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A blue house with people outside

Making it easier for homeowners to get a new mortgage deal

Content design for Nationwide's website in 2021.

The brief

Nationwide wanted to empower people to sort their mortgage out by themselves. The Bank of England base rate kept changing, so call waiting times were too high.

 

Their website had a tool for customers whose fixed rate mortgage deals were ending. It allowed people to check the interest rates, calculate charges, and apply online. This was especially important when the press predicted a base rate increase, because customers would rush to secure a fixed interest rate.

So what's the problem? Not enough people were using the tool. A lot of visitors to the page did not click the call to action. 

Challenges

  • A quick turnaround – as usual for the web team

  • No budget for testing the page before launch

  • Complex regulatory requirements

  • Early repayment charges were a big pain point

  • Not everyone can use the tool

  • Some customers want to speak to a mortgage advisor first

  • I could only make small changes to the tool itself due to development effort

Discovery

I started with a quick and dirty content audit, including:

  • mapping the end-to-end journey for switching to a new mortgage deal 

  • analysing all the key messages throughout the journey

  • measuring the reading age of the existing content

  • looking at analytics to see how users moved between the web pages

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I carried out some language research. I looked at competitors, search terms, and google trends to understand how our users would be searching for their new mortgage deal.

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Lastly, I created some user stories based on all the potential scenarios our customers could fall into.
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My key findings

 

The webpage was packed with content about eligibility and warnings. But it was clear that this wasn't needed. The tool itself very quickly told users if they were eligible and if they would pay any charges. It also provided the regulatory warnings at the right point in the journey – when users choose their deal.

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The page didn't explain what the online tool could do. It positioned it as more of an application form. Why would customers apply before they knew how much it would cost them?

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Analytics showed that users were actually going backwards to look at our mortgage rates and calculators. Not only was this extra effort for them, it also meant they weren't getting personalised rates with a clear picture of what it would cost them. 

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The page had a lot of long sentences and grammar mistakes. It wasn't clear if all or some of the criteria were required. The heading hierarchy was unhelpful.​

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While the words "Switch your mortgage" were preferred by Nationwide, it seemed that users were more likely to talk about "mortgage deals".​

What I changed

  • ​I changed the key messages to focus on what the tool could do for users – it's not just an application form.

  • I cut out most of the eligibility criteria, except for the rules about customers who definitely couldn't apply online. 

  • ​I created a section for customers who want mortgage advice, and advertised our new video call service.

  • ​​I negotiated two small tweaks to the tool itself to cover some edge case scenarios.

  • I lowered the Flesch-Kincaid reading grade to 4.6 and reduced the word count.

  • I created a clean heading hierarchy to ensure screen reader users could navigate the page easily.​

  • I negotiated sign off with stakeholders and took the content for a full crit and peer review.

Before: click to enlarge

Before: what the page used to look like.

After: click to enlarge

After: the new content I created.

The result

When we launched my new content, there was:​

  • an increase in visitors who apply to switch their mortgage online – from 45% to 64%

  • a decrease in the number of visitors who get to the webpage and drop off – from 50% to 30%

  • an 81% reduction in call volumes – partly helped by the base rate becoming more stable

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The following year, the switcher tool was changed and absorbed into a general "mortgage manager" tool. So, just a heads up – my work is no longer live. But the new content designers did a great job of overhauling the content for the new journey.

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I do not claim to own the intellectual property contained within the images in this portfolio. The images are merely here to illustrate my contributions to these works as part of a private portfolio.

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