LendingTree builds trust to make the loan process feel more secure for their customers

LendingTree is an online loan marketplace for various financial borrowing needs, including personal loans, small business loans, auto loans, credit cards, and more.

They help their customers by providing a single place to view different lender options, empowering users to compare them side by side and figure out which one best meets their personal needs.

We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again: Finance can be a tricky industry for trust. You’re not only asking people to trust you with their money, but finance is also a subject that most people don’t know a lot about. It can be very confusing to the uninitiated, and consumers want to feel confident that they’re getting good deals and interest rates — when often they aren’t even sure what a good interest rate is.

As financial companies have moved into the digital space and the industry has grown, the market is increasingly competitive as well. This provides people with decision fatigue and makes it incredibly challenging for them to choose the right financial partners.

On top of all of that, LendingTree deals with loans specifically. This means that often their potential customers may already be experiencing financial stress and aren’t sure where to turn. LendingTree realized they needed a way to build trust throughout their customer journey, and turned to Trustpilot. They were particularly concerned with establishing trust as quickly as possible, ideally on the first or second page that potential customers landed on.

Because of LendingTree’s affiliate model, it was even more important to build a trusted brand because they connect potential borrowers with a large amount of other financial tools — in addition to building trust with shoppers, they also need to come off as credible and trustworthy to the lenders they represent on their site.

Being a great partner to their lenders and customers behind the scenes wasn’t enough, so they needed a way to highlight the quality of the LendingTree borrowing experience and showcase it in their brand reputation.

Higher conversion rates and increased revenue per visitor are the main benefits for LendingTree

The main place LendingTree leverages their reviews is on their site within their online forms. From their homepage, customers navigate to the type of loan they’re looking for, and on the form page they see a review carousel specific to that type of loan. This allows customers to see reviews from experiences that are as relevant as possible to the types of loans they’re looking to get.

From implementing Trustpilot’s review widgets on their site, they saw better conversions on their personal loan page (+2% conversion rate on mobile and +4% on desktop) and an excellent 6% conversion rate increase on their page dedicated to auto loans.

They also saw a 2-4% increase in revenue per visitor, because when you’re showing buyers reviews from other satisfied customers they’re more comfortable spending their money.

“The best part of Trustpilot for us have been our increases in conversion rate and revenue per visitor, as well as the ease of use of Trustpilot’s platform and customer service. The UI is clean and easy to use so you can easily get insights from all of your reviews. From the regular email reminders, it’s easy to keep a pulse on your reviews and how your customers are feeling. When you combine that with the support we get from our Customer Success Manager it really helps us make sure we’re getting the most out our reviews and the capabilities Trustpilot provides.”

Featuring social proof in social media advertising and remarketing emails

Once LendingTree started seeing conversion improvements on their site they decided to start featuring their great customer feedback throughout their marketing channels as well. Below is a cart abandonment email from SnapCap by LendingTree, a LendingTree brand focused on small business.

By including a review and their TrustScore, they’re letting their happy customers speak for them instead of bragging about themselves. This goes much further with shoppers than traditional ad copy.

They also decided to incorporate reviews into their paid social advertising for SnapCap by LendingTree. Given that they were spending their precious marketing budget on these ads, they wanted to make sure the ad creative resonated with customers enough to click through.

LendingTree knew even a small lift in conversion would mean better ROI from their budget, and that’s exactly what they saw.

Trustpilot reviews help LendingTree attract new customers with star ratings in search results

The lending space is extremely competitive and by collecting reviews with Trustpilot, LendingTree qualified for Google Seller Ratings to help them stand out ahead of their competition.

In a crowded SERP, their seller ratings are a simple yet effective way to quickly convey trust and legitimacy in search.

LendingTree's future plans with Trustpilot

LendingTree and their subsidiary brands have seen terrific results since joining Trustpilot, but the next step is to expand on that so they’re collecting and leveraging their customer reviews throughout all of their different businesses under the LendingTree umbrella. Once they expand the conversion rate and revenue increases to all of their brands it will only further improve their trustworthy brand reputation and have a bigger positive impact on their revenue as a whole.

They’re also hoping to get their optimization team more involved with Trustpilot and put more focus into Review Tagging for better Review Insights. This way they can better understand what pages the reviewers interacted with, how much they spent, whether that user converted, and more — all so they can tailor the perfect on-site experience for their customers.

Ready to improve your on-site conversions and average order value like LendingTree? Create a free Trustpilot account below.