7 Tips from TurboTax on How to Market Your Legal Tech Platform

Many legal software companies liken their companies to TurboTax. For example, several companies built on the Gavel platform call themselves the “TurboTax for family law.” So, how do you get the usage that TurboTax has? The following are the top 7 tips to learn from TurboTax to make your own legal offerings just as desirable, to reduce bounce rate, and increase conversions to revenue.

1. Offer Free Informative Resources

TurboTax provides free calculators, an expense estimator, tax tips, latest law changes, and a regularly updated blog with topics such as tax deductions, cryptocurrency and health care. In doing so, TurboTax proves its depth of expertise and its commitment to helping users with the tax preparation process even before they become customers. This allows potential customers to review its product without commitment, freely share with others and return to the website for purchase if satisfied with the free offerings. 

Additionally, these resources can help TurboTax understand the key market and their pain points through user feedback and analysis of webpage traffic. TurboTax’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rankings are likely also increased due to these free offerings.

Provide These Types of Free Offerings

• Subject Matter-Specific Articles. Publish works exemplifying subject matter expertise and competence in product-related areas. This proves your expertise and not only convinces users to purchase your product but also helps users find you in a sea of competitors.
• Use Cases. Draft content that illustrates how your product is being used by current customers. This lends credibility to your product but also illustrates ways your product can be flexible.
• Free Demos. Offer to provide users with a free consultation or demo. A satisfactory meeting here can convert a user to a customer.
• Provide Various Tools. Publish a blog, calculators (if relevant), worksheets, quizzes and other insights.

2. Build Your Credibility With Client Testimonials

According to Findstack.com, “72% of customers say they use Google reviews to find businesses” while “94% of consumers have avoided a company due to a bad review[.]”

_{(Carter, R. (2022, September 6) The Ultimate List of Online Review Statistics for 2023. Find Stack. https://findstack.com/resources/online-review-statistics/.)}

Positive TurboTax reviews are included throughout the website. Reviews in the form of stars (out of five) —including the volume of reviews yielding the overall star average—and expandable narrative testimonials are shared in the pricing section alongside each of the priced offerings.

Publish These Types of User Reviews

• Written Testimonials from Consumers. Similar to what TurboTax has done, post quotes or short narratives from satisfied consumers. If you have been able to gather a handful of quotes/comments consider a ‘Testimonial’ tab on your website that also provides more context about the consumer.
• Logos from Established Consumers. If applicable, reflect the logos of established companies and users who use your product on an ongoing basis. Brand recognition from more established companies using your product may bridge trust between you and a new user.

3. Provide Actually Helpful Help and Support

TurboTax provides ‘Support’ as a primary navigation tab on its main webpage, ensuring users can easily find help by topic, with videos, in community forums, through its blog, or even via chat. While only articles, videos, and blog posts are available for viewing prior to purchase of the product, sharing other help options gives customers the confidence that they will be in good hands and be able to access more personalized resources when they purchase the product. The entire ‘Support’ page is searchable to quickly find resources without having to peruse through every available option.

In the ‘Support’ tab, general articles and tips are also searchable and structured in Q&A style format. They also include the date of last update to ensure up to date information. TurboTax also includes short step-by-step help videos to share information about a number of topics, such as tracking refunds, understanding deductions, etc.

Provide Varied Formats of Support

• ‘Help and Support’ Tab. Have a clear ‘Help and Support’ tab at a noticeable part of your website so users can quickly help themselves.
• Different Support Mediums. Offering a variety of help and support options, like those listed below, ensures that you are offering support to a wide demographic and allow you to get more specific.
• Articles and FAQ Sections – for users who are of the read/write learning group
• Videos – for the users who are of the auditory or visual learning group
• Video Demos and Interactive Chat Features – for those who are kinesthetic or visual learner

Additionally, accessibility functions, like the ones below, can also ensure that all users are able to access the information they need.

• Appropriate alternate text for images
• Screen-reader accessibility so that written content of webpages can be “read” aloud
• High contrast mode on all webpages to enhance visuals
• Adjustable font sizes on all webpages
• Quick and smooth load times for all webpages and images and keyboard navigability for all webpage forms

4. Have an Intuitive Website Design That Anticipates User Needs

The TurboTax website has only five navigational elements, keeping the structure simple and clean. With primary navigational tab names like ‘Expert Does your Taxes’, ‘Do it yourself’, ‘Resources’, ‘Support’, and ‘Pricing’, users have a clear expectation of what to expect at each click. Further, each of those five primary navigation items have an accompanying dropdown secondary navigation with more relevant information, allowing users to generally find all sought-after information within three clicks (a good rule of thumb to keep in mind).

TurboTax organizes its website by anticipating specific user questions. To achieve this and avoid providing an overwhelming data dump, TurboTax has users answer a preliminary prompt: ‘Expert Does your Taxes’ or ‘Do It Yourself’ before providing specific, and only relevant information thereafter.

