Mortgage broker landing page examples

Most broker websites have a homepage, an about page, a services page and a contact page. That set is fine for someone who already knows your name and terrible for someone arriving from a search or an advert with one specific worry.

A landing page is the page you build for one of those worries. It exists to be the best answer on the internet to a narrow question, and to make the next step obvious to the one kind of person who asked it. Below are four archetypes worth building, described in enough detail to copy, followed by what they have in common.

The local first-time buyer page

Aimed at someone who has been looking at flats for a month, has a deposit that is nearly enough, and does not know what a broker does.

Open by naming them and the place: buying your first home in Sheffield. Then, before anything about your firm, lay out the actual sequence of events from saving to keys, with rough timings and who does what. That sequence is the reason the page ranks and the reason people stay on it.

Fold in the things only a local adviser knows: which shared ownership schemes operate nearby, what the newer developments in the city are like for lending purposes, how gifted deposits from parents are normally evidenced. Then explain your fee, plainly, in the same tone.

The action at the end should be low commitment. A first-time buyer is often not ready to be advised, and a page that only offers a full appointment loses them.

The self-employed and company director page

Aimed at somebody who has been told, usually wrongly, that they will struggle.

This page should be structured around the different ways income is assessed: sole trader, partnership, limited company where you take salary and dividends, limited company where profit is retained, contractor on a day rate. Explain what documents each usually needs and how many years lenders typically look at, without claiming that any particular lender will do any particular thing.

Reassurance here comes from precision, not from adjectives. A reader who recognises their own accounting arrangement described accurately will assume you have seen dozens like it.

Anticipate the questions they arrive with. What if my last year was worse than the year before. What if I have only been trading eighteen months. What if my accountant has been minimising my profit for tax reasons.

The credit history page

Aimed at someone who is embarrassed and expecting to be judged. Tone does more work on this page than structure.

Set out what the different marks actually mean in lending terms: a missed payment, a default, a county court judgment, a debt management plan, a discharged bankruptcy. Be honest about the fact that some situations mean waiting rather than applying, and that some mean a higher rate. A page that promises everyone can be helped will be disbelieved by exactly the audience it is aimed at, and it would not meet the standard that any promotion of a regulated service must be fair, balanced and not overstated.

Say what you need to see before you can be useful, which is usually a copy of their credit file, and tell them how to get one.

The remortgage and product transfer page

Aimed at someone whose fixed rate ends in a few months and who is deciding whether to just take what their existing lender is offering.

This page is a comparison, so structure it as one. What a product transfer involves, what a full remortgage involves, the situations where staying put is genuinely sensible, the situations where it is not, and what changes the answer: raising money, a change in circumstances, early repayment charges, a property whose value has moved.

Be willing to say that some readers should stay with their lender. It costs you a few enquiries and it is the reason the ones you get will trust you.

What all four pages share

• One audience. If you can imagine two very different readers on the page, split it into two pages.
• A headline that names the situation rather than the firm.
• Substance before persuasion. The first screenful should be useful, not a form.
• A named human being with a photograph and a qualification, because the reader is choosing a person.
• Proof that fits the page. A review from a contractor belongs on the self-employed page and nowhere else.
• Fees stated, in words, in a way that matches your terms of business exactly.
• The next step repeated two or three times down the page, not just at the bottom.
• Fast loading and a layout that works one-handed on a phone, which is where most of these readers are.
• Your regulatory status and firm details visible, as they must be on any page promoting your services.

What to leave off

Sliders that quote a borrowing figure without a fact-find. Stock photography of a family in a kitchen. A list of every lender logo you can access. Countdown timers. Claims about being the best in your county. Long paragraphs about the firm's founding. A form asking for fourteen fields before anyone has agreed to talk to you.

Judging whether a page works without much traffic

A small firm will not have the volume to test two versions properly, and pretending otherwise leads to confident conclusions drawn from nine visits.

Do something cruder and more reliable. Watch three people who match the audience read the page while you say nothing. Note where they scroll back, what they read twice, and where they reach for the wrong thing. Then ask what they would do next and whether they would ring you.

Beyond that, keep two simple numbers per page over a quarter: how many people arrived, and how many enquiries mentioned the situation the page is about. If the second number is zero after a few hundred visits, the problem is usually that the page is answering a question the reader did not have.