Cel Solicitors

Redesigning a law firm's web experience to turn more visitors into claimants — without losing the human side

My role

Lead Web Designer

Timeline

Nov 2023 — Present

Deliverables

Full site redesign
UX & content audit
Claims form redesign
WCAG 2.1 compliance
A/B testing framework

The Brief

CEL Solicitors is one of the UK’s leading consumer law firms, handling everything from fraud and scam recovery to housing disrepair and personal injury claims. Around a month before the website project kicked off, the firm had completed a rebrand — new visual identity, refreshed positioning, new brand direction. That gave us a strong foundation to build on.

But the rebrand wasn’t what triggered the redesign. The real driver was more straightforward than that: the existing site wasn’t serving the people who needed it. Users were landing, not finding what they needed quickly enough, and leaving without taking action. For a firm whose entire purpose is to help people in difficult situations, that gap between intent and outcome mattered — and it sat squarely in the design.

Discovery

Before touching anything in the design, I went back to basics. I dug into the analytics — where users were dropping off, which service pages were pulling traffic without converting, and what scroll depth and heatmap data was telling us about attention and friction.

The picture that came back was consistent: people weren’t confused about what CEL did. They were uncertain about what would happen to them if they clicked. That’s a very specific kind of hesitation, and it’s common when someone is stressed, potentially vulnerable, and making a decision that feels high-stakes. Understanding that shifted how I thought about almost every design decision that followed.

”People weren't confused about what CEL did. They were uncertain about what would happen to them if they clicked — and that distinction changed everything.

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