“Fine” is a difficult website problem to fund.
The site loads. Practice pages exist. Referred prospects can find a telephone number. The design causes no acute embarrassment and the firm continues to win work through relationships. Nothing in that description creates an obvious incident or budget deadline.
It can still conceal commercial loss. A referred buyer may use the site to check fit and confidence before making contact. A candidate may compare the firm's ambition and expertise with another employer. Existing clients may fail to discover a relevant service. These missed actions leave no record in the CRM, so the leadership team sees the work it won and very little of the demand that disappeared.
The source article tried to turn that uncertainty into a precise annual loss of £250,000 to £450,000 for a typical firm. Its inputs, buyer percentages, deterrence rates, conversion penalties, salary multiples and programme costs lack linked evidence. The answer may be large for a particular firm. Invented precision still weakens the case. A better approach is to measure the firm's actual decision journey and show a range leaders can interrogate.
Define what “good enough” is failing to do
A website can be adequate for one job and weak for another. Before estimating cost, decide which outcomes matter.
For a mid-market law firm, the list may include:
- Giving referred prospects confidence in a named lawyer or team
- Helping an uncommitted buyer find relevant expertise
- Producing suitable enquiries with enough context for follow-up
- Demonstrating experience without breaching confidentiality
- Helping clients discover adjacent services
- Supporting recruitment for priority roles
- Allowing marketing and BD teams to keep information current
Each purpose has different evidence. Enquiry forms and call tracking may help with demand. Referral interviews can reveal what buyers checked before contacting the firm. Search and page journeys can show discovery. Recruitment teams can ask candidates which digital material influenced their judgement. Existing clients can be tested on their awareness of services.
“Make the website better” cannot support a commercial calculation. “Increase the proportion of referred corporate prospects who reach a relevant lawyer profile and make contact” can.
Three costs worth investigating
The source's three-part model remains useful if its assumptions come from the firm.
Unmade enquiries. Start with known referral, search and campaign routes. Track calls, forms and introductions far enough to distinguish suitable demand from noise. For referrals, ask a sample of prospects and recent clients how they used the site. This will never reveal every lost buyer, though it can test whether the site is a meaningful validation step.
Compare high-intent landing pages with what a buyer needs to decide: relevant services, sectors, people, experience and a credible next action. Where practical, test revised pages or enquiry paths before attributing a broad conversion change to a redesign.
Weaker conversion after contact. The source argues that an underwhelming site creates a confidence deficit for fee earners to overcome. That is plausible and difficult to isolate. Record source, pages viewed, enquiry quality, response time, first-meeting outcome and instruction. Interview BD and lawyers using actual opportunities. Treat the result as a contributing signal, rather than applying an unsupported 10% to 15% penalty.
Recruitment friction. Candidate decisions have many causes: role, pay, leadership, flexibility, progression, reputation and recruiter experience. Digital presentation may affect how those factors are understood. Recruitment should capture candidate feedback and abandonment evidence before assigning replacement cost to the website.
Adjacent-service discovery may deserve a fourth line. If significant clients know only the practice that serves them today, content and relationship design could support relevant introductions. Avoid counting all theoretical cross-sell as lost revenue. Use client plans and conversations to identify credible needs.
Build a range from evidence the partners own
A board-ready estimate should separate observed values from assumptions.
For the enquiry route, the model might contain:
- Annual suitable visits or referred prospects
- Proportion using the website during evaluation
- Observed contact or instruction rate
- A defensible improvement range from a pilot
- Contribution value of an additional suitable matter
- Delivery and operating cost
Label the source and confidence of every input. Where the firm lacks a number, use a low, central and high assumption and show how it affects the result. If the case collapses under the low assumption, say so. If one uncertain conversion estimate drives most of the benefit, gather evidence before commissioning a large programme.
Avoid multiplying several speculative percentages and presenting the output as money already lost. The further a model travels from observed behaviour, the wider its range should become.
Costs also need full treatment. Include research, content, technology, migration, internal partner time, governance, training, measurement and continuing ownership. A targeted content and journey programme may be sufficient. A platform rebuild may be justified by deeper constraints. The diagnosis should decide.
Look for opportunity fog in the current data
Digital loss is often invisible because measurement ends too early. Page analytics do not know whether the right prospect instructed the firm. CRM records may begin only after a person has made contact. Recruitment systems may never capture website influence.
Connect a limited set of events across the journey:
- Original source or referral route
- Landing content and relevant return visits, with suitable consent
- Enquiry method and response time
- Practice, sector and matter fit
- Meeting, proposal and instruction outcome
- Reasons for loss where they can be learned
Do the same at a proportionate level for priority recruitment and client-development journeys. The objective is a decision system, rather than surveillance of every visitor.
Qualitative evidence matters. Five interviews with recent buyers can reveal that lawyer profiles settle confidence, pricing language causes hesitation or the enquiry route feels impersonal. It does not produce a universal percentage. It gives the team a hypothesis to test and better material to design.
Improvement can be smaller than redesign
The “fine website” argument often polarises the decision into keeping the current site or funding a complete replacement. Many constraints sit between those choices.
A firm might improve priority practice pages, refresh profiles, add properly approved experience evidence, create named enquiry routes and connect response measurement to the CRM. It might repair mobile interaction or accessibility issues. It might fix a publishing workflow so expertise reaches the market while it is current.
If those changes are hard because the content model, platform support or integration is weak, the evidence begins to support deeper investment. If they can be delivered and measured within the present estate, the firm can learn before committing more.
This staged approach also protects attribution. Change a defined journey, observe suitable enquiries and response, and compare the result with the baseline. A simultaneous redesign, campaign and sales-process change may improve performance while leaving leaders unable to explain why.
Expectations move, so “fine” is temporary
A site that once met buyer needs can drift. Lawyers join and leave, services change, evidence ages, devices and accessibility expectations evolve, and competitors clarify their offer. The cost does not automatically rise by a fixed annual percentage, as the source implied. The risk grows when the firm has no ownership or review cycle.
Assign owners for high-value pages, lawyer data, regulatory information, enquiries and performance. Review by change and risk, rather than waiting for the next redesign. A stale profile or broken handoff should be an operational exception with an owner.
Make “fine” prove itself
The answer may be to retain the website and invest elsewhere. That is a sound decision when evidence shows the site supports the journeys that matter and larger constraints lie in follow-up, service or relationship management.
The test is whether leaders have examined those journeys or inferred success from the absence of complaints. Use the firm's data, state uncertainty and price a proportionate experiment. “Fine” should be a conclusion supported by evidence, rather than the default name for an unmeasured experience.
If you want help running this properly - using your firm's specific commercial data rather than the ranges I've used here - we offer a cost-of-good-enough assessment that does exactly that. It's a structured exercise that produces a number, and then you decide what to do with it. We've also published a broader guide called The Customer Experience Dividend that connects website quality to the wider client experience picture - worth reading if you want the fuller argument.
There's also a downloadable calculation worksheet that walks you through all three cost calculations with estimation guidance and a three-year cumulative output. If you'd rather do this quietly with your own team before having any external conversations, that's the place to start.
But do start. Because "fine" has a price. And you've been paying it longer than you think.
