Lawmatics is a leading client automation platform for law firms. While its software is stellar, the Lawmatics team wanted to add a product-led stream of inbound leads to complement its existing sales-led channel. To generate more product-qualified leads, they knew they needed a self-serve free trial.
The catch was that they’d tried that before—and it actually scared off trials. Why?
Because their old onboarding flow didn’t get trials to the Aha moment.
Lawmatics first asked me to design a high-converting onboarding flow to make trials successful.
Then, when they had the flow they needed, they asked me to add on wireframes and product specifications.
The result was a thoughtful strategy and complete spec to hand off to dev to build a product-qualified lead-gen engine.
Background
Lawmatics is a complete software platform for law firms. It’s a CRM, it automates client intake, it keeps track of time and billing, it does analytics, and it even automates marketing tasks.
The promise of the platform isn’t just a sleek experience for existing clients, or a more effective way of connecting with new ones, but also marketing automation to re-engage with previous clients. (I’m all about retention, so I loved that).
The platform basically does much of the marketing and intake leg work, making law firms much more efficient. And it allows firms to focus on what they do best: law.
Problem: Sales lacked qualified leads
So they’ve got a great product. But Lawmatics’ growth strategy relied on their sales team. The problem was that the team needed more qualified leads, and wanted to add a product-qualified channel by adding a self-serve free trial.
The “Get a Demo” CTA was a barrier
The big CTA on the Lawmatics website was “Get a demo”. There’s a good reason for that: their software is so expansive that it’s easy for new customers to get lost in it. The sales demo gives potential new clients an anchor in the software and shows them how to use it to meet their own needs.
Unfortunately, “Get a demo” turns lots of prospects off. It’s a barrier to engagement. Many people don’t buy software like that anymore—these days, customers want to “kick the tires”. They play around with a potential new piece of software and see what it can do. That trial component is critical.
There's only so much you can do when you are watching product videos. People want to get in there and play around. The modern consumer, whether it’s B2B or B2C, want to experience the product in their own way and on their own time.
Onboarding scared off potential customers
Lawmatics used to have a free trial, but they found that it actually did the opposite of what they were aiming for. Prospects that tried the software by themselves would actually be less likely to purchase.
The reason? They were getting scared off because there wasn’t a solid onboarding process that got the potential customers to their “aha” moment.
As Sarah says:
The software is not very intuitive. Without the handholding of an implementation specialist or a salesperson to guide you through the functionality, the prospects just didn’t know what to do. It was actually a deterrent.
Solution: Create an onboarding process that generates conversions
The solution was to build a self-serve free trial that allowed potential customers to play around with the software and try out its functionality.
A true free trial—with carefully designed onboarding
Lawmatics knew they needed a free trial. They just didn’t know how to offer it while showing prospects how to get value out of it. I designed an onboarding plan to get prospects from the website to a credit card purchase.
Sarah says:
We wanted to create a true free trial experience where we handhold the prospect through the software and walk them through some sticky features and aha moments so that they could really understand how the software could help them.
A tangible strategy with wireframes
I also created a set of wireframes for each page and a detailed implementation design. With this set of deliverables, Lawmatics’ Dev and Design teams didn’t have to do any extra strategic thinking—they just needed to build.
Results: More than just a plan
Lawmatics was extremely pleased with the results. Here are some of the benefits they noted from having worked with me.
An actionable, step-by-step spec
I delivered a full plan from initial website visit to entering credit card info, complete with wireframes for each screen in their onboarding flow. I included a detailed functional spec, including everything down to microcopy on each screen.
In Sarah’s words:
We got a very in-depth series of steps and wireframes—the blueprints for how to build out an effective free trial from website to closed deal. It’s a self-serve model as well as a demand generation engine for us.
Outsider perspective and expertise
Sara also noted that one of the main benefits to the team was the depth of expertise I could bring from other companies in the same industry. This gave them fresh eyes on their app, and my previous expertise decreased ramp time.
As Sarah put it:
Kareem is incredibly methodical in his process and just… smart. We benefited from having someone from the outside with his depth of expertise and who understood our end goal. He could synthesize what we’re trying to do and package it into something that's digestible and actionable.
Less work for the implementation team
The self-serve free trial reduces the burden on the Sales team—that was an expected outcome.
But Sarah also noted an unexpected benefit: reduced burden on Implementation. She notes that because onboarding answers a lot of the questions about how to set up and use Lawmatics, there’s less need for intervention by the Implementation team. Not only that, but the Implementation team can spend more time focusing on helping clients with strategy, rather than set-up instructions.
Sarah mentions:
We are doing a better job of educating our new prospects so that when they become customers, Implementation doesn’t have to pick up the pieces, which alleviates that resource burden.
Lawmatics was happy with the results
Sarah says she enjoyed working together:
I would absolutely recommend Kareem. He’s super smart, he helped us think about things that we hadn’t, he’s a pleasure to work with, and he provides valuable outcomes.
I can help you create a product-led self-service free trial that generates qualified leads
Lawmatics needed a steady stream of qualified leads. They have some coming through their marketing, but they wanted to supplement those with product-qualified leads.
Are you in a similar position? I can help.