The Mortgage Application
Experience Audit
The Mortgage Signal Report plus a narrated walkthrough. I diagnose the funnel that leads up to your application, then go through the application itself as a well-qualified borrower and narrate every step. You see where qualified borrowers leave, and exactly what they hit once they start applying.
Fixed fee, paid before work begins
What you receive
Two things, one engagement: the written Mortgage Signal Report, plus a narrated video your team can watch together and share with leadership. The report covers the funnel that leads up to the application. The video shows what happens inside it, with me going through your actual application as a well-qualified borrower.
Borrower-Perspective Walkthrough
I move through your mortgage application as a well-qualified borrower, narrating what I'm seeing, what I'm thinking, and what I would do at each step. The point of view is the one that matters: a real prospect trying to get a mortgage from your bank.
Expert Friction Commentary
As I move through the application, I call out specific friction points in real time: confusing questions, trust gaps, moments where a well-qualified borrower would hesitate, slow down, or abandon. Named and explained as they happen.
Application Experience Assessment
An evaluation of what the application signals to the borrower at each stage (whether it builds confidence or introduces doubt) and how the overall experience compares to what a competitive lender offers.
The Mortgage Signal Report (Included)
The full written diagnostic of your mortgage funnel: pages, lead capture, positioning, and follow-up, with gaps ranked by likely revenue impact. The same report sold on its own for $1,000, included here alongside the walkthrough.
Why go through it as a borrower? Because the application experience is sequential, and problems in it are experiential. Reviewing a page abstractly tells you what's there. Walking through it as a qualified borrower shows you what it feels like: where trust breaks, where a question creates doubt, where friction turns intent into abandonment. That's not something a checklist or written review captures. Your team watches it happen in real time.
Report vs. video: what's the difference? The Mortgage Signal Report ($1,000) is the written diagnostic on its own. It covers the funnel that leads up to the application: your pages, lead capture, positioning, and follow-up. It tells you where borrowers drop off before they apply. This Audit ($2,500) is that same report plus the narrated video walkthrough of the application itself. Buy the report when you want the funnel findings. Buy the Audit when you also want to see the application experience in motion.
How it works
No intake. No prep work. No scheduling. I go through your publicly available mortgage application and deliver a video your team can watch, share, and act on immediately.
You pay via Stripe
Secure payment through Stripe. Work begins within one business day. You receive a confirmation email immediately.
Buy Now →I go through your application as a borrower
I move through your full mortgage application experience as a well-qualified borrower, on screen, on record, narrating my observations and expert feedback at every step. No internal access needed.
You receive the video + summary
Delivered via email within 10 business days. A Loom link and written findings summary. Watch it with your mortgage team, share it with leadership, reference it without a follow-up call.
Why her perspective is worth paying for
The entire premise of this engagement rests on two things: that my two decades in design and technology, plus my firsthand experience going through the mortgage process as a well-qualified borrower, is more useful than a checklist, a heatmap, or an internal team trying to review their own work. I have bought two homes in the last decade. I have lived the application I am evaluating.
Here is why that is true, and why it holds for regional bank mortgage specifically.
I know what good looks like. I know what your competitors are doing. When I call out a problem in your application, I can tell you whether it is specific to your bank or endemic to the category.
Before this work, I spent 2.5 years inside a regional bank. I understand how these institutions are structured, how decisions get approved, and what it actually costs when a qualified borrower drops out of a digital application. That operational context is not something you can replicate from the outside. Twenty years working across design and technology (from product strategy to systems architecture) means I know exactly what to look for and how to explain what needs to change in language your team can act on.
I approach your application as a well-qualified borrower: someone with good credit, stable income, and genuine intent to buy. This is not role-play. I have been through the mortgage application twice in the last decade, as the borrower living it and as a design and technology expert reading it. The problems I find are the ones costing you the borrowers you most want to keep.
