The Intermediary – January 2026 - Flipbook - Page 78
B RO K E R B U S I N E S S
Opinion
Get more leads…
using your face
Y
our face could generate
more business for you.
It did for our client in a
recent experiment.
We ran a test on
a mortgage broker’s
website – two identical web pages,
except one showed a mortgage
adviser’s photo and one didn’t. Our
soware randomly assigned a page to
each visitor, split down the middle.
The page with the adviser photo
generated 11% more leads than the
page without. As leads converted to
application at 15%, the adviser’s face
generated an additional mortgage
application for every 967 page visitors.
The experiment showed that
using an iPhone photo of an adviser
on a webpage – a cost-free action –
increases leads and applications.
Why does it work?
‘Ambiguity aversion’ is where people
tend to avoid making choices with
uncertain outcomes. Like requesting
a call back when they don’t know who
will call them. Just as you wouldn’t
want to discuss your private financial
maers with a stranger, your clients
feel the same.
The science shows that our brains
are uniquely optimised to assess
the trustworthiness of faces. It’s
something we’ve goen really good
at over thousands of years to help
us survive. While logos can build
reputation and signal competence
over time, the human face is the
most powerful and immediate trigger
for trust.
Eye-tracking studies have shown
that when a user lands on a page,
their eyes are immediately drawn to
a human face. Another result of our
evolution, we’re hard wired to look for
other human faces.
Another experiment found that
users largely ignore generic stock
photos of people because they
are easily recognisable as filler
content. However, when the images
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The Intermediary | January 2026
were of actual team members or
subject maer experts, the photos
significantly improved credibility and
conversion rates.
This suggests the benefit is not just
any face, but a perceived ‘authentic’
face that represents the company or
the offer.
ALEX CURTIS
is founder of The Lead Engine
A chance to stand out
We checked 15 landing pages of
brokers – who we don’t work with –
with Google Ads campaigns, and none
of them featured a photo of an adviser.
Good news for you, if you make this
change you can stand out.
Show your face, it’s a personal
service! Don’t just hide details of
your team on an ‘about us’ page.
Don’t assume everyone enters your
website via the homepage or will go
to your team page. Every page is an
opportunity to meet your team.
It doesn’t have to be a super
professional photoshoot. Our test
was just a black and white photo
taken from an iPhone. A professional
photographer could capture some
excellent additions to your website,
but don’t delay when your smart
phone takes quality photos. iPhone
photos are beer than no photos.
Should you opt to use your
smartphone for taking the pictures
yourself, consider using a black and
white filter. This can help create
a consistent look across all your
photographs. It might be difficult
to get all your team together so it’s a
quick and easy option.
If you book a photoshoot, a pro
photographer will take some stunning
photos in full colour. They’ll normally
recommend which ones to use too.
An iPhone photo that looks genuine
will do more for you than an artificial
intelligence (AI) generated picture
that doesn’t look real. Don’t forget that
we’ve evolved to easily spot genuine
faces, if your image looks fake it might
as well be a stock photo. Our photo
was underneath the headline just
Our brains are
uniquely optimised to
assess the trustworthiness
of faces. It’s something
we’ve gotten really good at
over thousands of years to
help us survive”
before the main body of text. Our
aim was to position the adviser as the
author of the text on the page. This
positions the adviser as an expert in
that particular mortgage scenario.
Not a silver bullet
Remember, while people buy from
people, it doesn’t work on its own.
While showing your face online
is incredibly persuasive, you’ll be
disappointed if that’s all the only thing
you think about.
The pages in our test incorporated a
variety of elements, like recent 5-star
reviews, persuasive copywriting, a
clear call to action, content tailored to
the specific mortgage scenario and a
user-friendly layout.
The adviser photos acted as a boost,
but it needed a solid foundation to
generate results. ●
