InvestorBlogger has written about a number of mortgage websites in the past. We were asked to write a short review about MortgageMart.com.

When the client or visitor takes a trip to MortgageMart.com, a wonderfully rich image fills the screen. Take a look yourself to see what I mean. The evocative image of a large house nestled among some trees along the end of a driveway is probably how most visitors imagine their dream house. Mortgage mart neatly captivates its audience by implying that you, too, can have your own castle by filling out a free mortgage quote (which you can see on the right).

The website’s function is simple to provide a home loan quote for different types of loans: Refinance, Home Equity Loan, Purchase Loan, and Debt Consolidation for homes. Additional drop down menus are for Home Types, Credit Rating, and of course your state. Once you’ve filled in the four criteria, clicking ‘submit’ is supposed to take you to a ‘free quote’ provided by the LendingTree.com. Unfortunately when I tried this, I kept getting the following error.

This is definitely not good for business. So I next looked at some of the other links above the picture. So then I tried to find out which website provides their services, and each time I clicked on different offers, I was taken to the same site: http://www.lendingtree.com. Unfortunately, the only way I could get their site information was by accessing Google’s Cache. Their site is down, too, right now. Without their main site, there isn’t so much to do on the website itself. I guess the good thing is the site is quite responsive.

It’s quite clear that the website is intended to be attractive to first time buyers who won’t necessarily be as informed about the mortgage market when taking out their first mortgage loan. Though the types of loans offered suggest some sophistication, there are a number of issues that I think this website raises:

1. if the outage is just occasional like tonight’s, then I think there is no problem. But if there are frequent problems, then this needs to be dealt with. Casual visitors aren’t likely to be impressed by such problems, and will head to the address bar or Google Search to find another lender whose website isn’t down.
2. they claim to find the right mortgage for you based on four types of information, yet each search takes you to the same website, though I’d presume to different sections (but I can’t verify that);
3. given that the site doesn’t ask for financial information, it’s difficult to imagine that the loans information provided would be all that useful, though it can provide a good starting point to negotiate with your lenders;
4. within each state, there is a huge difference in property between the urban, suburban and rural settings, yet there is no way to include such information, making any loans or rates suggested highly general;
5. there is no link to any TOS, privacy policy, contact information, or even “about pages”, which really doesn’t help to build trust with new clients, many of whom might be quite nervous dealing online.
6. general claims like “we’ve been doing this a long time” don’t really cut it when you don’t say who ‘we’ are. I even tried a ‘whois’ search to find out who the owners are. Many records are now marked ‘private’ (mine are) and so was this website’s. Alexa’s WayBackMachine provided some information, but nothing I could verify as ‘current’.
7. Some of the articles that are provided seem somewhat generic, and don’t read very well. Though care is taken with spelling, occasional use of odd words (imputing) and punctuation issues suggest that a good copywriter needs to be employed to go over the text and edit thoroughly.

Summary: this website really has a lot of potential. It’s visually attractive and simple to use. But it clearly needs to find ways to deal with the issues raised.

This is a sponsored review.

Have you ever wanted to publish a book? Most of us feel that we have something in us that we could write about. Up until recently, getting published was a really difficult choice for most would-be writers, but the digital age has eased the process to such a point that it is possible, and even profitable to write books.

AuthorHouse is one such company born in the digital age that helps would-be writers take their first tentative steps, in determining your goals, submitting your manuscript, marketing your books, as well as designing and printing them. There are some inspiring stories that you can read about their authors in their case studies pages as well find their books in the bookstore.

Whatever services they provide, though, it’s a good idea to make sure that their website is functional. I clicked on many of the pages on the right side of the homepage, and got frequent script errors that looked ugly. You can see the graphic to see what I mean.

This is likely only to create an unprofessional image and chase away new authors as well as customers and casual visitors. So fix the problems, or at least, create an attractive error page!