How Would You Improve The Site? (Cont'd)

I am always willing to offer finest selection of our Domain Name Soup :slight_smile: 90% of good 5-letter domains are premium or taken, so I agree with you.

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@grant

Our portfolio page has now been broken up into much smaller pages. This is making it impossible to wade through without a search function. (I’ve got 80 pages now and can’t find anything!).

I don’t know if the larger page was causing you issues but I’d really like it back how it was if possible?

Or the ability to download our names with descriptions so we can find what we are looking for offline.

Many thanks for your time.

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I agree with you. I act differently and offer only own 5-letter domains at $100 award contests

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It’s not just a 5 letter issue, either. Often there are requests that require a lot of additional research (social media handles, multiple domain extensions that cannot be checked within our system, even trademark-type info) and with a $100 contest, the work to reward ratio is really out of balance.

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There are many great things about your marketplace from a sellers POV. I will mention just three of them.

  1. Domain submission times are super fast. The best of all the brandable marketplaces.
  2. The Sellers Dashboard (beta) is also the most comprehensive and user friendly in the industry.
  3. Your responsiveness to suggestions and improvements is also unparalleled as noted in many comments above.

There are two areas though that are still problematic:

  1. Payment wait times are very long. I know it takes time to transfer the domain and to process the payment but it shouldn’t take 2-4 weeks which is my usual experience. When payment is secure and I request a payout it shouldn’t take another 10 days to receive funds - which has also been my experience.

Personally, I have good cash flow and so I don’t mind waiting for payment - but other sellers care very, very much about timely payments. So it’s something to focus on.

The one area that REALLY, REALLY needs improvement is submitting domains to the marketplace after they are approved. I complained about this via Blue Button about a month ago and some changes were made within a week. I am very grateful for that. BUT the system still sucks big time and other sellers have complained about it including on platforms like NamePros. This aspect of the SH marketplace is, I have to say, the worst in the industry.

I will be very specific for you and give feedback on each aspect of the APPROVE THE COMMISSION RULE pop up window - which is the section of the submission process that is horrid.

  1. Primary Category - Drop down works good, only allowing one choice
  2. Other Possible Uses - Every time you make a selection the drop down list jumps back to the beginning and you have to scroll down again and find the place where you left off. Very time consuming and annoying. BTW I like that we are allowed to pick more than three and then can go back and select the best three out of all the choices we selected. So please keep that feature. I also think you should take a look at your drop down list. Hiking is listed as a sub-set of Mobile Apps. Sporting Goods is listed as a sub set of Sport Team Names. What is “Kitchen Ad Cooking”? Hotels is listed twice in a row. You get the idea. Some quality control is needed.
  3. Keywords – Same problem as Other Possible Uses. Every time you make a selection from the drop down it jumps back to the beginning of the list. Very, very annoying.
  4. What Emotion or Feeling Does This Name Convey - Same problem as Keywords. Every time you make a selection from the drop down it jumps back to the beginning of the list.
  5. What Primary Root Words In This Name --This feature is very, very unresponsive. It can take up to 30 seconds for the drop down menu to appear. As a result the user keeps clicking which further delays the appearance of the menu. Same for performing a search or adding a term. The cursor does not appear in the mini window when you click on it. So one never knows when to start typing a search word. Very clunky and super annoying.

On average it takes about 5 minutes to complete this form for each domain name. Way, way too much time. It should take about 60 seconds to make your selections for a domain submission.

My solution is to get rid of the drop down menus. Instead show a full page with all the options. The seller can go thru and check all appropriate boxes and then click SAVE and they are done. The drop down menus are slow, jittery and clunky. They are the root cause of all the issues with this section of the submission process.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and make improvements!! :slight_smile:

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@Commulinks @Edukar @ALDaisy1

Thank you for this feedback. Our platform is set up so that Contest Holders receive more features and benefits as they move up to higher packages.

With regard to the specifications of individual projects, we believe that the majority of Contest Holders have realistic expectations related to their domain requirements, and our branding team coaches Contest Holders on domain expectations if they become involved in any contests.

Naming is very complex, and we continue to look for new ways to educate Contest Holders on the various aspects that are involved in the process. Still, it is not possible for us to monitor the requirements put forth by each Contest Holder.

