Mortgage Broker

Start from the question every visitor is already asking: why not just go to my bank?

Most people who land on a broker's website already have a bank. Many of them have already looked at that bank's mortgage page, and some have already been turned down by it. Your site is not introducing the idea of a mortgage. It is arguing for a middleman, and the visitor is quietly suspicious of middlemen.

So the homepage has to answer that question in plain words, near the top, before it does anything else. Not "we find you the best deal," which every broker says and nobody believes, but the specific mechanics of what you do that a single lender cannot: you can compare across a panel of lenders, you know which lenders are flexible on which kinds of income or credit history, you package the application so it is less likely to stall, and you chase it through underwriting so the borrower does not have to. If you have access to lenders or products that are not offered directly to the public, say so, as long as it is true for your business.

The second thing the homepage needs is a fast route for people who already know why they are there. Someone who has had an offer accepted on a house and needs a decision in principle by Friday does not want to read your philosophy. Give them a clearly visible "book a call" or "start here" button, and a phone number that is tappable on a phone, in the first screen.

Organise the site by the borrower's situation, not your product list

Lenders organise by product: fixed, tracker, variable, interest-only. Borrowers do not think that way. They think in terms of what is happening in their life, and each situation comes with its own deadline, its own anxiety and its own set of questions. Building your main navigation around those situations is the single structural choice that most separates a useful broker site from a generic one.

The situations most brokers will recognise:

• Buying for the first time. Often arriving months before they are ready, worried about deposits, credit scores and how much they can borrow. They need education and reassurance, and they are the most likely to read long pages.
• Moving home. Usually arriving with a sale and a purchase running at once, plus an existing mortgage that may or may not be portable. They need speed and someone to coordinate.
• Remortgaging or renewing. Driven by a date: the current deal is ending. The page should talk about how early you can start looking and what happens if they do nothing.
• Self-employed, contractors, recent job changes, or complicated income. Often already declined somewhere. This group is where brokers earn their keep, and the page should say plainly that this is normal work for you, not a favour.
• Credit problems. Missed payments, defaults, past insolvency. These visitors are embarrassed, and the tone of this page matters more than anything on it.
• Property investors and landlords. A more confident, numbers-focused audience who want to know you understand rental income calculations and portfolio lending.

Only list the situations you genuinely handle. If you do not do commercial or bridging finance, leave it out. A page you cannot back up will cost you more trust than it gains.

Each situation page should follow roughly the same internal logic: describe the situation in the borrower's own terms, explain what usually makes it difficult, explain what you do about that, say what they will need to have ready, and end with a way to talk to you. That last part is not optional. A situation page with no way to act on it is a dead end for someone who has just recognised themselves in it.

Say how you are paid before anyone has to ask

Fee confusion is one of the main reasons people hesitate to contact a broker. Some assume you are expensive. Some assume you are free and are then surprised. Some suspect that if lenders pay you, you will steer them towards whichever lender pays most.

Put a page, or at least a clearly labelled section, called something like "How we're paid" and explain it honestly. If you charge a fee, say when it is charged (on application, on offer, on completion) and whether it is refundable. If you are paid by lender commission, say so, and explain how you make sure that does not decide which lender you recommend. If it depends on the case, give the ranges or the factors rather than hiding behind "contact us."

In many places the rules around how you disclose fees and commission are set by your regulator, so the wording on the site should match what you are required to tell clients in your formal disclosure documents. A website that says one thing and a fee agreement that says another is a complaint waiting to happen.

The commercial reason to be open about this is simple. People who are worried about a hidden cost do not book the call. People who already know the cost and are fine with it book the call and are easier to work with.

Make the first conversation feel low-risk

The enquiry is the whole point of the site, and there are specific fears that stop people making it. Address each of them directly, ideally on or next to the booking form itself.

