Does your site have users in mind? If not, it should

Michael Blair, vice president of business development, Electronic Ink

As published in Scotsman Guide's Residential Edition, January 2010.

With the need for increased inves- tigations into borrowers’ histories comes the need for technology that enables this process. This technology should be user-friendly for brokers and borrowers. Moreover, brokers should make sure their consumer interface — typically, their Web site — is easy to operate and doesn’t turn away prospective clients.

So how can brokers build more user-friendly interfaces and solutions? For starters, you should look at your Web site, your loan-origination system (LOS) and your internal technology-based processes to ensure they communicate effectively to the people who interact with them. Also, when building intuitive technology, brokers should consider whether they have the right resources to build the interfaces and solutions in-house.

Better technology design can improve your chances of communicating with borrowers and increase borrower satisfaction. And your Web site typically makes your company’s first impression. If borrowers have difficulty maneuvering around your Web site, they’ll likely look for someone else to close their loan.

Technical flaws with sites’ online forms can harm usability and drive away potential borrowers. Proper and error-free system design, on the other hand, ensures clear information and appropriate workflows from brokers and borrowers using the loan-application or loan-modification system.

Strong design leadership implements a rigorous and complete process that ensures delivery of a product proven to meet business, technological and consumer goals. It’s wise to measure and understand how real users interact with it to create a product that boosts user adoption and efficiency, in addition to confidence in the system, its data and the organization.

Often, companies don’t have a team experienced in how to design and build complicated interfaces using the latest technologies and industry best practices. The people spearheading your system’s design may have expert-level domain knowledge but lack design training and a focus on improving productivity and usability.

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