4 Steps to Enhance Your Mortgage Website for Maximum ROI

In the digital age, your mortgage lending operation absolutely needs a website. Whether you’re part of a team at a financial institution like a bank or credit union or you work on your own as a mortgage broker, a strong online presence matters. It helps potential borrowers find you, and it gives you a way to differentiate yourself or your company from other competitors in the game.

And since the biggest lenders absolutely have websites, your own plays a big role in leveling the playing field. 

Because developing your site often costs thousands of dollars — and hosting it each year is usually in the hundreds of dollars — your site is an investment. You want to see a return on that investment, of course. Fortunately, taking certain steps can help you improve your site and see greater ROI. 

Because our team has years of experience helping mortgage lenders, brokers, and credit unions do more with their websites, we know what works. Here are four steps our experts recommend to boost ROI on your mortgage website. 

#1: Leverage good website design

Your website needs to attract borrowers and convince them to work with you. Good design goes a long way here. 

That might feel a little nebulous, but we have some actionable tips to improve your site’s design and performance. Start by focusing on:

• Easy navigation: Think through a user’s experience when they visit your site. Does your top navigation menu make it easy to see which loan products you offer? Does it make it simple for site visitors to find the information they’re probably seeking, like live rates or a personalized quote? If you’re not sure how your site will perform in the hands of someone who doesn’t have mortgage expertise, ask a few friends or family members to try it out. Watch what they do when they first land on your homepage. If everyone seems to click to the same page, for example, that’s a big indicator you should focus your design improvement energy on that page. 
• Hero section: The hero section is the first thing people see when they visit a webpage. A lot of mortgage institutions make this a large image with a tagline and a call-to-action button on it (e.g., “Get a Quote”). This is your best chance to capture a website visitor’s attention and make it clear what you can offer, so don’t miss it. 
• Clear calls to action: It’s all well and good to have someone visit your website. But that doesn’t deliver much ROI if they just click around for a bit, then leave. Make sure your site has clear calls to action, meaning you’re giving people obvious next steps and showing them how to take them. Tools like a lead workflow can walk them through the process to get a tailored quote, for example. This way, you get data from this potential lead and they get the information they want, too. 
• Apply search engine optimization: Your website can be stunning and highly functional, but if users never find it, it doesn’t benefit you much. To help your website rank higher on Google and other search engines, use SEO (search engine optimization). We have a guide on ranking for the keyword “mortgage rates” to get you started. This way, when someone searches for “mortgage rates” — particularly if they’re in an area near you — your website is more likely to pop up. 

This is just a quick overview. We have a detailed guide on good mortgage website design complete with lots of examples so you can learn more. 

#2: Provide live rates 

If someone is on the internet researching their mortgage options, they almost always want to know one thing: what interest rate will I get?

The big players in the game are providing live rates on their site. If you’re not, you could lose potential leads. They could think you either aren’t up on the current rate environment or don’t care enough about serving your clients to put that information where it’s readily available. 

On the other hand, having live rates on your website helps you keep pace with national lenders, and it may even help you beat out the local competition.

Fortunately, adding rates and keeping them updated can be easy. We offer a rate tool that syncs with your product pricing engine (PPE) to maintain the most up-to-date rates on your site without any extra work from your team. 

#3: Deploy rate comparison tables

Having live rates on your site is an excellent step toward getting more ROI from your online presence. But why stop there? You can leverage those rates to create personalized rate comparison tables for each potential borrower. This tailors their online experience to them, something that’s been proven to drive engagement with your site.  

Plus, adding this tool to your website helps your team generate insights into lead behavior. We track how users engage with their personalized rate dashboard. This way, your team can see which leads are most engaged and direct their efforts accordingly. 

#4: Sign up for lead providers

Your website doesn’t have to (read: shouldn’t) live in a silo. You can plug it into some of the most effective mortgage lead generation tools available today. Explore adding your rates to sites like Bankrate, LendingTree, and other lead generators. 

These websites provide consumers with valuable information about the home lending process paired with rate comparison opportunities. If someone clicks on your rates from a Bankrate table, for example, it directs them back to your website. This drives more traffic to you — specifically, high-intent traffic from people who are actively exploring getting a mortgage. 

These four steps help mortgage brokers, lenders, and credit unions amp up the benefit they get from their websites. You’ve already invested money in designing it and hosting your site, and these actions help you see better ROI on those dollars spent. 

That said, these are general tips. Different lending institutions benefit from directing their website improvement efforts in different areas. Our team has extensive experience supporting successful mortgage websites, and we’ve seen what works. For site improvement recommendations tailored to your specific lending operation, book some time with our team today.