Growth-Driven Design
Client: Meridian Bank
Web Migration + Growth-Driven Design Initiatives to Streamline Lead Nurturing Efforts for Regional Bank
Client
Meridian Bank is a regional financial institution in the Northeast committed to financial wellbeing and innovative technology.
Solution
Growth-Driven Design
New website pages
Website migration
SEO: location-specific landing pages
Custom search functionality
Pillar page strategy + implementation
Challenge
Meridian Bank was looking for a solution to deploy new website features for its mortgage division without disrupting the daily online activities of its personal and business banking clients.
With real estate’s high season quickly approaching, the clock was ticking to launch a suite of new features for loan officers to use to engage new clients.
This deployment required transitioning from the difficult-to-update Expression Engine platform to a new CMS.
Solution
With just nine weeks from project kick-off to launch, Mole Street employed an agile, phased approach to custom web design and development to:
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Develop a search engine for web visitors to discover Meridian Bank loan officers in their area
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Create a personalized, highly shareable landing page for each loan officer to nurture new client relationships
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Develop a custom website that was easy for their team to update
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Build out pillar pages for the mortgage service vertical to launch after the high season
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Create economies in development
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Empower future governance
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Accelerate the design process through the design of reusable components/modules
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Ensure consistency during QA Period
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Produce a template-rich page structure for commonly used page layouts
As part of the web build, Mole Street created the following reusable components:
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Page header
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Body copy
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Awards row
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Specializations row
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Client testimonials
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Branch feed
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Global Sidebar, top nav + footer
In addition, several reusable page templates were built, empowering the Meridian team to add new pages as needed without requiring additional IT or development resources.
Location-Specific Landing Pages
To help loan officers strengthen relationships with client prospects, Mole Street built custom listing landing pages for each loan officer. To encourage engagement and conversions, the landing pages contained CTAs that allow users to request a consultation or start an application right away.
These custom landing pages house vital information about each loan officer, including their biography, list of specializations, awards and achievements, NMLS #, and contact information. To enhance online searchability and to create a better user experience, each loan officer’s page details the corresponding branch address and embedded Google Map for local SEO.
Custom Search Functionality
Loan officers at Meridian Bank relied on a templated real estate website and third-party websites like Zillow to be found online — and in many cases, to no avail.
Our team created a centralized database of all officers at all branches, optimized for local SEO. By creating this type of search-engine functionality on the website, web visitors can now locate loan officers in their area simply by inputting their city and filtering to show the nearest location first. Search results are organized by branch name and feature each officer’s custom landing page in the feed underneath.
Pillar Pages
With the search engine deployed and operating during high season, Mole Street built a pillar page strategy for its mortgage service area. Previously, Meridian Bank had relied on an antiquated real estate website template to tell the story of its services. The template lacked vital information to educate client prospects and was challenging to navigate.
Starting at the foundation, Mole Street conducted market research, led stakeholder and user interviews, and completed a competitor analysis to guide strategic efforts.
With the goal of improving Meridian Bank’s ability to be found online through organic search, and also educating new and existing homebuyers with value-add content, our team created a comprehensive pillar page content strategy.
Following strategy approval, we built content outlines for each pillar page to ensure goals were met and keyword targets were optimized based on SEO best practices.
Adhering to Meridian Bank’s brand tone and voice, Mole Street's design team used the approved outlines to guide the development of engaging, conversion-focused SEO pillar pages.
“Keeping the primary goals of Meridian Bank’s team top of mind, we created key site features and strategic web pages focused on helping their agents earn and nurture new client relationships.”
Tina Martin ─ Art Director, Mole Street