After choosing the perfect business name, selecting the right logo, and launching your mortgage website, you finally have the digital front to your lending business. But is your mortgage site setup for optimum results?
Website effectiveness can be measured by how well it works toward meeting your goal: generating mortgage leads.
Websites that make a killing at generating leads pay attention to three key areas:
- User Friendliness
- Branding / Value
- Search Engine Optimization
Website Features for Digital Mortgage Success
User Friendliness
Easy Navigation
Want to encourage prospects to leave your site? Confuse them and make it difficult to find their way around. If you’d rather they stick around, display navigation buttons in a legible and noticeable font at the top of your page. Consider also posting navigation links at the bottom of your homepage or have a site map.
Security
Many lenders and LO’s have a digital 1003 accessible right on their mortgage website. Use an SSL certificate to reassure visitors that their sensitive information is encrypted and securely transmitted.
Mobile Compatibility
People use smartphones for more than “keeping in touch” –it’s an essential tool. From finding a job to finding a home, user’s demand that their devices, and the websites they visit, keep up with their mobile life with a responsive website.
User Enhanced Forms
Increase your sites effectiveness of generating mortgage leads with user friendly lead capture forms. Ask for just the basics like name, phone number, email, loan program they are interested in, and their estimated credit score, and use drop down options whenever possible.
Branding / Value
Business Info Highly Visible
We cannot stress this element enough: your contact info must be found easily. So easy that your prospect doesn’t feel the need to scroll or scan your website because it’s there –in the most logical and noticeable place.
Also, give them options in how to contact you (email, fill-in form, phone number) and post those options multiple times throughout your website.
Large and Responsive Hero Images
Visual experiences are emotional cues for prospective home buyers. Use large photos in a slider or a single hero image on your homepage to immediately and emotionally reflect your value to your prospect. Don’t forget that mobile compatibility also applies images! Also make sure that you don’t overdo the photos. Adding too many photos can make the page heavy and slow to load.
Content
Relevant content, whether as static articles or weekly blogs, is one of the most effective tools for marketing and soft-selling. Info-rich content builds authority and legitimacy with both prospects and search engines. It also increases your digital footprint.
Read the SEO section below for more info on on how to do this right.
Search Engine Optimized
Best Practices for SEO
There’s quite a bit of misunderstanding about SEO for mortgage sites. It’s not enough to set up a mortgage website, say you’re the best in home loans with the lowest rates and repeat your business name 4x throughout your web page.
Instead, lending businesses of all sizes benefit the most by focusing on niches. Mortgage niches include loan products (such as FHA, VA), locations you serve (cities, zip codes), a target group of buyers (first-time homebuyers), and specific financial situations (self-employed, low credit score).
Semantic HTML
Semantic HTML refers to code that reinforces the structural meaning of the content. For example, heading tags such as H1, H2, H3, and so on, communicate a hierarchy of importance. When a search engine crawls over a site, it sifts through the code to pick up on the various tags, class names, and ids to understand the site and index it correctly.
As an additional bonus, semantic HTML communicates meaning visually. In this post, for example, font in bold, italic, and increased size visually reflects the structure of the content — reinforcing the ideas.
How well is your mortgage website working for your lending business?
See room for improvement?
Hi LenderHomePage,
I would like to improve my web site using your current advancements. I have been using LenderHome page web site for many ywars and would like to improve visibility and online loan application and docs uoload and download. Please call me with suggestions or how can you help increase our exposure to buyers and Real Estate Agents.
Best Regards,
Anil Kumar
Xpress Financial dba Xpress Lending
Cell: 908-463-5625 E-mail: anil@xpresslending.com
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