It’s the same like a contest, plus the buyers can already search for domains in the marketplace and use these filters you mentioned, these things are already implemented.
You are suggesting to run free contests, then why would anyone start a paid contest?
No, it would require too much time, it isn’t worth it.
@Bence_Ur Maybe in your world getting an email that’s asking you as a seller to pitch 3 domains you own to let’s say a Fortune 500 company (a bunch of them used SH in the past and looked for high end domains) is a waste of time. In my world I have high end domains- so yes, it’s going to be worth my time to pitch domains to serious buyers with a sizable budget. In fact, Grant posted such briefs a few years ago at the NP forum for a few clients with $XX,XXX-$XXX,XXX budgets. I’m talking about something that will be reserved for specific high end clients who don’t want to be bombarded with unregistered domains. They specifically came to SH because they want to buy an expensive domain and get a list of high end options, curated by SH. So please allow me to use this thread and SH can ignore this suggestion or consider it. Thanks.
It’s already implemented, let’s say I am looking for an expensive domain in the tech industry, curated by SH. Then I enter “tech” and use the “Ultra Premium” sorting option:
These are expensive domains curated by SH, if you scroll down you can read this:
It’s better because here the buyer can see all the domains, but if you ran these “mini-contests”, then only a few sellers would submit a few domains. All the domains in the marketplace have been already curated by SH. Then the buyer can use the filters.
But we could create another sorting option called “Price - High to Low”, which would list the most expensive domains at the top. I think such a sorting option should be introduced in addition to the existing sorting options.
I’m talking about a concierge type service that does all the work and hands the company a curated list of the best possible options based on their specific needs. And you’re talking about people from the company opening up a $500 contest and then using an ultra premium filter to try and find which one of the ultra premium domains could work for them. Not the same experience. Anyway… I have to go to sleep, so let’s leave it at that. I wrote the suggestion. SH is free to ignore and also consider what you wrote. Cheers.
SH Team,
4 suggestions for your consideration:
Premium Marketplace Search
Alphabetical: Give buyers the ability to sort all domains in alphabetical order… Also, optimize the ‘begins with’ and ‘ends with’ filters so they show only relevant results. A search for domains beginning with or ending with a specific letter (e.g. domains that begin with A) shouldn’t yield results that don’t fit the criteria (e.g. domains that begin with R), especially not at the top—this is the case right now.
Length: Add custom fields for buyers to specify minimum and maximum domain lengths and filter domains accordingly. The existing length filters are 3 letters, 4 letters, 5 letters, short, and medium. While they’re good, I don’t know that they’re effective enough (?). What about buyers that come in with a different, fixed length in mind (say 7 or 10 letters), and all they want to see are exact options? Are they to use the short or medium filters? What if their understanding of “short” or “medium” differs from yours? How can those with no clue correctly infer when the short filter turns out 3-10 letter domains and 12-16 letter domains? How about buyers that only want long(er) domains, what filter caters to their needs? Just thinking: Wouldn’t custom length fields solve these?
Price (filters): Add custom fields for buyers to input their exact lower limit and upper limit amounts. Reason — some buyers have an open budget and only decide how much they’re willing to spend when they find the right name, but a significant number do know just how little and how much they’re willing to spend. Beyond that, custom price fields may help discovery of relevant names in the sense that, with them, it would then be easier to pinpoint options at a specific price point (e.g. only $3k names), or options within a custom price range (e.g $3.5k to $4.2k names) than it would if one applied the fixed price-range filters (e.g $2k to $5k) and had to sift through the many more results they would yield.
Price (sorting): Give buyers the ability to sort all domains by price, from high to low (descending order). Currently, domains can be sorted by price, from low to high (ascending) and “ultra-premium”. Low-to-high sorting makes sense, esp. for the buyer whose main consideration is paying less… But high-to-low sorting also makes sense. Higher prices are often seen as a proxy for higher quality, esp. in a curated marketplace… So, buyers looking for higher quality may be inclined towards high-to-low sorting… The same thing goes for those with deeper pockets.
Plus, when used alongside price filters, high-to-low sorting will ensure that for every search query, (more) names at the higher end of a price range can be found just as easily as one can find names on the lower end of that range. Ultra-premium sorting doesn’t take care of this, it centers super high-value names and can disrupt the search process if one was filtering for names in a lower price range in the first place.
Some benefits: I think the above suggestions will help improve search, save time, reduce friction, improve UX, eliminate some of the issues of your 10-page search limit, minimize choice overload and scrolling fatigue, increase domain discovery, help buyers zero in on right-fits, etc.
