More than a lead generator: Making your website work for you

Do you want your website to help you elevate your business? "Sure," you say, that's why you created one, right? Of course you've advertised your Web address on every piece of literature and marketing item that goes out-brochures, business cards, local newspaper ads – and it's mentioned on your outgoing voicemail message. But those tactics won't help you capture potential customers surfing the Web.

More than 84 percent of online Americans use search engines (e.g. Google.com or Yahoo.com) to find information they need, according to a recent survey of 1,399 Internet users by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That translates into more than 107 million people and there are likely hundreds – even thousands – of your target customers using those search engines to find a mortgage broker.

You also need to think one step ahead. Everyone wants their website to be found and visited by many prospective leads, but does it help them decide to do business with you, and does it help you do business with them? Let's tackle the search engine issue first.

Finding you
Think of it this way: Unlike the television and print advertising which may simply reinforce your message or your company's name, people who use search engines know what they're looking for, but they don't necessarily know where or how to find it. Search engines help them by finding the most relevant pages that match their search words. To make sure your site pops up in your target customers' search results, you'll want to optimize your website.

For each page of your website, you should focus on a key phrase. Incorporate that key phrase into the page's title, keywords and content. The page title will be the first thing that a search engine displays on a search return. Search engine computers, known as "spiders", read each individual page and rank them based, in part, on the frequency a key phrase appears in the page title and content. As you optimize your website, you'll want to make sure each page has its own title, whether it's "refinancing options" or "The lowest mortgage rates in Poughkeepsie."

In addition to your website's title, the content page you're optimizing needs to contain the exact key phrase. Search engines don't look at sites, they look at pages, and every page on the Internet is considered its own entity. The tricky part when developing keyword-rich text is trying to please two very important groups-your customers and the search engine spiders. Your page must be written cleverly as to deliver your key phrases often. However, repeating the phrase too many times will sound redundant and visitors may move on to another site. a la mode provides Mortgage XSite users with more than 60 pre-written content pages, allowing users to simply edit these pages to incorporate their own important phrases instead of writing new content.

Just as it was in high school, popularity is everything when it comes to search engines. To get "in" with these "spiders" you need to get your web address listed on other websites that are related to you. Think of these "linking campaigns" as another form of networking. You want to get to know sites that will complement yours – local REALTOR®, mortgage broker or consumer advocate association sites, city chamber of commerce sites or local home builder websites. In addition, writing an article (even a "top 10" list) that gets published on a news-oriented site along with your web address can also help boost your popularity.

Choosing you
While optimizing tactics may increase awareness and traffic to your website, it also reinforces the notion that the Web still "observes gravity" and there aren't magical new laws will make people flock to your site just because it's in a search engine. It's like publishing your phone number in the yellow pages and expecting new customers to immediately start calling you.

The mortgage process can be confusing and intimidating to many people (see "More people baffled by mortgage apps," top right-hand side), so they'll naturally gravitate toward a broker or loan officer who can make their lives and the daunting loan process easier.

As a result, your website must anticipate a potential home buyer's questions and concerns, and answer them clearly and concisely. Having lots of informative content (such as the pre-written pages included with every Mortgage XSite) keeps people on your site longer, and conveys the important impression that you know what they want and need. Online 1003 forms that are intuitive, easy and can be "paused" and completed later are a great feature – lessening the stress of all that mortgage "paperwork."

Mortgage calculators and related tools are essential – once you've educated them about how the process works, what they need and want and how you can give it to them, you don't want them having to go elsewhere to figure out what they can afford and what program might be best for them. You want them to consult you, and make use of your resources.

Finally, you want them to contact you, and once they do, you want a website that will be a familiar, functional place where you can transact business together. With an XSite you can customize lead generation pop-ups on any page to capture online prospect information so they can get to them while they are still a hot lead. Then, customers can download fax cover pages, fax you documents and have them converted to electronic files for easier, more secure storage. They can have instant updates on where they are in the process – there's a lot of hand-holding necessary on a mortgage, and customers like being up to date on what steps have been completed with what result and what's next.

Getting down to business
In order for your website to truly work for you, you need to think of it as more than just a lead generator – it should act as the layer between you and your client base on every aspect of initiating and closing a loan. If your website educates your customers and keeps them up-to-date on the status of their loan, you'll be able to add one of the most effective lead generators to your bag of tricks: hundreds of satisfied customers.