"Will this affect my credit score?" Many borrowers believe that talking to a broker triggers a credit search. Explain exactly when, in your process, any kind of credit check happens and what kind it is, and that you will tell them before it does. Only state what is actually true of your process and the lenders you use.

"I'll be judged." People with low deposits, messy income or past debts often put off calling because they expect a lecture. A sentence on the form page saying that you speak to people in their situation every week does more than a page of testimonials.

"I don't have everything ready." Tell them what the first call involves, roughly how long it takes, and that they do not need documents for it. Then, separately, list what they will need later so they can start gathering it.

"My partner needs to be there." A large share of mortgages have two applicants, and the decision is shared. Offer evening or weekend slots if you have them, mention that both applicants are welcome on the call, and make it possible to book a video call that two people in different places can join.

Keep the form short. Name, contact details, the situation they are in (a dropdown matching your situation pages), and when they would like to be contacted is enough to start. Asking for income, deposit and credit history up front feels like an application, and an application is exactly the commitment they are trying to avoid at this stage. You can ask those questions on the call, where you can also explain why you need them.

If you use online booking, show real availability. A calendar that lets someone pick a time is far more reassuring than "we'll get back to you," especially for the person whose sale is going through and who is worried about losing the house.

Proof that survives a compliance review

Mortgage advice is regulated in most countries, and that shapes what you can say about yourself. Before you write any of the persuasive content, find out exactly what your regulator, and your network or principal firm if you belong to one, requires. Many brokers who are part of a network need the network to approve website content before it goes live, and finding that out after the build is finished is expensive.

Typical things to check include: whether you must display a registration or licence number and your firm's legal name, mandatory risk warnings (in the UK, for example, there is standard wording about the home being at risk of repossession), rules on how you describe your range of lenders, rules on advertising rates, and how complaints should be handled. In the US, loan originators commonly show their licensing identifier, and fair lending notices apply. Put these in the footer and anywhere else they are required, and do not treat them as decoration to hide in tiny grey text. A visible licence number is itself reassuring to a borrower who is nervous about handing their finances to a stranger.

Within those rules, the strongest proof for a broker is the story of a difficult case. "Self-employed for eighteen months, two lenders said no, here's what we did differently" tells a future client far more than a row of five-star ratings. Write these as short case studies, anonymised, with the client's permission, and keep them focused on the problem and the approach rather than on a specific rate or saving, which can stray into territory that regulators treat as financial promotion. Organise them by situation and link each one from the matching situation page, so the self-employed visitor reads about self-employed clients.

Reviews from an independent review platform are worth embedding because they are harder to fake and visitors know it. Pick a few that mention something specific, like speed, being kept informed, or not being made to feel stupid, rather than the ones that only say "great service."

Calculators, rates and the trap of the live rate table

Borrowing calculators are popular and genuinely useful to first-time buyers, who often have no idea what they might be able to borrow. If you include one, label clearly that it gives a rough indication only, that lenders assess affordability in their own ways, and that a conversation will give a more accurate answer. Put a booking button directly underneath the result, because that moment, when someone has just seen a number, is when they are most curious.

Be more cautious with rate tables. Rates change often, and a rate table that was accurate when the site launched and is out of date six months later is worse than none, both for trust and potentially for compliance. If you want to show rates, use a feed that updates automatically and carries the required warnings, or show example scenarios with a clear date on them. For most small brokers, the honest message is better: rates move quickly, the right one depends on your circumstances, and we check the whole market for you when we talk.

Repayment and remortgage calculators are useful for the renewal audience in particular, because they help someone see what their payments might do when their current deal ends. That is a concrete reason to act early.

The about page is about the person who will pick up the phone

People are about to tell you how much they earn, what they owe and sometimes why their credit file looks the way it does. They want to know who they will be talking to before they do it.

Use real photos of the actual advisers, not stock images of smiling couples holding keys. Give each adviser a short profile written in plain language: how long they have been advising, the kinds of cases they tend to handle, and something human. If one adviser specialises in contractors and another in buy-to-let, say so, and link their profiles from the relevant situation pages.

