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Law Technology Today

2024

How Integrating Data Elevates Your Website Forms in the Legal Industry

Mike Hakob

Summary 

  • Integrating data into website forms, like contact, lead generation, and feedback forms, can significantly enhance user experience and accessibility, aligning with ADA guidelines.
  • Data integration reduces form errors, increases completion rates, and personalizes user interactions by pre-filling information from databases or CRM systems.
  • Utilizing form analytics and data integration strategies allows firms to track performance, understand user behavior, and improve client service and website efficiency.
How Integrating Data Elevates Your Website Forms in the Legal Industry
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ADA.gov and the Americans with Disabilities Act recommend that businesses that are open to the public do their best to help make websites accessible to those with disabilities. Data integration in your firm’s website can help you:

  • Create accessible web forms.
  • Improve user experience.
  • Reduce errors.

Redesigning or updating a site to be more accessible and less error-prone should be at the top of every firm’s list in 2024. Understanding the multiple types of forms first will help you understand areas that can be made more accessible.

Understanding the Types of Website Forms

Your website forms can include multiple data points. While some form inputs may only be used once, others are required across many forms repeatedly.

The most common types of forms that data integration can help fill in and make easier for your clients are:

Contact Forms

If site users have interacted with your site in the past, you can pre-fill data, such as their name or email address. You can also fill this information in on live chat forms.

Lead Generation Forms

Client intake forms or inquiries from your firm’s landing pages will fall into this category. You can also fill in user data, such as the user’s name, into your newsletter intake form.

Order Forms

If you allow site users to purchase services online or buy a legal-related product from you, you’ll need order forms. You can reduce the time it takes for users to place an order and even improve conversion rates due to form pre-filling.

Registration Forms

Signing up for client portals or webinars are just two of the many registration forms you may have on your website.

Feedback and Survey Forms

Client feedback and survey forms are used by firms to collect data that can be used to improve their business. For example, you can ask your clients about:

  • Their experience working with your lawyers
  • What processes you can improve upon

You can use data integration across all of these forms, but what is integration in the first place?

What is Data Integration?

Data integration connects data points into your forms. Imagine that you have a customer relationship management (CRM) system where you log all of your clients’ information, such as:

  • Names
  • Email addresses
  • Past cases

You can integrate non-sensitive information into different areas of your client portals. If your law firm website doesn’t have a client portal, you won’t be able to connect the data to the user to use integrated forms as well.

Instead, you’ll need to use sessions or cookies to store the user’s information, but this is less reliable than using a CRM. Users can move to new devices or clear their browsers, and all of the data will be lost.

Maintaining an in-depth database of your clients and storing their information in a CRM will make data-integrated forms easier.

What are the Benefits of Data-Integrated Website Forms

Data-integrated forms offer many benefits to law firms and their clients. If you’re used to using standard forms, you’ll find that adding more information into your forms will:

Reduce client friction when filling out forms, leading to more complete responses and higher fill rates for clients. 81% of people do not fill out forms, and data integration can help.

Form errors lead to bad client data and can impact your service. Adding pertinent information into forms will reduce the risk of human error.

Faster form fill times are good for both clients and fill rates. Your clients can work through all of the forms you require, allowing you to receive critical information faster.

Customer service or client experience improves with the help of data integration. Clients appreciate faster form fills. Website users who rely on screen readers or talk-to-text will find that using your site is easier if you use the data you collect to fill in form fields.

Adding data-integrated forms to your website will leverage the data that you already have on a client and improve their experience, too.

Creating this level of accessibility will transform your firm’s site into one that is more accessible and hits on the ADA recommendations mentioned earlier in this publication.

Integrating data into your forms can be done using multiple steps or platforms and will depend on how your site and backend are setup already.

Steps to Integrate Data into Forms

Integrating data into your forms is all about making your site as useful as possible. First, you’ll want to review your current forms for common data requirements, such as:

  • Preferences
  • Client names
  • Email addresses
  • Street addresses
  • Phone details

You can integrate data across your firm using this tactic. For example, you can link case data to different forms. Let’s imagine that you’re a car accident lawyer and you require a client to input the date of the accident and their vehicle type.

Any subsequent forms can use this data and fill it in for the client in the future.

Once you’ve determined the key data points that you want to be persistent in your forms, you’ll need to store them somewhere:

  • Databases, such as CRM systems, which can be tied into the form and accessed using client IDs.
  • Server sessions, which keep the data on the client side and not on your own servers.

Maintaining your own database is the best course of action because you’ll have the option to encrypt the data and use it for your forms. You can also use form analytics data and tools for data collection to better understand where clients have been on your site, browser, location, and other information.

You can now add personalization to the forms by connecting the data you store on clients and pre-filling form fields using it.

Your site’s developers can work on this functionality for you. Begin using data-integrated forms on your most essential forms because they will have the greatest impact on your firm’s site and clients.

Note: Third-party solutions are available that will help you add data-integrated forms to your website. You’ll connect these solutions to your data points so that the platform can begin filling in your firm’s forms using client-specific data. In-depth analytics may even be offered to help you track how these solutions are working to improve the user experience.

Pre-filling certain forms will have a different impact from one form to another.

How can you learn if a form is working properly and if your data integration is working well? You can use form analytics to:

  • Learn the Average Dwell or Form Fill Time on the Page: Measure how long users typically spend filling out the form. Longer times may indicate complexity or confusion.
  • Understand Form Bounce Rates: Identify how often users leave the page without interacting with the form or after only minimal interaction. High bounce rates could signal issues with form visibility or appeal.
  • Track Form Completion Rates: Determine the percentage of users who start filling out the form versus those who complete it. Low completion rates might point to issues in form length, layout, or user experience.
  • Analyze Field-Specific Drop-Offs: Pinpoint which fields users commonly abandon the form at. This can help identify fields that are problematic, whether due to complexity, irrelevance, or technical issues.
  • Monitor Error Messages and Validations: Keep track of common errors that users encounter, which can indicate areas where instructions or field design need improvement.
  • Evaluate Device and Browser Performance: Compare form interactions across different devices and browsers to ensure consistent user experience and identify any device-specific issues.
  • Assess User Pathways and Interactions: Understand the journey users take before and after interacting with the form. This can help in contextualizing the form’s placement and effectiveness within the broader website experience.

If you have benchmark data for these two points, you can then compare the before and after results. Pre-filling forms should help reduce the time it takes for your site’s users to fill in forms and reduce the form’s bounce rate.

Tracking how well data integration works on the firm’s site will allow you to better serve your current and potential clients. “Remembering” the site user’s details and personalizing your firm’s website is one of the most important steps that your firm can take in 2024.

Clients will appreciate the level of personalization and customer experience that you offer through data integration.