Building Personalized Banker Landing Pages
Background
During our quarterly Hack Weeks, I joined the Rocket Local team, who had a project aimed at enhancing Franchise Bankers' lead intake for mortgage applications. Franchise Banking is a new channel at Rocket Mortgage, combining local presence with national brand support. Unlike our retail channel, Franchise Bankers generate their own leads, prioritizing organic lead generation and allowing them to earn higher commissions. This approach is vital for three reasons: it reduces customer acquisition costs, boasts higher loan conversion rates (second only to team member loans), and aligns with our focus on purchase loans in higher rate environments.
Problems
- Franchise Bankers don't have a way for applicants to be linked to them during the application process, leading borrowers to sometimes be reassigned during the process.
- Borrowers have to wait for the banker to initiate their application, slowing momentum and creating more time pressure during the home buying process.
- We are relying on a vendor to surface our Franchise Banker landing pages, which limits our customization options and reduces visibility for web search.
User Flow
Before constructing our landing pages, we needed to grasp the existing process that clients and bankers experience. Franchise Bankers lacked a dedicated link for borrowers to associate mortgage applications with them. Currently, we employed Social Proof, a vendor, for banker landing pages. Here, borrowers could contact bankers via a form, and real estate agents could refer business through another form. Banker action was necessary in both scenarios. Furthermore, an internal search tool for local bankers was absent within Rocket. This task relied on external searches like Google, risking exposure to competitors. This challenge was deferred during the proof of concept phase, as focus centered on real estate agents with pre-established Franchise Banker connections.
We optimized the user flow to eliminate banker bottlenecks. Our redesigned landing page enables borrowers to initiate applications without banker intervention. This minimizes fallout risk and prevents redirection to our retail channel during application initiation.
Designs
While out of scope for Hack Week, we also needed to design a way for borrowers to get to the banker's landing page through search instead of through a direct link. We created a landing page where borrowers could enter a ZIP Code, city, or state, and a list of local bankers would display with pins on their offices. The borrower would then select a banker and would see the landing page.
After several iterations, we arrived at this design. We aimed to emphasize Justin's local presence by prominently featuring the Rocket Mortgage Local Team logo, his service area, and a matching area code phone number. The main user action is to start their mortgage application, achieved by clicking 'Apply Online.' This link scrolls to the 'Apply Online With Me' section. Users only need to provide loan type, name, and email. This seamlessly leads them to the 'account creation' screen in our mortgage application, bypassing any banker involvement. The secondary action is referral submission, open to real estate agents or others. Clicking the button triggers the Social Proof modal and sends an email to the banker.
Below the application section, we surface the benefits of working with a local mortgage loan officer. And lastly, we surface the 5 most recent reviews for that banker, lifted from their Social Proof page, with the option to see all of the bankers reviews.
User Interviews
We tested our designs with two sets of users and did some testing on features to pursue in a V2. The two rounds of tests were: with real estate agents and borrowers. The outcome was positive, with users finding the page straightforward and user-friendly. A real estate agent even stated, "this is easy for my clients, whether purchasing or refinancing." Users perceived this banker to be located in their community instead of merely 'serving' that community from an office possible in another state. Detailed analyses of both tests were conducted and shared in our internal research repository for knowledge dissemination.
When our project was selected to be presented at the end of Hack Week, I presented our work with the lead engineer on the project. That presentation was seen by the head of the Franchise Banking team, and he reached out to ask if our team could kick out a proof-of-concept in a few weeks. We took on the challenge and about a month later, the landing pages were live for all 160 Franchise Bankers nationwide.
Lessons Learned
I learned that when working with a team that has not worked with designers before, it is important to set expectations for our process. As designers, we need to convey that our process is inherently iterative, and will change from week-to-week or even day-to-day. During one stakeholder update meeting, we showed our current iteration of the landing page and one stakeholder said "this looks different that what we showed you last week. Why did you change it?". We informed him that changes were necessary due to technical constraints that we learned of since we showed our last iteration.
What I'd Do Differently Next Time
Throughout this endeavor, I grasped the significance of comprehensive requirement documentation. While the project's distinctive timeline and adopted process posed challenges, uniformity in working from a shared set of requirements remains paramount. Even in later stages, debates with stakeholders regarding the primary user type (real estate agents or borrowers) persisted. The lesson is clear: a well-defined set of requirements is foundational.
What's Next
Approximately a month following our Hack Week presentation, we introduced our proof of concept. Armed with initial metrics, we're poised to monitor design performance closely. After a month, we'll contrast performance metrics of the old and new solutions, aiding our decision on a potential version 2. Numerous features, initially postponed for the proof-of-concept phase, offer intriguing avenues for exploration, sparking excitement.