Additionally, TurboTax preempts the following intuitive user questions by including the following information on its website:

• Which tax forms and scenarios are offered as products
• Pricing for the varying products
• Measures taken to secure sensitive user data
• Step-by-Step Overview of what the tax process looks like

Use These Tools Improve Your Website’s Navigational Experience

• Accurate Navigational Labels. Set clear expectations with what each navigational item contains (e.g., ‘Pricing’ should clearly list your pricing options).
• Descriptive Navigational Labels. Refrain from using creative and vague terms in the navigation (like ‘Ignite’, ‘Empower’, etc.) to avoid confusing customers.
• Contact Information for Improvements. Provide contact information or a poll for users to submit improvements so your website can consistently monitor how users find your website usability.
• User Persona Analysis. Create ‘user personas’ to collect data on how real consumers would interact with your website. Discern what needs are not being met and how they can be met in three clicks or less. For example, many user personas reveal that users are most curious about: your company’s services and products information, pricing, company information, a FAQ section, why your product is unique from those of competitors, confirmation that the content is up to date, that the website and materials found on them are trustworthy and that website owners are easy to identify and reach.

“User personas are fictional characters you create to anticipate the different users who will use your product. The process is designed to help you deeply understand your customers’ needs…‘[U]ser personas’ can be very detailed[ ] and…not just about objective facts. They also help you understand your customers’ values, fears, goals, and challenges[.]”

_{(Gavel. To build a great legal product, you need to know your law firm’s customer, their needs, motivations, fears and buying decisions. Build a user persona. https://www.gavel.io/resources/legal-user-design.)}

5. Create A Simple Website Design That Allows User to Digest Your Offerings

TurboTax utilizes visual cues to focus the user’s attention to important parts of the website. For example, TurboTax not only has a colored banner with priority information (i.e., “File by April 18…”), against a predominately white landing page, but each webpage has obvious subject breaks with distilled messaging and a visual aid. Positive reviews are also highlighted in standalone boxes reminding users that TurboTax is a credible, effective product.

Use These Strategies To Make Your Website Clean and To-The-Point

• “Chunk” Content. Use short paragraphs, short lines of text, bulleted lists, and meaningful headings and subheadings.
• Background Color for Visual Breaks. Using white space and background colors can also help ensure that content is organized and allows users to focus on each bit of information at a time.
• Maintain Some Conventional Design. Provide information in a way that a user would inutility expect to find it. For example: include navigation at the top of the page, indexes at the bottom, clearly representative icons, etc.
• Group Like Materials. Instead of placing everything on the landing page, include content (including video, images, articles) under the applicable navigational elements.
• Utilize Visual Hierarchy. Users are quickly scanning your website, so use visual hierarchy to make sure that important information and elements are prominently displayed. This can include placement on the page, larger headings and images, strategic use of color, and effective use of white space to ensure other elements stand out.

6. Provide Clear Calls to Action

On the TurboTax website, there are a few noticeable calls to action (CTAs). 

CTAs are interactive elements, usually buttons, on a website that push users to take a certain action on a site. While they are often used to prompt users to sign up for a service or a product, they can also push users to learn more, watch a video, contact, etc. Each call to action should aim to generally do one of four things: educate, guide, support, or convert.

TurboTax’s primary call to action is getting users to convert into customers by clicking the obvious ‘Start for Free’ buttons. This call to action is usually green, blue or red, placed at the top of a webpage and again at the bottom and surrounded by an otherwise white space to stand out from its surroundings. Notably, these secondary CTAs are not as bright or prominent as their primary CTAs but still attract users’ attention by appearing at the top of the webpage[1] where a conventional toolbar would be. These CTAs are clearly labeled for their purpose and encourage users to take action and learn more about the product on the site.

Tips for Clear CTAs

• Stand Out CTAs. Have your CTA stand out by focusing on the placement of the button, contrasting colors, sizing, and surrounding white space.
• Have consistent CTAs within a Webpage. Each page may have multiple CTAs, but each page should only have one primary CTA to prevent confusion. The primary CTA reflects the core purpose of your site, which is likely to get users to sign up for the product or product demo. Also, use descriptive words so that users know what exactly to expect from your CTA, such as ‘Start Free Trial Now’.

7. Humanize Your Website with Imagery, Details and Word Choice   

TurboTax includes pictures of confident, smiling experts, their names, years of experience, refund amounts they’ve gotten customers, and even signatures, turning the abstract “tax expert” into a relatable individual. TurboTax also includes names of reviewers to again make them seem real and relatable. These tools along with straight forward language throughout add warmth to otherwise cold and intimidating subject matter.

Use the Following to Humanize Your Website

• Lay Terms. Use colloquial language throughout the website and less corporate jargon, which may come off as inaccessible.
• Imagery. Use photos of satisfied, confident consumers who have used your product.
• Add Context to Reviews. Like TurboTax, add contextual information for testimonials and quotes that may have a similar background to new users of your product.

Like taxes, law can be intimidating and many of your potential customers may not know where or how to start. By focusing on your substantive offerings and how you aesthetically present those offerings, you can show potential customers your expertise and willingness to work with them to achieve their goals.  

Interested in learning more about how you can build a legal tech platform of your own on Gavel? Book a demo with our team here, or start your 7 day free trial now.

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[1] These CTAs appear after a user answers the primary prompt: ‘Expert Does your Taxes’ or whether they want to ‘Do It Yourself’