OwnUp Mortgage Shopping

The Challenge

When interest rates are low, the mortgage business booms. Those in the industry, like Own Up, turn their focus to accommodating the crush of potential borrowers. When rates creep up, that deluge of consumers turns to a trickle. Offering a compelling and differentiated experience can mean the difference between being in the game or standing on the sidelines.

To keep customers on the hook, many lenders offer teaser rates to pull customers through the process, only to hit them with the “real” rate later in the sale. Own Up took a different approach.

Founded by two former mortgage bankers, the Own Up team prides itself on being an advocate for the customer. By offering shoppers an option to speak with a knowledgeable Home Advisor, Own Up helps guide shoppers to a more specific (and hopefully better) quote. 

But online customers won’t often talk to live people, so shoppers were opting out of the process. How do you keep them engaged?

Our Approach

As we studied Own Up’s business, it became clear that qualifying borrowers is inherently complicated. Steps required by state and federal regulations may seem unnecessary to a user. Anywhere we looked to reduce steps—and potential friction for the customer—we hit a regulatory dead end. But then we realized, wouldn’t shoppers face this situation anywhere they went?

This is where we saw a real opportunity. Rather than being just a technology solution to help homeowners find great rates, we realized that Own Up could lean into their value proposition: advocating for homeowners. We just needed to make the process easier to understand. 

Through many collaborative work sessions, ZeroDegrees and Own Up uncovered and re-branded their customer experience, providing shoppers with two journeys. One was to talk to a Home Advisor; the other was to be presented with a lender option carefully curated for the consumer’s profile. By talking to a Home Advisor, Own Up could better qualify candidates and potentially get them better rates. Talking to a curated set of lenders was more direct, but couldn’t guarantee the best rates. To get more people to engage, we brought the Home Advisors to life. We shared bio information. We showed customer reviews. We improved the transparency of the process through a Rate Card Insight module. And we made the process feel, right up front, like the full-featured experience it really was. 

But we also made the second option better, too. Own Up would now help prepare borrowers for the call with greater transparency around the process and arm them with information to navigate those conversations. 

Through our testing with users, it became clear that the new process felt more trustworthy, helpful, and worthwhile.

The Results

Through a series of iterative sprints, Own Up was able to raise the number of shoppers who scheduled a consultation by almost 30%. As we added in Home Advisor Reviews, the number of calls scheduled rose by 50%. Today, shopper engagement is up, average time to schedule a call is down, and Own Up is—more transparently than ever—a customer-centric brand.