Today, your target audience is expecting a seamless digital experience to make the home buying process easier. And that experience all begins with your mortgage broker website.

The problem is, who in your company has time to spend redesigning and optimizing your website to bring in new leads?

Implementing these mortgage marketing strategies will require considerable time and effort that you may not have the time or interest to learn all by yourself. If that’s the case, reach out to schedule a call with us to learn how we can help your company.

The best mortgage broker websites keep lead generation in mind

Don’t go overboard with design features thinking you need to cram a lot of stuff on your website. Keep your design simple and you’ll see an increase in conversion rates.

Trust me.

If your main goal is redesigning your website is to generate more leads, which I think it is, then don’t add unnecessary junk that will distract them from filling out the contact form!

Pop-up ads and scrolling banner images do nothing to entice your readers to stay on your website.

If anything, it will scare them away and slow down the loading time of your website — no good! 

You have to remember that website design isn’t how it looks. It’s how it works.  

Of course you want a stylish, professional sheen to your website. It’s necessary to impress your audience and look modern. But don’t confuse that with website design.

Keep your user experience and user interface (UI/UX) simple. 

Include these essential features for a successful mortgage broker website

Today’s website builders such as WordPress make it pretty easy to build a mortgage website from scratch. You no longer need to learn how to code. Just pick a theme and start adding features.

Take a look below to make sure you add these important elements to your website.

Impress your audience with branding and style

What’s your company’s logo looking like these days? Does it look like it was designed in 1989? If so, it might need a touch-up.

We do this sort of thing a lot. Not redesigning a totally new logo, but making small alterations to bring your company’s branding into the 21st century.

In addition to updating a logo, you may want to consider doing a rebranding exercise. This is a fun way to figure out your company’s values and a visual way to communicate them.

Values can be conveyed through specific typefaces and the choice of color used throughout your website and printed marketing materials. 

It might be worth looking into color psychology to determine what colors appeal to your company’s brand.

Display your most important information “above the fold”

Above the fold is an old newspaper term.

It means to put the most relevant information at the very top of the page — this way your readers don’t need to scroll at all to get the info they need.

For this reason, the best websites have site navigation at the top of the page, and usually a phone number.

Let’s look at the other important elements you need above the fold

Mission statement

Your website needs to have its mission statement large and in charge at the very top of the website. 

• “Home loans for you”
• “A specialized home loan experience for you”
• “Home loans just got easier for you”

Your succinct mission statement will be the first thing your audience reads. It needs to reassure them they’re on the right website to solve their problems.

If you don’t have a mission statement, you risk confusing the reader and they’ll bounce immediately off your website. 

“What does this company do exactly?” That’s a question no one should ask when going to your website.

Services

Your services as a broker are your main product, so feature them at the very top of your website’s site navigation.

Consider using a dropdown menu so that users can see everything you have to offer and find what fits their needs. 

Don’t be afraid of posting redundant information in your sidebar and below the fold. Giving your readers a couple of different options for finding the information can be useful.

Branch locations

If your company has multiple locations, you don’t want to list all of your addresses at the top of the page.

Instead, create a “Branches” drop-down menu at the top of your site navigation. 

Then your reader can select their branch and go to that location’s specific page with contact info, such as a phone number, fax number, and address.

Your branch locations can also be added individually in the footer of the website.

Bio pages

Would you want to submit your contact info to a nameless, faceless entity? Didn’t think so.

This is why we highly recommend creating bio pages for each of your team members that assist clients, whether they’re a loan officer or the actual mortgage lenders.

This is a great SEO tactic. When people Google one of your loan officers, your website should be in the top results.

Bio pages are also a great way to showcase your lenders’ NMLS license for more social proof.

Phone number

Most websites these days follow a universal pattern of putting a phone number at the top right of the corner. People are accustomed to it, so put this important info where people know where to look for it.

Chat boxes and messengers

Technically, these chat boxes are at the bottom of the page, but they will appear above the fold when your user lands on your website.

You know what I’m talking about? Those little chat boxes that pop-up and say “We’re happy to chat! Let us know if you have any questions.”

It also helps to have a dedicated employee who can spend time monitoring the chat.

Questionnaires, progressive contact forms, and lead paths

Since your goal is to generate leads, you’ll need to put contact forms throughout your website. 