I have gone through multiple regional bank mortgage applications using this same framework. I have a reference point. When your application has a trust gap, I can tell you whether it is common or whether your competitors have already solved it.
The findings are the product. By being an outside expert and neutral third party, I'm not hindered by office politics. There is no reason for me to soften them.
My work is specifically on customer acquisition systems for regional banks. This is not a side service. The Signal Audit framework, the product pages, this engagement: they are all built on the same focused body of work.
What the top digital lenders already do that you don't
Your applicants have already applied for a mortgage on Rocket, Better, or SoFi, and that is the experience your application is silently measured against. Three things those lenders treat as table stakes, and most regional banks still haven't shipped.
Rocket Mortgage
Applicants sync their bank accounts for instant asset and down-payment verification, inside an app with real-time status updates and one-tap document upload. No statements to hunt down.
The regional gapThe borrower is asked to find, scan, and email statements, then waits with no visibility into where the application stands.
Better
A pre-approval letter in about three minutes with no hard credit pull, and a fully online path from rate to a commitment letter in as little as 24 hours.
The regional gapPre-approval waits on a loan officer callback and a hard credit pull before the borrower sees anything at all.
SoFi
Prequalify online in minutes with a soft credit check that doesn't touch the score, then see the exact loan options you qualify for on the spot.
The regional gapThe form ends in "a specialist will reach out," with no instant answer and no options shown.
These are now baseline borrower expectations: connected income and asset verification, save-and-resume with document tracking, and real-time status. The walkthrough shows you exactly which your mortgage application is missing, where a well-qualified borrower notices the difference, and what each gap is costing you in applications you never see start.
Who this is for & who it isn't
This is the right engagement if
- Your mortgage team suspects the application is losing well-qualified borrowers before they complete it, but no one has actually gone through the experience from a borrower's perspective.
- You want something your team can watch together, not a document they'll read once and file away.
- You need mortgage application-specific findings, not a broad bank-wide overview.
- You want expert feedback that's easy to share with a Head of Mortgage, CMO, or CLO without scheduling a briefing call to explain it.
This is not the right fit if
- You want only the written funnel diagnostic without the video. See the Mortgage Signal Report ($1,000).
- You want the full retail footprint, not just mortgage. See the Bank-wide Signal Report ($1,500).
- You need a live debrief with your leadership team. See the Executive Briefing ($3,500).
- You want to see a reimagined prototype of what the experience could become. See the Opportunity Review ($4,500).
- You need implementation work. This engagement is diagnostic only.
Want more than the video?
Each engagement in the suite builds on the same signal analysis framework. If you want the bank-wide view, a live session, or a prototype preview, there's a tier for that.
Mortgage Signal Report
Written diagnostic of your mortgage funnel. 7 business days. No meetings.
Bank-wide Signal Report
The same written diagnostic across your full retail acquisition footprint.
Mortgage Application Experience Audit
The Mortgage Signal Report plus a narrated walkthrough of the application itself.
Buy NowCustomer Acquisition Executive Briefing
The bank-wide report plus a 45-minute live briefing with your leadership team.
Customer Acquisition Opportunity Review
One product, diagnosed in depth, with a live debrief and a reimagined prototype of that product.
Build a package that fits your bank.
The four diagnostics are sold individually online. If you want to combine them, cover more than one product line, or scope something broader across your bank, tell me what you're weighing and I'll come back with a tailored package. I respond within 2 business days.
Before you commit
Your mortgage application,
seen through a borrower's eyes.
One payment. No meetings. No prep. You get the written Mortgage Signal Report plus a narrated walkthrough of your application as a well-qualified borrower experiences it: where they leave the funnel, and where they stop inside the application. Delivered in 10 business days.
$2,500 Introductory rate · Fixed fee · Paid via Stripe · Work begins within 1 business day Introductory price for the first banks aboard. It rises as client testimonials come in.10-Day Delivery Guarantee
If your report and walkthrough aren't delivered within 10 business days of payment, I refund you in full.