There was a time when I had six maxed-out credit cards. Frightening, huh? It was during the dot-com days, when I thought I'd make millions like everyone else - then be able to pay back those cards easily. Alas, that was not to be, leaving me with six maxed-out credit cards.

After that, I put myself on a very strict, very rigorous debt payment plan. And in three to four years, I worked it all off. I paid off all of my credit cards. Now, I pay out each balance full every month; no more carrying balances over!

While setting up my plan, I had looked into debt consolidation programs. Ultimately, I didn't do that, but I know at least one friend who did.

If you're not someone who's anal about record keeping and paying your bills, then a debt consolidation program could help you. The advantages include having one easy location to pay all your bills. The disadvantages include having to put up collateral, such as your home, and potentially paying more in the long run if you stretch out this new loan for a very long period of time. They are generally helpful if you have a lot of credit card debt though, since the consolidated loan they offer can have a lower interest rate than any of your credit cards.

But: beware of predatory lenders, who typically approach desperate customers and deceptively convince them to agree to unfair - and even abusive - loan terms.

One such program, Debt Free 24, just applied for a paid review. Since I've looked into debt consolidation programs before, I figured I'd give these guys a once-over too.

Visual Design

Being a website review, I of course can't help but look at its visual design - its layout, its use of text, its usability. I do this because it's really important. All too often, I'll hear a random user back out of a site because it "doesn't look safe" or "looks like it could be a scam." What they're really saying is, "this visual design sucks."

Debt Free 24's design doesn't totally suck. But it doesn't look as professional as I'd want a financial services firm to look. And since the debt consolidation industry is fraught with scam artists, it's easy to point at a poorly-done design and guess that they're a scam. (Of course, a slick design doesn't mean a firm isn't a scam.)

There's lots of text. Way more than the average reader will want to read. It's probably for SEO purposes though. What really bothers me about it is that it's all full-justified - meaning the words are lined up at both the left and right sides of the paragraph.

Notice how the words from my paragraphs are lined up on the left, but aren't lined up neatly on the right? That, in typesetting-speak, is known as ragged-right. Generally, it's easier to read paragraphs on computer screens that are ragged-right than full-justified. Only in print does full-justification look nice. The designer probably thought, "Hey, let's align this text with full-justification, 'cuz newspapers and books do it!" without any knowledge of computer usability. 'Tis the mark of an amateur designer.

To the designer's credit, there is a clear call-to-action and clear navigation. I know how to sign up for a debt consolidation program. That's way more important than the alignment of the text. Kudos! Users ought to be funneling into the sales flow nicely.

The Service

To sign up for this service, you need to fill out an online form with information such as:

  • How much credit card debt do you have?
  • Current payment status on your credit cards?
  • Other unsecured debt?
  • How much secured debt do you have?

After supplying that, along with your contact info (address, email, and phone number), you're told that:

By submitting your request, you are granting permission for up to $product.maxNumberOfSales of our Premier Partners to contact you either by phone or email even if you are on the Do Not Call Registry.

Wait, how many Premier Partners? $product.maxNumberOfSales? Oops, looks like someone's code is peeking out!

Once you get past the unsecured (http, not https) form submission and buggy code, one of their Debt Repayment Representatives will contact you to set up a debt consolidation program. After interviewing you about your financial situation, the representative will contact all of your outstanding creditors (credit card companies, loan companies, mortgage companies, etc) to negotiate a potentially lower interest rate for you. Then Debt Free 24 will combine your debt, so you only have to pay one creditor - Debt Free 24 - and not hassle with multiple bills.

They don't indicate whether they offer secured loans (where you have to offer up collateral) or unsecured loans (where it's determined by your credit rating), however.

Articles

Under the section, "News Updates," Debt Free 24 has a number of articles about debt management and personal finance. The articles don't look terribly helpful, so I suspect they serve SEO purposes. Unfortunately for them, they haven't done much in-page search engine optimization. These articles could be helping them a lot more than they are right now.

My Suggestions

  1. Hire a professional web designer and give the site an overhaul. Make it look more professional , usable, and trustworthy. Although the current design isn't the worst I've seen - it's probably even doing it's job well-enough for their target audience - it could be a lot better. Is the ROI of redesigning the site worth the extra sales conversions? Well, since I'm going to recommend rewriting some of the code, they might as well update the design too.
  2. Hire an SEO-knowledgeable web developer to rewrite the code to be more SEO-friendly. From page titles to URLs to headings, there's lots of basic SEO stuff they could do. Hell, a simple pass through Website Grader could help wonderfully. Also, make sure this developer doesn't leave any open bugs on any key pages, such as the sign-up form.
  3. Consider re-writing the copy a bit. Or at least, shorten it. I'd love to see more information on the About Us page, for instance. If it's owned by one guy in a basement somewhere, he probably doesn't want to reveal that - because if it's true, no one's going to want to use his site. But a vague About Us page doesn't fill me with warm fuzzy trustworthiness either.

Good luck, Debt Free 24!