You’ll see most websites have those generic contact forms on the right side of the page. They might have a few lines for people to fill out their name, email address, and a brief description of their inquiry.

These forms are okay, but not great. 

Instead, you should be using a progressive style form. These are questionnaires that have a pop-up bubble that just asks one simple question at a time. 

The best part is they don’t look like forms! They’re just buttons that might say “Home Finance” or “Home Purchase.” Once your reader clicks on it, a pop-up questionnaire appears on the screen.

And these forms are smart too. They will automatically update their questions based on answers submitted, so you don’t turn your lead off before they fill out the form!

Progressive style forms work better. It’s as simple as that. They’re also mobile-responsive too, so people on their phones (half of your audience!) can easily submit their info.

Display less important information “below the fold”

Below the fold of a website you’ll find additional information that’s important, but more of secondary importance. Think of blog posts, landing pages, testimonials, and reviews. The stuff people read after they’ve read above the fold.

Landing pages for loan products

As I mentioned before, your loan products should be featured at the top of the website in the site’s navigation.

But because scrolling is such an essential part of surfing the web, you should also put your landing pages for each product type (FHA Loan, VA Loan, etc) below the fold.

Consider using high-quality stock images from Pexels or Unsplash (they’re both free to use) as thumbnails for each of these landing pages.

It’s been shown that the more landing pages you have for your products, the longer your reader will stay engaged with your website.

Blog posts

Blogs are absolutely essential for attracting your audience to your website. But once they’re on your website, you just want people to fill out a form.

For this reason, highlighting your blogs above the fold isn’t as important as displaying your loan products and contact info.

Like landing pages for your products, you can also highlight recent blog posts with thumbnail images to attract your readers’ attention to relevant blog posts that are relevant to them.

User reviews and testimonials

Every mortgage lender’s website needs user reviews and testimonials for social proof. 

There are a couple of reasons to do this:

1. It shows your company is legitimate and in business
2. When people Google reviews of your company, hopefully, your website will appear in the search results above third-party review sites (such as Yelp, etc.)

FAQs

Frequently asked questions are a great SEO tool. They’re all question-based texts such as “How do I get my first mortgage?” or “What are the credit requirements for a mortgage?”

Adding FAQs is also like a shortcut to get your website more easily noticed by Google’s index, which may improve your website’s chances of getting on the first page of Google’s search engine results page (SERP).

It’s also just really helpful for your audience too.

Information that needs constant upkeep

Here’s a fact: Google prefers to show regularly updated websites in their search results over static websites.

But because most of your web pages don’t need to be updated regularly (Contact, homepage, bios, etc.) you’ll need to find a way to add fresh new content to your website.

This is where SEO and mortgage content marketing come in.

SEO

SEO is a magic term that means “make my website rank really high in Google searches.”

How is this done? Through hundreds of factors, but mainly through adding essential keywords throughout your website.

Make sure your headers, blog posts, and even the embedded video and images on your website are optimized for the keywords you’re targeting.

But remember — you can’t type “home loans” five hundred times on your home page. Google will punish you for that! 

The legitimate way to add “home loans” to your website is by writing five hundred blogs instead! (Of course, this is done incrementally, publishing a few articles every week.)

Content marketing

Your website’s blog is the primary traffic generator.

Your blogs provide answers to your audience’s Google searches.

That’s how you will get your website discovered by your target audience.

No blog = no answer = no traffic. It’s as simple as that. 

People find most websites through a discovery process. They’ll search into Google “how to buy my first home.”

Your competitors are already blogging because it works. So should you be blogging on your mortgage website? Yes! How else are you going to bring traffic to your website?

Content can also include videos, ebooks, email newsletters, and more.

PPC Ads

There’s another way to bring traffic to your website — paid online ads.

PPC ads are effective, especially when combined with content marketing.

PPC ads can give you a short-term boost, while content marketing gives you a long-term mortgage marketing strategy. Remember, PPC ads only run as long as you pay for them. But content is forever!

Hire Kaleidico to build your mortgage broker website

Kaleidico is a full-service marketing agency specializing in website design, content marketing, and lead generation for the mortgage industry.

At Kaleidico, we understand the mortgage business and leverage that information to create websites and content that will convert your visitors into new customers.

Are you ready to start generating more leads? It all starts with a quick meeting that we call a Discovery session. 

Schedule your free Discovery session call with us today and learn how we can help your business get more customers.