Rocket Mortgage / Rocket Local / March 2024
Personalized Banker Landing Pages
Franchise bankers relied on vendor-hosted landing pages with limited customization and no way to directly link borrowers to their application pipeline. What started as a Hack Week innovation became a 4-week sprint to deploy personalized landing pages to 160+ franchise bankers nationwide. The product remains live today, serving as the distribution channel for hundreds of Rocket Local loan officers and 5,600+ realtor partners—both through direct link sharing and the rocketmortgage.com/local-loan-officers search interface.
Details
Solo designer leading a rapid 4-week sprint that shipped personalized landing pages to 160+ franchise bankers—a product generating 3,000 qualified leads monthly and $120M in projected annual closing volume.
Challenge
Franchise bankers couldn't link borrowers directly to their application pipeline, borrowers had to wait for banker action to start applications, and limited customization options meant visibility suffered in web search.
Solution
Designed personalized landing pages hosted on Rocket's platform that allowed direct application starts, enabled banker customization, and improved web visibility for local searches—creating a scalable distribution channel for franchise banking.
Impact
Annual loan volume
from landing pages
Qualified leads generated
monthly from landing pages
300
Active personalized
landing pages live nationwide
Franchise bankers are a unique segment: they combine Rocket's national brand with local presence and generate their own leads, earning higher commissions than retail loan officers.
Unlike retail loan officers who work directly in Rocket's systems, franchise bankers relied on vendor-hosted landing pages. These pages offered limited customization and restricted visibility in search results. More critically, there was no direct link from the banker's page into Rocket's application flow.
When a borrower wanted to apply, they had to fill out a contact form and wait for the banker to manually initiate the application. This created multiple problems: momentum loss at the high-intent moment, potential for borrower reassignment, and limited control for bankers over their online presence.
The vendor relationship also limited how bankers could customize their pages. They couldn't add personal photos, testimonials, or local market information—the things that help them stand out in local searches and build trust with potential borrowers.
The vendor-hosted model created three critical problems: borrowers couldn't link directly to their banker's application, application initiation required banker action, and limited customization reduced web visibility.
Problem 1: No Direct Application Link Franchise bankers lacked a dedicated URL that borrowers could use to start an application while staying linked to that specific banker. Borrowers had to contact the banker via form first, creating an extra step and abandonment risk.
Problem 2: Delayed Application Start When a borrower contacted a banker through the landing page form, the banker had to manually initiate the application. This delay created momentum loss during the high-intent moment when the borrower wanted to start the process immediately.
Problem 3: Limited Customization & Visibility Relying on a vendor for landing page hosting meant limited customization options and reduced control over SEO and brand presentation. Bankers couldn't personalize their pages with photos, testimonials, or local market information—limiting their ability to stand out in local searches and build trust with potential borrowers.
During Hack Week, I designed a solution that allowed borrowers to start applications directly from a banker's personalized landing page while staying linked to that specific banker throughout the process.
The concept was straightforward: build personalized landing pages on Rocket's platform instead of relying on a vendor. This gave bankers full customization control while enabling direct application starts.
I designed landing pages that showed:
Banker's name, photo, and local credentials
Direct "Apply Now" button that starts the application pre-linked to that banker
Local market information and testimonials
Contact options (call, text, email)
Trust signals (Rocket branding, rates, process steps)
The Hack Week presentation was approved by leadership. I was asked to deliver a production-ready proof-of-concept in 4 weeks to scale to all franchise bankers nationally—a compressed timeline that required tight collaboration with engineering and product.
I designed two key surfaces: personalized banker landing pages and a search interface for borrowers to find local bankers by name, location, or specialty.
Banker Landing Pages Each banker gets a personalized page with their name, photo, and locally-relevant information. The page features a prominent "Apply Now" button that starts the application pre-linked to that banker. Bankers can share their personal link directly with realtor partners and borrowers, or borrowers can discover them through the search interface.
Banker Search Borrowers can search for bankers by name, location, or specialty (first-time home buyer, investment property, etc.) at rocketmortgage.com/local-loan-officers. The search interface shows banker profiles with ratings and specialties, helping borrowers find the right local match without needing a direct referral.
Both surfaces were designed for speed and clarity. Bankers needed simple, fast experiences to maintain momentum during the home buying process, whether distributing their personal link or being discovered through search. The dual distribution model—direct sharing OR search discovery—gave bankers flexibility in how they use the product.
After Hack Week approval, I conducted user interviews with real estate agents and borrowers to validate the design before the production build.
Real estate agents loved the concept—they could now refer borrowers directly to a banker's page with a simple link, and borrowers could start applications immediately without waiting for banker action.
Borrowers appreciated the ability to start applications on their own timeline while knowing they were connected to a specific banker. The personalization (banker photo, local info) made it feel more trustworthy than generic vendor pages.
All feedback was positive and aligned with our hypothesis: removing friction and enabling direct application starts would improve the borrower experience and increase conversion. Participants understood the value proposition immediately and saw clear use cases for sharing with their own networks.
The 4-week sprint delivered a production-ready proof-of-concept deployed to 160+ franchise bankers. The product has since scaled to generate 3,000 leads monthly with adoption across 5,600+ realtor partners.
What started as a Hack Week innovation became a foundational distribution channel for Rocket Local. The personalized landing pages are now actively used by franchise bankers either sending their personal link directly to realtor partners or having borrowers discover them through the search interface.
Product Performance (16+ months live):
3,000 qualified leads generated monthly from landing pages
54,000 monthly page views across 300 banker pages
10 average referral leads per banker page monthly
$120M projected annual closing volume from landing page referrals
"I send this link to my realtor partners and they send it to the clients they are working with who are looking to buy so they can start the pre-approval process with me."
These metrics demonstrate product-market fit. Bankers actively share their personalized pages with their realtor network, creating a self-sustaining distribution channel. The landing pages have become the primary way franchise bankers receive referrals.
The original design has been continuously maintained and updated to Rocket's current design system as the platform has evolved. The foundational product structure and user flows remain intact, demonstrating the durability of the original design approach. This shows the power of rapid prototyping and Hack Week innovation—taking an idea from presentation to nationwide scale in 4 weeks, with a product that's generating $120M+ in annual volume 16+ months later.