Communicated Content – A recent report on website activity data from onlinewillmakers.com has been released to Mid Hudson News, which has led to some interesting insights about the American public and will making. The website in question aims to review online wills to help customers make an informed decision before they settle on which company to use for their online legal services.
Online wills are exactly how they sound, being an online alternative to the traditional will, which usually involves paying a lot of money to have a meeting with an attorney.
Online wills, on paper, are nearly a perfect product. The average cost of an online will is around a fifth of the price as hiring a lawyer to draft a will. Given that online wills are professionally created blueprints, somewhat like a survey form, in which the answers are then amalgamated to automatically create the legal literature… There is not a lot cost per sale involved, which explains the ability to price wills under $100 (and sometimes under $30).
The process for the customer takes around 10 minutes, another advantage, and is considered to be legitimate in executing the will in court. Yet we are still seeing skepticism around online wills. Data released exclusively to Mid Hudson News by onlinewillmakers.com reveals an interesting story: Less than 1% of all readers on the niche review website opt to choose one of the online will makers and proceed to a purchase (of a subscription or one off).
This may sound typical of a review site’s numbers, but it’s not. Many products are able to achieve conversion rates of 10% and higher, proving that Americans are seemingly not yet ready to pay for online legal services.
The Aversion to Online Legal Services
Whilst the reasons behind the low conversions cannot be an exact science, there is some logic behind why there may be such an aversion. As stated above, online wills appear to be the perfect product on paper; but “on paper” indicates a deeper issue here. Online wills have only been around as long as the internet, and have only grown into the mainstream in the past 5 or so years.
This has meant that, whilst many people successfully create a will and review the positive process, you can’t review the product after you have passed away… The product itself is still very new, meaning it can’t be seen as a pragmatic, tried-and-tested product, even if it is perfectly credible on paper.
It seems to be a case of people relying on empiricism over rationalism. The most likely thing to happen is that each year, online legal services have another year of evidence, and another year of normalisation, which will likely lead to less skepticism and apprehension. It’s understandable, because the nature of the product is to be in charge of one’s life work; their assets, their child’s fiscal security, and perhaps the continuation of a company or estate.
Pandemic Acceleration
If we take LegalZoom as an example company, seeing as they’re one of the largest and most established, we can see that they are on a strong financial trajectory. Rising revenues, a strong 19% EBITDA margin, but it’s the 27% Q1 YoY accelerated growth that catches the eye…
It’s very possible that the pandemic has caused a fright in young people to start considering their wills more seriously, as we have been hit with a wave of vulnerability. Of course, the threat of death is not only more prevalent in older people, but older people are more likely to stick to traditional methods of will creation.
It will certainly be younger people who are not only more tech savvy, but haven’t lived through the decades of tradition which online solutions are breaking and pleading to be seen as “proper”. Instead, youngsters’ first ever introduction to will creation may now be an online company, which bodes well for the long-term future of the industry.
The pandemic accelerated many industries, particularly ones that take away high street business towards online. For obvious reasons, the high street was the victim of lockdowns and social distancing (including legal offices), meaning online solutions took that revenue in a very zero-sum game-like kind of way. In fact, the pandemic was the single biggest event that has even normalised online shopping for the post-war boomer generation.
What’s also interesting to see within the finances of many online legal service companies is the high margins. The majority of the costs in setting up online wills is the start-up fixed costs of hiring attorneys to help formulate soundproof will blueprints, software infrastructure, and so on. Beyond this, only some offer on-going legal consultation, which are generally the online law firms, as opposed to the tech startups who are more focused on automation and low costs.
Regardless, these high margins lend themselves to having the money for substantial online marketing campaigns, which will likely be the key to their success. These companies need more than just impressions on social media, they need to create brands that are trusted, and seen as a credible legal solution; somewhere that you can trust being in control of your life savings.
