Local Rate 411

Local Rate 411 is a marketing, matchmaking and lead generation platform for mortgage loans. The original website was designed in 2013 by Michael Austin, the co-owner of Create + Conquer, a Boston website design and marketing agency. I managed the original project and wrote most of the content for the site at the time. This year Local Rate 411 is planning a major TV marketing campaign for Beverly, Massachusetts and surrounding areas and I was brought back into the fold in part to redesign and modernize the website for this push, and also to develop a new backend database. As with npfhometeam.com, this new version of the website was done entirely as a solo project.

This redesign was both challenging and satisfying. There were several design decisions that were debated upon at length prior to being implemented, not the least of which was the new look and feel of the lead capture form. The original form was on the front page of the original website, and was several pages long but with only a few fields per page and no indication of how long the full form was. It was ultimately determined that this kind of form structure could be a turnoff to potential customers because there was no indication of how long it was, which could be viewed as somewhat obfuscating, although that was not the intention of the original form. The new form is all on one page, and fully discloses the length and types of questions to customers, letting them see everything up front so as to be more transparent and comforting.

Beyond the form, a lot of new web-based features only available in recent years have been implemented into the new site. This includes parallax image effects as well as CSS3-based animations that allow content to literally fly into the page as you scroll through the website. The site is also packed with information to help customers become informed about loan products and even includes extras such as a completely redesigned mortgage calculator and purchase as well as refinance checklists to help with their planning. The end result of this redesign is that Local Rate 411 is not only beautiful to behold, but also highly functional. The results of this new redesign can be seen below:

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  The original website
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  The all-new localrate411.com

Local Rate 411 stands out amongst its competition as being one of the nicest looking and most informative mortgage lead generation websites on the internet. Even some of the largest lenders and operations with the deepest pockets to funnel capital into their lead generation website design do not have lead generation platforms that even hold a candle to the modernized look and feel of Local Rate 411. I am quite proud of my work on this website.

Projects

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