About a month ago, I noticed a change to the standard DomainMarket.com landing pages. Mike Mann added a photo of domain broker Tracy Fogarty along with her contact information. It was similar in fashion to how some real estate agents present their home listings and business cards.
Yesterday evening, I noticed a small in scale but major change that seems to have been implemented across the board on DomainMarket.com domain name landing pages. Check out the screenshot of Cashless.com:
You will notice the list price of the domain name is no longer there. In the previous article I shared, you can see the asking price of $294,888 right below the BUY NOW button. In order for a prospective buyer to know the price of the domain name, they will need to click through the BUY NOW or BUY THIS DOMAIN links on the landing page or call DomainMarket / Tracy.
I am not entirely sure the rationale behind it, but I presume it’s something of a psychological test in that a prospective buyer is taking the first step by clicking the BUY NOW button to move forward. I presume the majority of the domain names listed for sale have much lower prices than Cashless.com. I asked Mike about it, and he told me it is just one of many tests they have planned.
My background is in Direct Marketing, and one thing I learned in grad school is to test everything. It’s neat to see Mike doing all of these tests, and as someone who uses my own landing pages, I like to keep an eye on DomainMarket.com landing page designs to see if I can learn anything from them.
Vehicless.com – makes sense for driver less cars? What do you think Elliot? Thanks
Don’t like the name and really hope you don’t continue posting your domain names in the comment section.
if so, i do not see any reason to read and comment your blog. 🙁
If you’re only visiting so you can post your names, I think it is better for all of us if you don’t.
How’s a person not going to be sufficiently happy with having his domain appear as the screen name? Yes, listen to Elliot and don’t bother here. These blogs are for helping the cause and being constructive for the whole.
If I had the kind of traffic Mann had, you better believe I’d be split testing everything all of the time. It would nice if he shared some his results.
I doubt he will share results, but if you keep checking back, you can see what sticks and get an idea of what is working.
My first thought, this is only an experiment. If anyone read my comments about “packaging” and DM that is probably the answer to what is going on.
He knows if someone clicks to see the price then he knows its a real human and not a bot visiting the page. Makes it easier to track real interest in your name.
Huh ? Because bots dont follow links ?
Word testing seems too far-fetched here. To properly test something, one needs two equal samples, and each domain name is unique…
He could randomly assign two different landing pages to user sessions viewing a single domain name’s landing page to achieve the equality with randomness. Tools like Optimizely do this.
It looks like he has removed the prices from the landing pages only (so far). When you browse or search for domains they are still showing prices. BTW, it Tracy the broker on all of Mike’s domains?
They are going for that “US real estate agent” look with the logo and picture
Without a price, it makes “buy this domain” button redundant when there’s a “make an offer” link below it though.
IME (and I do lots of tests) there were 837 queries when listing domains without a price, but only end up with 0.9% converting (8 sales), whereas with a price there were 49 queries for 10 sales (with several just clicking buy without any previous contact)
So to me no price meant much more work AND less money – YMMV of course as it’ll be portfolio dependant, but not something I’d go back to
“So to me no price meant much more work AND less money”
I have had similar results.
Moreover, dealing with the lowballers (and tire kickers) was extremely frustrating. And, sometimes they just got nasty when they can not buy a domain for pennies.
It probably dropped my blood pressure by 10 points going to BIN pricing.
As for Mike, he is always trying something new.
He is truly an entrepreneur.