Please consider. Thank you. @grant
@grant Shouldn’t we display in the headline on the landing pages that “this example.com domain is for sale”? The landing pages don’t explicitly tell that the domain name is actually for sale.
Almost every other landing page out there (by other marketplaces) mentions with large letters in the headline that “this domain name is for sale”.
Currently the landing pages only display the domain name itself (Example.com), but you could append the “is for sale” string to the domain name, there is enough room in that line. So instead of just displaying the domain name, you could display “Example.com is for sale” (below the logo).
It’s especially a problem on mobile view. If you visit the landing page directly (by typing the domain name into the address bar) and you are on mobile, then you won’t know immediately that the domain name is actually for sale. Please test this, you can see that on mobile only the logo, the domain name and the short description is visible above the fold. The visitor has to scroll down in order to find out that in fact this domain name is for sale and available for purchase.
Ok when the visitors start from the Squadhelp home page then they will know that this is a domain name marketplace, but visitors might discover the domain name via direct traffic, too. And here comes the problem, in case of direct traffic on mobile it is not clear immediately that the domain name is for sale.
But you only have 1-2 seconds. After that the visitor will close the window. In 1-2 seconds, without scrolling it should be clear that the domain name is for sale and available for purchase, on all devices.
I think it’s a problem, or have you A/B tested it? (landing pages with the “this domain is for sale” text and landing pages without that text)
Currently, some of my appeals have been pending for 127 days, a considerable amount of time.
I understand that creating a platform that caters to the needs of so many users can be a challenging task, and I appreciate the hard work that the Squadhelp team puts into maintaining and improving the platform.
If the domain appeal feature is not functioning as intended, I would kindly request that the team consider removing it. I believe this would be a better solution than leaving users frustrated and without a resolution for an extended period of time.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
The domain appeal doesn’t work, simply resubmit the domain after 60 days.
Thanks for your reply. Yes, there is a workaround by resubmitting after 60 days, however that does not address the root problem here.
The appeal system has been broken for years. SH has acknowledged the issue many times, yet the problem has persisted.
I believe it’s important to address known issues on the site in a timely way to provide a positive user experience.
@grant
Thank you for adding the “This domain name is for sale” text to all landing pages, works great on mobile, too!
Hi,
Since the launch of the Lifestyle stock images (around August 2020 I believe) - there hasn’t really been a renewal of these images. Would it be possible to add/renew some of these images. I’ve always thought these are a great benefit to the platform and do capture attention to our domains.
Thanks for your consideration!
New lifestyle images would be good. The current selection is too narrow.
But I would split test the following things marketplace-wide:
Lifestyle images might be good if you select the best image manually, but these auto-generated lifestyle images are funny sometimes. Make sure to manually select the lifestyle image, not via the AI.
You sell domains or remove domains from your account, next thing, approval rate drops.
I don’t see the reason why this should be.
The “You May Also Like” and “Other Names Based On” recommendations used to favor names from the same seller and mix in a few recommendations from other portfolios.
It seems this approach has changed, and now these sections just present random recommendations from other portfolios, making it more likely that leads will be lost to other sellers.
Please restore the old method to minimize loss of sales for leads generated from our names.
Thanks
It would be nice to see stats and shortlists… which do not include or separate out SH member visits and shortlists. I’d think a good deal of views and shortlists are SH creatives.
Can someone explain why some contests are $135 and some are $100?
Wholesale Marketplace
Refresh the wholesale marketplace.
You change price but it’s not updated in the wholesale marketplace until someone clicks on the domain, only then is the updated price seen.
Also, some domains are no longer available for sale in the wholesale marketplace, but still shows up.
@KwaziMoto Because when a customer uses a coupon, they take it from the prize amount side and not from the SH Admin side.
For premium names submissions, let creatives add a brief description of their domain. In many cases, reviewers likely have no clue as to the meaning or market for a lot of brandable names.
As an example, I’ve submitted numerous names starting with compre but none have been approved.
Compre means to buy or acquire in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin.
CompreData (buy data or short for comprehensive data)
My compre names have received numerous likes and loves in contests and CompreServe one a contest a few weeks ago.
A brief description will help to put a name in context and take less time than clicking Google, OC and LinkedIn links.
If you need to explain a domain, then it’s a bad brand name. The best domains need no explanation.
“CompreData” - for me, it doesn’t mean anything. You don’t have time for explaining it to your customers. You have 1-2 seconds to make an impression with your brand name, so domain names which are too clever or need explanation are bad domains.
Likes and loves don’t correlate with sales, only the repeat visitors (multiple visits to the lander by the exact same user), here’s the relevant blog post: https://www.squadhelp.com/blog/a-new-framework-to-measure-domain-name-interest/