If you are a one-person business, do not disguise it. Many borrowers prefer dealing with one named person who will answer their texts at the stage when a lender is asking for one more document. Make that a strength: you will deal with me from the first call to completion.

If you are part of a network, it is worth explaining what that means in a sentence, because the network's name will appear in your legal footer and borrowers sometimes find it confusing.

Your second audience: agents, solicitors and accountants who refer

A lot of mortgage business arrives through referral partners: estate agents and realtors, conveyancers, accountants, financial planners, and past clients. These people also look at your website, usually to decide whether they are comfortable sending their own clients to you.

A short page aimed at them is worth building. Explain how you work with introducers, how quickly you contact referred clients, how you keep the referrer updated on progress, and how to send a referral. A simple referral form that lets a partner submit a client's name and number, with the client's permission, removes a phone call from their day, and partners tend to keep using whichever broker is easiest.

For estate agents especially, speed is the selling point. They want buyers who can show proof of funding quickly so the sale holds together. If you can commonly issue decisions in principle quickly, say so in concrete terms that are true of your service.

What happens after they enquire

The site's job does not end at the form. Once someone has enquired, they will come back to the site, often several times, to look up what happens next. A page that lays out your process step by step, from first call to fact-find, decision in principle, full application, valuation, offer and completion, answers questions before they become anxious phone calls. Give an honest sense of how long each stage tends to take and what the borrower needs to do at each one.

Be careful about documents. Do not ask people to upload payslips, bank statements and passports through an ordinary contact form, and do not encourage them to email these as attachments. Use a secure client portal, which many brokers' CRM or case-management systems provide, and link to it clearly from the site. Say on the site how you protect client data. Borrowers are increasingly aware of scams that impersonate brokers and solicitors, so it also helps to state plainly how you will and will not contact them, for example that you will never ask them to send money to a new bank account by email.

A short frequently asked questions section can live here too, covering things like what a decision in principle is, what happens if the valuation comes in low, and what to do if their circumstances change mid-application.

Choosing a template or WordPress theme without inheriting someone else's problems

Plenty of mortgage broker templates and WordPress themes exist, and starting from one is a reasonable way to keep costs down. The risk is that most of them are built around a generic finance layout: a big hero image, a grid of product types, a rate table and a contact form. That structure fights against almost everything above.

When you assess a template or theme, check:

• Can the navigation be built around borrower situations? You want room for six or so situation pages with their own layout, not a single "services" page with icons.
• Does it have a footer area that can hold regulatory text properly? You need space for your legal name, registration details and any required warnings, readable on a phone.
• Is the rate table removable, or tied to a feed you can maintain? A hard-coded rate table you will forget to update is a liability.
• Does it load quickly and work well on a phone? Many of your visitors will be standing in a house viewing or sitting on a train when they look you up.
• Does it integrate with the booking tool and CRM you actually use? If it cannot connect to your calendar or case-management system, you will end up retyping enquiries.
• Can you add case studies and adviser profiles as proper content types, so you can link them to situation pages without rebuilding the site?

Treat demo content with suspicion. Placeholder calculators, sample testimonials and invented rates have a way of surviving onto live sites. Every number and every claim on the finished site should be yours and approved by whoever signs off your financial promotions.

A sensible order to build it in

If you are working with limited time or budget, build in this order. First, a homepage that answers why a broker rather than the bank, with a visible way to book. Second, the "how we're paid" explanation and your regulatory footer, because they affect what you can say everywhere else. Third, a booking page with a short form and the reassurances about credit checks and preparation. Fourth, situation pages for the two or three kinds of client you most want more of. Then the about page, the process page and the referral partner page. Case studies, calculators and the remaining situation pages can follow as you collect material.

That order means the site can start doing its real job, turning a cautious visitor into a booked conversation, from the first week, and everything you add after that makes the conversation easier to say yes to.