How To Quickly Develop Landing Pages For Your Mortgage Website
April 15th, 2013 by Wade Schlosser on Financial Lead Generation, Online Lead Generation 
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Your mortgage website is like the brick and mortar building your business occupies.
Just like the doors of your building are the most important component needed to bring people in to do business with you…your mortgage’s website is the landing page that brings visitors in your virtual doors.
Your landing page is what streamlines your leads, and is arguably one the most important parts of your mortgage website.
If you’ve ever wondered how to build effective landing pages that pack a punch, here’s our 7 part process that we follow every time we design landing pages.
- Start with a wireframe – A wireframe is a digital sketch for your landing page. Just like an artist or architect will draw a mockup before moving onto a final form a wire frame is going to give you the ability to visualize what your landing page will look like.We really like using Balsamiq for its straightforward use and adaptability. When building a wireframe figure out where you’d like your forms to go, how long the page is going to be, and how much navigation you’d like to include (we recommend very little, if any.)
- Identify what stays above the fold –Above the fold is the terminology for anything that appears on the top portion of a web page when a visitor arrives on said page.Identifying what goes above the fold is extremely important because many website visitors have short attention spans and must be prompted to go beneath the fold. Therefore it’s important to make sure that the most relevant and captivating information stays above the fold.Don’t waste above the fold space, but don’t over-stuff it either.Bonus Tip - Your headline goes above the fold. But how do you know if your headline is working well? Split test headlines versus one another frequently until you determine a winner.
- Determine the appropriate logos and colors for your website –It’s important to understand that colors carry weighted psychological implications with them.For you, it’s important that you understand that a mortgage website needs to take into account the consumer type that comes to your landing page. Don’t be too bold, and likewise there’s no need to be demure when creating landing pages. Take into account consistency with colors across your entire website as well.Additionally, having an easily identifiable logo that doesn’t overwhelm the website is of key importance. The goal with a landing page is to avoid visual clutter, so refrain from creating an outlandish and distracting logo that turns attention away from the landing pages intended purpose of creating leads.
- Put an expert copywriter on retainer –Your landing page should be constructed of just a few simple things. Bear in mind that sales copy is one of the most important component of your landing page.Copywriters are absolutely critical for making effective use of your landing pages real estate. The reason for this is copywriters know how to engage your prospects emotionally and encourage them to perform the necessary steps of action you need them to take.To find a good copywriter search for “freelance copywriter, ” and the other search terms you’d like to include. If you need some advice on how to choose a copywriter check out this awesome article from problogger.Copywriters aren’t cheap, but they’re worth every penny.
- Give your designers all the information they need –Designers aren’t mind readers, make their job easy for them. Provide them with instruction on how to integrate your CRM software to the landing page as well as he password and login for e-mail software.Have them include Google analytics on every page, as well as including PPC and remarketing scripts if you happen to be running these types of campaigns.
- Be clear with the goals of the page – Is the job of the page to get a form fill, a phone call, to prompt a click through? Establish goals and use A/B split testing to determine what methods are working and what aren’t.
- Only ask for what you need – If the mission of your landing page is to just get an e-mail, and that’s it…don’t ask for anything else. If you need a phone number and a name, don’t ask for an e-mail.The more invasive, and the more distracting the landing page becomes, the weaker it becomes, and the less likely you’ll get the response you’re looking for.
While there isn’t an exact science to creating landing pages, the nature of a good landing page design strategy is to test, test, and test again. Through testing you can begin to find out which form is working best and then push more of your advertising dollars to your best performing pages.
If you’d like to study everything landing pages you can check out Landing Page Handbook, How to Raise Conversions — Data & Design Guidelines. Published by Marketing Sherpa
What have you found is essential to creating landing pages?
Please tell us in the comments below.
