally designed and is clutter free to minimise cognitive load. This means having a clear information hierarchy and display prominent risk reducers (e.g. No Win No Fee and free phone) to reduce user anxiety. However, the asterisk (*) at the end of the “Call us Free” may undermine the impact of the message as it raises anxiety about it not always being the case.

Use third party validation (e.g. regulatory logos, partner logos or reviews) to transfer some of the goodwill from other organisations or people to your brand. Customer reviews or endorsements from experts can provide a powerful short-cut to considered decision making as they help establish trust in the brand.

Image Source: Seriousinjurylaw.co.uk

Have a clear call-to-action:

Your primary call-to-action (CTA) should be clearly visible and describe what happens next. It also sets expectations for the next page that the user lands on. The CTA label should complete the sentence “I want to ….” and so don’t use generic copy such as “Submit” or “send”. These three landing pages all have prominent CTAs that use language that clearly communicates what happens next.

Avoid giving too much choice:

The more choices you offer users the longer it is likely to take them to decide which to select (see Hick’s Law). When offering multiple CTAs it is important to give clear guidance on which is best for them.

Some sites, such as Accidentcliamsadvice.org, display both free phone numbers and 0333 numbers. This can create unnecessary confusion for users as 0800 numbers are now free for both landline and mobile users. 0300 number are not related to a specific geographic location and are not generally free to call. By suggesting mobile users call the 0333 number the company could actually create mistrust about their motives.

Image Source: Accidentclaimsadvice.org.uk

Keep It Simple:

Designers and web masters often like to follow the latest trends in web design to make their sites look current and stylish (e.g. over-sized hero images or auto-sliders). Avoid these fads and create landing pages that have a clear visual separation between content and the page shell (page title, navigation and background).

Don’t break basic web conventions such as not placing your navigation either at the top or bottom of the screen. This is where users expect to see your navigation and so it creates issues if it’s not located in the normal position. Avoid complex background designs as this is distracting and can make it difficult to read copy.

Allow Users To Scan Content:

Research has shown that most users scan web screens and only read the content that they are most interested in. This means avoiding large blocks of text and allow users to scan content by:

• Having prominent titles and subtitles.
• Using bullet points rather than sentences.
• Keep content to an absolute minimum to avoid information overload.

Here are two landing pages which use different approaches to displaying content. Accidentclaimsadvice.org.uk on the left doesn’t follow best practice and so there is screen after screen of block copy. This site requires more than twice the amount of scrolling compared to National-accident-helpline and the content is much more difficult to digest because there is so much of it.

Keep Your Promises:

Ensure continuity and consistency with the upstream experience. Many personal injury landing pages perform poorly because they don’t send visitors to a dedicated landing page which displays the relevant keywords and limited content to avoid distractions. Instead they are sent to the homepage instead.

Similarly, if you mention ‘No win no fee’ in your PPC or organic search entry make sure this is present on your landing page. Otherwise this can cause anxiety and confusion as visitors may not be sure that is what they are signing up for.

Image Source: Injurylawyers4u.co.uk

Only Ask For Information That Is Required:

With the implementation of European GDPR legislation it is even more important than ever to only request information we need to complete a desired action. Social norms also require us to respect a user’s privacy and any organisation that oversteps the mark is likely to suffer from poor conversion rates.

So, given that most personal injury sites want to arrange a call-back, why do so many sites, such as the ones shown below, also request the user’s email address? This is unnecessary and could make users anxious about how their data is likely to be used.

Make sure your landing page clearly indicates why you are collecting information and how it will be used. Only ask for information that is definitely required for the first step in the customer acquisition process. Don’t include optional fields on your form and avoid repeated data entry by transferring data from your forms to your CRM system.

Short Form vs Long Form:

There are a number of pros and cons of both short form and long form landing pages. Short form pages are generally more focused and have fewer distractions. However, long form designs are generally better at catering for users at different stages of the decision making process. You are much less restricted by the content you can display and so they are more flexible in delivering different content.

Image SourceL Injurylawyer4u.co.uk and National-accident-helpline.co.ukLike most things implementation is crucial and experimentation is the best way of finding out what works for you. Use A/B tests to identify how short form and long form designs influence user behaviour and conversion rates. Such tests will provide evidence for your decisions rather than relying on subjective opinions that are often wrong. See this post on how to choose A/B testing software that suits your needs.

The good, the bad and the ugly!

The Good:

The national-accident-helpline.co.uk site follows many of the best practices outlined above. It has clear CTAs, customer ratings and reviews to establish trust and uses bullet points and links to minimise the length of copy.

Image Source: National-Accident-Helpline.co.uk

The site also uses headings and sub-headings to help users scan the content and the sticky navigation ensures a CTA is permanently visible on the screen. Social media links could be removed from the home page as personal injury claims are not generally a social behaviour.

Image Source: National-Accident-Helpline.co.uk

The Bad:

The accidentcliamsadvice.org.uk page is nicely set out and has lots of information, but there is just far too much of it. It’s equivalent to 20 screens to scroll on an iPhone 6 and is likely to put off many users as it’s difficult to scan. There is some great content here, but it’s not accessible enough for many users.

Image Source: Accidentcliamsadvice.org.uk

The Ugly:

Ugly can often beat the stylish but it’s important to not overload users with choices. These two landing pages for solicitors lack a clear CTA and offer too many options at the beginning of the user journey. They appear to be designed around how the lawyers categorize claims rather than the nature of the client’s injury. A landing page should be about the user and not about your internal processes and procedures.

Image Source: Irwinmithchell.com and Claims500.co.uk

Test, test and test:

The above advice in this post is based upon personal experience and evidence from many A/B tests and research that I have undertaken. But that doesn’t mean what has previously worked in a different context will work for your personal injury landing page. Optimisation is about testing and learning from what doesn’t work as much as what does work.

So use my suggestions here to inform your decision making. Don’t forget to test and measure the impact on your conversion rate. Also be careful not to use vanity metrics such as clicks on a call-to-action as these are meaningless unless they also lead to an improvement in key success metrics (e.g. leads or revenues).

Conclusion:

A high performing personal injury landing page will focus on user needs and how they make their decisions. Always begin with the customer and look to establish trust and credibility as soon as possible. People scan web content and so follow these simple rules:

• Make your CTAs prominent and clear.
• Don’t offer too many choices.
• Keep you design simple and avoid complex backgrounds or other distractions.
• Use bullet points and headings to enable scanning.
• Ensure you keep your promises.
• Ask for the absolute minimum amount of information.

Finally, don’t assume that you know what will work. It’s always a good idea to test because we are all prone to confirmation bias and other cognitive biases that encourage us to believe we know more than we do. Establish a culture of experimentation to find out what actually works for your organisation.