With this in mind, it is up to each Creative to determine if they want to participate in each project based on the project’s specifications outlined in the brief. Therefore, if you feel uncomfortable with the specification in certain contests, you can easily skip them and focus on other contests.

Also, as recommended by @AvramChe, do not hesitate to submit your Marketplace Domains into Bronze contests, especially, if they fit the name specifications as outlined in the contest brief. In fact, we continue to see Bronze level Contest Holders select and purchase premium domains submitted to their contests.

For the foreseeable future, we plan to keep the Bronze/$100 option, as it is an important level, especially for the many startups that work with Squadhelp.

Secondarily, to be clear, at no point should a Creative be providing Trademark checks or support for a Contest Holder. This is not your role within the name development process; this part of the process should be handled by a professional (either through Squadhelp services or elsewhere). Still, it is always recommended to take a few seconds to perform basic Google searches on all your name submissions to prevent the submission of name ideas that are clearly being used by other companies in that industry.

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Thanks for your response, Grant. This is really disappointing, though. It takes several minutes of my time just to read a brief, only to find out I am not going to participate. I do not understand why limits cannot be placed on these contests, at minimum.

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@AbleBrands - Thank you for this feedback. We have been making changes to address some performance issues with large portfolio pages. Based on your feedback we will increase the number of names we display per page, and we will continue to look for other ways to optimize this page.

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@GibbonTake,

Thank you for this detailed feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to share these thoughts with us. We are currently updating the submission process, and we will definitely take your feedback into consideration.

Regarding your comment about drop down lists jumping to the top of the list after a single selection, we did fix this issue a few days back. Please share a screenshot with the customer service team directly if you continue to experience this issues, and we will work on resolving it for you.

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Thanks, Grant.
The drop down list jumping around was fixed in some sections for a while but the past few days
the jumpiness is back.

I submitted a domain today and my post today was a narration of my experience in real time :slight_smile:

I’ll also send a screen shot to CS

thanks!

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@Grant, if they were in alpha order it would help some

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In addition to this, may I also suggest that you say up front how many categories/primary uses/keywords we are allowed to select? It’s frustrating not to know, select a bunch, try to submit, and then be told “You can only select # keywords”.

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Thanks @grant

This has reduced it to 32 pages which doesn’t really help much.

I asked for a search function for our portfolios which you were going to keep in mind for future platform updates.

Any chance of moving this up the list now that it’s become such an issue for larger portfolio holders?

Or to please put it back how it was? Or to change it to how you have the marketplace homepage (with additional pages loading as you move down)?

It really is a nightmare as it is.

Thanks in advance.

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@GibbonTake @Commulinks @Therold

Thank you for your continued suggestions.

We have made several updates to this page, including improvements on how the root-words dropdown shows up.

Hopefully, this process will now be more streamlined. And, as always, we will continue to look for more ways to improve the platform.

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@AbleBrands,

We did add a search function that is visible from your account on your listings page, where you can search for all of your approved names and see additional relevant stats.

We’ve also made further updates to your portfolio page, including adding the infinite scroll features so you don’t have to click to move from one page to the next.

We will consider adding a search function on the portfolio page as well, but this is something that will take some time.

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Thank you, Grant. The recent changes to the Root Word section are wonderful. That part of the form is working quite seamlessly now and as usual you have addressed this very promptly.

However, I am still finding that the drop down lists jump back to the beginning of the list every time I make a selection.

Is anyone else having this problem? Or is it just me?

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The load more is brilliant @grant it makes life much easier, thank you so much!

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Squadhelp: Would it be possible to put domain requirements in the preview of a contest? I’m talking about in the preview we see in the contest listings. Even if it said domain required Yes or No somewhere in that preview it would be great. It would really save time opening contests for those of us more interested in certain types of contests. Thanks.

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It is a pity that we don’t know if the CH wishes the Premium Domain or not. The corresponding item has disappeared from the contest brief. Now we can offer our premium domains in every competition, but this is unfair to those customers who do not want them. In addition, our percentile is significantly reduced in such contests, because the CH dislikes all entries with premium domains.

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I haven’t found that to be true. I really like that we can sub them to all contests and I hope it stays the same. I have sold names this way and so have others so take heart in that. My percentile score has not suffered from it, either. I thought it would. It’s important for customers to know what premium names are and they get added benefits from premium names. Many have not even looked at the marketplace and it also gives us the chance to promote our basic and basic plus names.

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