The latest advice for mortgage Web sites?

Clean up your digital act.

As many as one in 20 online refinance application transactions fail due to some Web site problem and if consumers can telephone a broker or lender and complete an application in minutes, they aren't going to wait around while a Web site chokes on its electronic routines.

If a mortgage Web site's refinancing application is inefficient, inconsistent or unreliable, it's a turnoff for harried consumers, many of them clamoring to refinance at record low interest rates. That could mean lost business for mortgage companies with online applications that aren't up to the task.

Offering consumers another tool in the online mortgage shopping market, Empirix, a Waltham, MA-based electronic applications tester, recently studied 15 mortgage companies' online mortgage refinancing applications to determine which Web sites' tripped up during the online task.

Reston, VA-based comScore Networks' Media Metrix service recently found that mortgage shoppers most often wanted bottom line information including calculators and solid editorial content and it listed which Web sites were better -- or worse -- at providing those services.

Now, after a two-week study, Empirix revealed which Web sites were better -- or worse -- at handling a simple refinance application. The company examined the mortgage Web sites using its proprietary software to measure a refinance application's performance from outside a firewall -- they way a consumer would try to complete the application.

For each synthetic transaction, Empirix navigated to the Web site's home page, then to the refinancing page, and then clicked on "Apply Now".

Transactions were repeated at 30-minute intervals, 24 hours a day, at each site from June 10 through June 24.

"The hypothesis was that a lot of consumers are turning to the Web to find mortgages and the companies that provided the best experience would be more likely to capitalize on that business trend. I would view it as 'Where am I going to get the fastest and most accurate service?'" said Michelle Goodall Faulkner, an Empirix spokeswoman.

Empirix said lower numbers were better when it measured:

Number of Steps -- The number of steps it took to go from the home page to the refinance application.

Testing Online Refinance Applications

Company	EFF	CONS	RELI	NO.
Countrywide	16.2	14.1	5.3	3
First Horizon	1.8	1.5	4.2	2
E-Loan	24.4	13.1	3.9	4
GMAC	9.7	1.0	3.8	4
Wells Fargo	26.5	10.4	2.1	5
Washington Mutual	10.5	4.1	2.0	5
Schwab	7.4	3.3	1.1	6
Chase	7.1	4.2	0.9	4
E*Trade	6.1	4.2	0.8	5
CitiBank	15.7	5.0	0.6	3
Bank of America	11.9	4.1	0.5	5
ABN Amro	2.2	3.0	0.5	2
Flagstar	7.6	1.7	0.2	2
National City	7.4	20.	0.0	4
Lending Tree	5.5	1.1	0.0	3

Source: Empirix

Code:	EFF = Efficiency
	CONS = Consistency
	RELI = Reliability
	No. = Number of steps

"We saw a wide range of performance," said Joe Alwan, vice president of Marketing for Empirix. "Some of these firms have figured out how to optimize the online experience, and others still have work to do."

Transaction length ranged from a swift 2.2 seconds for ABN Amro to a sluggish 26.5 seconds for Wells Fargo.

Consistency ranged from 1 second at GMAC to 14.1 seconds at Countrywide.

"Studies have shown that 30 percent of consumers will not shop at a site again after just one bad experience," noted Alwan. "It's not good enough for Web applications to perform well 'some of the time.'"

Failure rates are perhaps even more important. National City and Lending Tree were perfect, never locking testers out of the application. Countrywide was on the high side of the scale, with a 5.3 percent transaction failure rate.

A consumer who nearly completes an application and then suddenly gets locked out is a frustrated consumer likely to go elsewhere.

"In many cases, when consumers can't complete a self-service application at a Web site, they pick up the phone. This turns a 25-cent self-service transaction into a $5-10 agent-assisted call. Even worse, some consumers will just click to a competitor's site, and the vendor loses the business altogether," Alwan said.

Published: July 11, 2003

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.