mortgage website design
"Your website has done more for my company in the last month than my last website did in 5 years!"
Internet Mortgage Lead Conversion - The primary goal of most mortgage websites is to generate a consistent flow of mortgage leads. When mortgage website visitors come to your website and initiate contact with your mortgage company, conversion has occurred. Mortgage Lead Conversion is the third of three steps in Mortgage Lead Generation. Before lead conversion and mortgage lead generation can take place, there first two components of Internet Mortgage Lead Generation must be satisfied:
Step 1) Search Engine Optimized Website - A website that has been optimized for relevant keyword terms being used by the target audience.
Step 2) Internet Marketing Campaign - A campaign that increases visitor traffic and search engine rankings by creating unique content on your website and then generating links to that content to improve search engine rankings.
Once the first and second components of mortgage lead generation have been satisfied, on-page website conversion can take place.
Step 3) Conversion of Website Visitors
Conversion is the ability to convert visitors to your website into mortgage leads. The primary tool employed on a mortgage lead generation website is the Online Application. You have invested money and time building and promoting your brand and website, so it is very important that you have the right tools in order to achieve the highest level of conversion on your website possible.
The hands down most important on-page conversion factor issue facing mortgage companies today on their websites is the quality of their Online Applications. The mortgage website industry has long been steering their customers in the the wrong direction by promoting a "Online Full 1003 Application" or "Full1003" application style. Originally designed to be a tool of efficiency that kept a loan officer from needing to take a loan application over the phone or in person, the Full 1003 style application has long since been proven to be a non-starter as borrowers will not fill it out due to its length and complexity. The Full 1003 is the single biggest obstacle facing mortgage companies in their quest to generate mortgage leads.
The "Full 1003" is bad, very bad. It does not convert visitors to leads and even worse, it will cause your significant harm in the form of lost business and online conversion from visitors you have worked hard to drive to your website. It is important to note that all of your marketing campaigns (direct mail, radio, tv, etc.) are affected by this issue because many visitors to your website come directly from non-internet related marketing activities. If your your mortgage website employs a Full 1003 application form, you simply will not realize any significant or meaningful success in your lead generation efforts until the Full 1003 Application is removed from your website.
Barriers to Conversion Another important aspect of mortgage website lead conversion is providing as few barriers as possible between website visitors and your online applications. Case in point: Most mortgage website providers' websites take visitors to an intermediary page once a visitor clicks on an "Apply Now" link. This intermediary page typically includes 3 to 5 different options for applying such as "Short Form", "Long Form", "Download the Application", etc. Each of these options includes a two or three sentence summary which then requires the visitor to study each option in order to find out which potential way of submitting an application is most appropriate. This is one more hoop the visitor is made to jump through and will only result in a high rate of application abandonment and guaranteed lower conversion. This intermediary page, combined with a Full 1003 is a proven formula to lower or eliminate lead generation on your mortgage website, yet it is the industry standard model. If you already have a website with any of the major mortgage website providers you know this first hand.
What Works? To find out which Online Lead Application does work, you only need to look to the large multi-million dollar companies that generate mortgage leads day in and day out as their core competency such as lowermybills.com, mortgageloan.com, etc. As witnessed on their websites, the 4 page short form application is the form used exclusively by virtually all of these lead generators and top producing mortgage broker and loan officer websites. These companies spend large sums of money driving traffic to their websites, so employing the highest converting online application possible has become an ongoing quest since day one. Through years of extensive A / B testing, the 4 page short form mortgage application has been proven day in and day out as the highest converting application format available.
In addition to the application format, website architecture, layout, presentation, and content also play an important role in generating mortgage leads. More specifically, to maximize conversion a website must be authoritative, must provide ample opportunities to gather leads, must be a resource for visitors with useful information and tools, and must have high converting application forms.
View the High Conversion Short Form Mortgage Application 
