May 30th, 2018

After all the work you’ve put into your website, it can be difficult to decide when to redesign it.  Ultimately, there comes a time when it needs some Spring cleaning and you may need to start from scratch.  In order to redesign a website, commitment is key. It takes time, energy, and patience.  Your website is the virtual face of the loan officer and mortgage lender at hand. This is what your potential borrowers are seeing when they research you.   All in all, no matter how you plan to use your site, it must remain updated and user-friendly. If you’re unsure whether or not your site needs some refreshing or redesigning, keep a look out for some of these signs.

Your Website Doesn’t Have Mobile Capabilities

In this day in age, users are primarily on their smartphones when online.  According to Stone Temple, 63 percent of users visit websites from a mobile device rather than a desktop. This conclusion is based on an online study in 2017 of 2 trillion visits.  If the content on your site does not transfer easily onto a mobile device then it is probably time for a redesign of your website.  If over half of users are searching while on the go, it’s crucial that your website gives them no problems. Traffic will decrease if other sites are more accessible and user-friendly on their phones.  Now you can check to see if your website is mobile friendly by entering your URL into Google’s mobile-friendly testing site.

Your SEO Rankings Are Low

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is how search engines such as google determine the order in which your results come up when you search for something.  Of course, it is always a competition for businesses to get a higher ranking on the list so that the user sees them first. Let’s be honest, we rarely go passed the first page of our search results.  We go down the list until we find what we need. The use of select keywords and readability is important in SEO, ensuring the website is user-friendly.  The length of much of your content is also a large contributor.  Users want to be educated and won’t be satisfied with basic information. When SEO rankings are low, it’s time to redesign the website.

You Don’t Have An Easy Navigation System

Users today want something that is quick, easy, and to the point.  They do not want to spend more than a few seconds trying to find what they are looking for.  At this point they will probably move on to the next website in their search results. Information has to be at the user’s hands. Users will search elsewhere if they don’t find what they are looking for right away.  People want quick and easy. This is another reason that point-of-sale applications are so successful.  There’s no reason to wait weeks upon weeks to be approved for a mortgage.  Updating and redesigning websites sometimes require new applications such as START that can get them approved almost instantly.

Overall, having an updated website is crucial in the success of a company, especially in terms of the mortgage industry.  While redesigning a website is time consuming to say the least, the mortgage industry is rapidly expanding and our websites have to keep up.  The most important thing to keep in mind is the happiness of our clients and potential customers. This will ultimately lead to the success of a loan officer and their company.