Look for a relevant explanation of the work.
A provider should explain how the site serves your actual clients, how enquiries are handled and how the scope changes after launch. Ask for a walkthrough of a relevant journey, not just a gallery of attractive homepages.
Understand who designs, writes, reviews and maintains the work. Lending expertise and digital delivery are separate responsibilities; both need an owner.
A useful test is to name one real journey and ask the provider to walk through it. For example, a self-employed borrower finds the site on a phone at night, reads the page about business income and wants to know what to prepare before a call. Where do they land? What does the form ask? Who sees the enquiry the next morning? A provider who has thought about broker websites will answer in specifics. One who has not will steer back to the homepage design.
Ask who does each part of the work.
Website and marketing work involves several roles: design, writing, technical build, content review and maintenance. In a small team one person may hold several of them. That is fine, as long as you know who they are.
Ask who will write the copy and what they need from you. A provider that plans to publish lending explanations without your reviewer seeing them first is creating work for your brokerage, not saving it. Ask, too, who answers when something breaks after launch. A named person and a known way to reach them are worth more than a promise of “full support”.
Then check the hand-offs. If design is outsourced, copy comes from a freelancer or hosting sits with a third party, find out who coordinates them and who you call when something goes wrong. Pay particular attention to the gap between whoever builds the enquiry form and whoever is meant to answer the enquiries it sends.
See how they handle compliance review.
Broker marketing sits under rules a general web agency may not know well. Credit advertising, rate claims, testimonials and commercial messages all carry obligations. A provider does not need to be a lawyer, and should not act like one, but it should expect your licensee or nominated reviewer to approve regulated claims and should build time for that into the schedule.
Ask how the provider records approvals, what happens if your reviewer asks for changes after launch, and whether they have worked through an aggregator’s marketing review before. A provider who treats review as a delay to be minimised will create friction. One who plans for it will make it routine.
Check evidence without borrowing confidence.
Ask whether an example is a real client project or a concept. For performance claims, request the period, baseline, measurement method and what can reasonably be attributed to the provider. A testimonial does not establish a guaranteed outcome.
BrokerMint labels design concepts as concepts and does not publish invented client results. A portfolio should include permission and enough context to assess the claim.
Be specific when you ask. If a provider says a client’s enquiries doubled, ask over what period, compared with what, and what else changed at the same time. A brokerage that hired a second broker and started advertising in the same quarter its new site launched cannot credit the whole change to the website. A provider who raises those limits without being prompted is usually easier to trust than one who leads with the headline number.
Discuss lead ownership early.
Ask where form data travels, which accounts you own, who has access and how permissions are removed at handover. Written restrictions on lead resale and unrelated use are more useful than assumptions based on a founder’s background.
BrokerMint is a website and marketing specialist, with no competing lending service. That is its positioning; it is not evidence that another provider handles data improperly.
Before signing, write down three things: which accounts are registered in the brokerage’s name (domain, analytics, advertising and CRM), where each form submission is sent, and how access is removed if the relationship ends. If a provider is reluctant to put this in writing, treat that as part of the answer.
Assess the recurring program.
A good recurring scope shows how topics are selected, what gets published, which technical changes can be made and how outcomes inform the next decision. It should also say where the allowance stops.
Ask to see an example month. For a content program, that might be the topic list, one brief, one draft and the record of who approved it. For care, it might be the edits made and the checks run. You are looking for signs that the recurring work is planned, rather than simply invoiced. If nothing like that exists yet, ask how the first month will be planned.
Compare the total term and actual work across providers. Choose the service your team can participate in, including approvals and responding to enquiries.
Run a short, fair comparison.
Shortlist two or three providers and give each the same brief: your services, your locations, who will review content and the one client journey you care most about. Ask each for a written scope, a price over the same period and the terms for leaving. Comparing like with like takes longer than choosing the most polished pitch, but it gives you something specific to hold the provider to later. If you can, speak to a current client of each provider and ask what happened the last time something went wrong.
Then consider fit. A brokerage that wants to own and edit everything in-house needs different help from one that wants the work handled for it. Neither preference is wrong. Choose the provider whose way of working matches how your team actually operates.
