Product Marketing Case Study: Proportunity’s Homepage
Let’s face it, product homepages are too bland.
Show glimpses of the product, throw in a bunch of big names as clients (funny how Google, Nike, and Netflix are referenced on and on), perhaps a Gartner quadrant, and boom — you have a homepage.
But what happens if you’re operating in a new or not-so-sexy industry like property mortgages?
You start educating your visitors, at the risk of having a long page.
This week’s headliner: Proportunity’s homepage — a London-based fintech that aims to disrupt the home ownership market (in London for now).
Proportunity Homepage
The moment I type in Proportunity (cool name, btw), I get hit by a bold tagline “Don’t rent. Own!”, worthy of founders originating from the country with the highest home ownership in the EU (96.6%) — Romania.
And also in line with millenials and Gen Z, who despite rising student loans and inflation, still want to become homeowners before turning 30.
Let’s see how this fares out in terms of supporting copy and other marketing lessons we can learn from this ambitious start-up.
1. Tease the dream land
Proportunity is looking to reduce the biggest barrier to home ownership: large deposits that don’t reflect the true mortgage risks. How you may ask?
By offering shared equity loans to literally “boost your deposit” and own your dream house “with as little as 5% deposit”.
Messaging-wise, you can’t get more realistic than this. First time home buyers come with a small deposit as little as 5%, while the rest up until 20% will be covered in the form of a mortgage loan. This reduces the timespan of having to save up for a house (doesn’t say by how many years) and gives owners access to the best interest rates, without having to slave their youth to pay it off.
NOTE: Would be great to see in % how much cheaper are these monthly interest payments compared to the standard ones, as the CEO Vadim Toader already points out on his LinkedIn profile that they can go down up to 45%.
2. Show, don’t tell
By now, you should probably be pumped up if you’re living in London. Yet how can you trust a simple, yet bold promise like this?
Proportunity doesn’t leave home seekers to wander off, but brings them back in the narrative in an interactive way: through a mortgage calculator.
Select your current income and level of savings, then see how much more money you can borrow with a shared equity, as opposed to a bank alone.
The mortgage calculator also comes with a useful tip if you earn an income over £ 77k in terms of how much can you up your mortgage if you up your savings by a certain extra amount.
I know this might be hard if you’re a SaaS looking to provide value upfront, besides a free trial. However, you can still design some sort or ready-available functionality. Coda does this really well with their Uber’s App Redesign Project Doc which you can view for free and use once you sign up.
3. Use a process map
Now that we’ve had a taste of the dreamland, it’s time to see how to actually get there.
Proportunity guides us through some sort of a process map, outlined by…well, a thread with dotted milestones to follow as I scroll through the page.
First up, is their home search function that identifies all the under-valued houses within a designated area and their future prices using machine learning — so you get a fair deal and no buyers remorse. Hard to verify, but convincing nevertheless.
Once you’ve got an offer and accepted it, they recommend trustworthy mortgage advisers to help you out with the financing application or tell you whether Proportunity is right for your current circumstances or not. Think of customer success reps that have your best interest at heart, even when it doesn’t benefit them (that’s how business is supposed to be).
There’s also a little bonus in the form of a free ZipVan on the big move day, all on Proportunity’s behalf — which I guess is a big deal given London’s traffic.
Finally, the fintech is transparent towards doubters who might suspect hidden costs. They are reassured that since it’s an equity mortgage, the principal repayment amount is linked to the home’s appreciation.
In other words, you pay no interest on it, just the profits in case your home has registered a growth in value over the mortgage period.
NOTE: This is my logical assumption as I’m not familiar with the UK law, hence a bit more clarity wouldn’t hurt.
Now, in terms of user reviews, I believe only those with an avatar should be displayed at the bottom (for credibility), but all-in-all I’d say the guys have done a pretty great job translating a complex financial mechanism into a digestible, yet practical process at the same time.
Remains to see how this unfolds in the future 👀
That’s it for this Sunday!
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