Work / Harmon & Vale

Harmon & Vale

A 40 year old law firm with a website that couldn't close a door, let alone a client. Their partners blamed the market. We blamed the homepage.

Conversion Copywriting UI/UX Landing Page Concept Project
+0% qualified consultations in 60 days
Harmon & Vale redesigned website shown on MacBook Pro and iPhone
Harmon & Vale
Business litigation · Chicago
4 weeks
Teardown to launch
Landing page
+ intake flow rebuild
+134%
Qualified consultations
01 / The Problem

A beautiful website.
Zero leads from it.

They'd invested heavily in a site that read like it was written by a committee who'd never met a client. Polished. Expensively useless.

01
The homepage was a vanity mirror.
Eight paragraphs about "legacy of excellence." Zero mention of what a client gets. Hero image: a stock gavel.
02
The CTA was buried on page four.
No phone above the fold. An 11-field contact form, including fax number.
03
160+ case wins appeared nowhere on the homepage.
Their "Awards" page had three items, listed in Times New Roman.
04
63% of traffic was mobile. The site had horizontal scroll.
A hamburger menu with 14 items. Key content cut off on every screen size below desktop.

"We don't need a new website we need more referrals." We asked what a prospect sees when they Google the firm after a referral. He went quiet.

— From our initial teardown call

02 / Before & After
Harmon & Vale redesigned website Harmon & Vale original website Before After

Fig. 02 — Drag to compare · Old site vs. Vellumwire redesign

03 / The Work

Four weeks. Three bets.

We didn't redesign the whole site. We identified the three highest-leverage changes and executed them surgically.

01
Week 1 — Kill the brochure

Rewrote every word above the fold.

Replaced 340 words of institutional copy with a 12-word headline and a proof bar. Credibility in 3 seconds not 3 pages.

02
Week 2–3 — Rebuild the intake

Replaced the 11-field form with a 2-step qualifier.

Step 1: select issue type. Step 2: name + email + one sentence. Click-to-call on every page. Tripled after-hours enquiries.

03
Week 3–4 — Prove everything

Social proof that doesn't look like marketing.

Case results as data. Named testimonials from CFOs. Media mentions inline, not on a page nobody visits. Every proof point near a CTA.

Harmon & Vale website on MacBook showing city skyline hero and statistics cards

Fig. 03 — Hero section with cinematic office photography and proof bar

04 / The Results

The website started closing.

+0%
Qualified consultations
11/mo → 26/mo
−0%
Bounce rate
78% → 22%
Form completion
2-step vs. 11-field
Mobile conversion
0s
Avg. time on page
0%
Step-1 → Step-2
$0
Ad spend

"We'd worked with three different agencies over five years. Vellumwire rebuilt one page and outperformed all of them in two months."

— Managing Partner · Harmon & Vale

Key Insight

The website isn't about you. It's the last mile between a referral and a signed engagement letter.

Every professional services firm is sitting on decades of proof they've never used. Put it where the decision is being made.

Your website next

Same problem?
Let's talk.

15-minute teardown. We tell you exactly where the leads are leaking. Nothing to fix? We'll say so.

Next case study

Selo H

A government certification platform drowning in bureaucratic copy. We rebuilt it from scratch — teardown to launch in 4 weeks.

+65% form submissions
Selo H rebuilt website