I am going to try something on my Embrace.com inquiry pages. I am going to remove the offer field from the landing page and see if doing so provides any sort of lift. I am sure it will increase the number of inquiries, but my hope is to also increase sales.
I recently sold a domain name but the buyer did not remove the “for sale” link from the landing page. Because the domain name is no longer being sold by me, I deleted the name from my database. Instead of being directed to an inquiry page, people who click the link are instead directed to the contact page. Prior to selling the domain name, I probably received one inquiry/offer a month. Since changing the redirect to a general contact page, I have received several different purchase inquiries. The contact page form is somewhat similar to the inquiry form, except there is no field for offer or phone number. My hypothesis is some people may be intimidated by the offer field.
In looking at a list of offers received in the last few months across my portfolio, I don’t see one that is all that close to either my asking price or final sale price. Many offers seem to be $100. I would say most of these are genuine, in that the prospect only has $100 to spend, but quite a few made substantially higher subsequent offers, so their $100 offer was a placeholder. They don’t want to overcommit, so they intentionally underbid hoping to work out a deal. There have been a few deals that were close to the initial offer, but most of those buyers were pretty savvy and seem to know the market.
One reason for having the offer field is to quickly eliminate unqualified buyers. I have learned it’s pretty fruitless to have a discussion with someone who offers $15 for a one word or 3 letter .com domain name. Even if I convince them of the utility of the domain name and show them the domain aftermarket, most people simply don’t have the budget to make a real offer. Removing the offer field may cause me to engage more with people I might have been able to eliminate from the outset, but those people probably won’t reply to my response email.
In looking at other offer pages, it does not look like GoDaddy’s landing page has an offer field either. I think Uniregistry’s offer field is presented after the person submits their contact information. I believe Efty, DAN.com, and Sedo all have offer fields on their landing pages on unpriced domain names. I am not sure if users can opt to eliminate the offer field.
I am going to give it a shot and see how it impacts my business. It could cost me a bit more time dealing with people who would ordinarily be eliminated from the start, but I also think it could be good to generate more leads, especially on mid-level inventory with more pricing flexibility.
i too have often used reason and logic to adapt my domain sales strategies. never worked out for me.
Thanks for sharing. Please keep us updated.
Have you seen what Venture.com is doing? Click on one of their names at site.
This is a good idea, following!
Most names should be listed with a BIN, unless you like dealing with people who have $100 budgets. Exception is very high quality names.
I would guesstimate that 90% of my portfolio is listed on GoDaddy/Afternic with BIN prices. The reason I don’t have BIN prices on my Embrace.com landing pages is four-fold:
1) I would rather collect leads so if I want to juice sales by lowering select prices, I can follow up with prospects down the road. If someone lands on my landing page and the BIN is too high, they may just choose something else rather reaching out to negotiate.
2) If I have an offer field or link along with a BIN price, it tells people to make an offer rather than BIN, which sort of defeats the purpose. I then have to price substantially higher to account for people making lower offers.
3) If someone visits my inquiry landing page rather than using a BIN on GoDaddy, it gives me time to dynamically price the domain name and price it at a current market value rather than a price I set months ago. I may arbitrarily set a price for names at GoDaddy, but being able to individually respond to an inquiry allows me to set a more accurate price based on current market conditions.
4) I do not like the BIN landers I had created, so I scrapped them.
I was just wondering what have been the Top 10 Domain Sales for pages with landers??
This year, last year.
Is it really working?
Is it getting a fair return or a fire sale return?
Especially domains that sell for 5 and 6 figures or more.
I don’t know the answer but would like to have that valuable unvarnished info.
Would love to know that, but my guess is the performance is all proprietary.
I think an investor would have to have a huge portfolio and test different company landing pages to get a real idea of performance.
Seems like testing would be possible with a ParkLogic format where different sales platform BIN landing pages are loaded and tested like they do with parked pages.
Well then, what is the highest sale and how many made by any reader here?
That may give us an idea.
I’ve taken this approach myself Elliot.
I point all of the ones I would sell or rent to a single landing page with a contact form and a virtual landline telephone number that diverts to my mobile phone.
My theory is that a phone number, especially a landline, adds a little bit of credibility.
It hasn’t resulted in any meaningful offers to date (2 months in now), but I don’t often sell or try to sell names from my portfolio in any event.
Of course, they could all be rubbish names, but my visitors get to see what I’ve done with some of my names and get an idea as to how I value them.
Good luck with the trial!
Was the offer field optional before you removed it? Maybe that could work for both parties.