alter supports ppc landing pages just like dan integrates bodis?
Not at this time. Right now our focus is on improving STR through supercharged landers.
It would be nice if landing pages included all lowercase/all uppercase somewhere to increase confidence of the visitors.
We had considered that but couldn't find a place to show all uppercase/lowercase versions of the name without affecting the aesthetics. Also, because we handle all transactions manually we can ensure that buyers don't get duped (i.e. we can easily process a refund in that case).
I have a quick question for Alter, when I include the "both" option for pricing, and I add a "Minimum Offer" price, is this automatic? Meaning if someone does submit the offer price, do they get the domain at that price, or do I still get to negotiate?
As
@Jurgen Wolf pointed out, the minimum offer value is simply the starting point for negotiations. If a buyer submits an offer that matches your minimum, you will have the opportunity to accept/counter/decline/cancel/ignore it.
Sorry to be negative, but I am finding trying to create copy for my domains extremely frustrating.
Right now, it seems all of the "Descriptions, Keywords and Ideas" are very random, which is fine. I would like to add my own information.
The problem is, I usually can't. (I actually took images to show clearly, but can't upload here apparently)
You have restricted what we can write far too much.
Descriptions: Why must the word "name" be included? And why are we reduced to 100 words? It would be nice if we could give the potential buyer a "sense" of what our domain can become through copy writing. Instead we have one sentence. Is this necessary? Also, you can't use anything but periods or commas. No numbers, quotes, etc... Again, very limiting.
Keywords: I understand why there is a limit of 6, that is fine. But again, certain words or numbers aren't allowed. Since we are already limited to 6, why can't we use whatever words or phrases that we believe the client would type in to find the domain? They are always the same, which means as soon as you get enough domains, the keyword search function will be pretty useless to the client when they are searching. Which also means they'll get bored or frustrated and leave.
Ideas: This is the most limiting. Why can we only use short words. And half the time it doesn't accept my words even though they are legitimate business ideas. This should be somewhere where we are free to give the potential client an idea of what they can use the domain for. But it's very difficult with the way you have this limited.
I want to create enough copy to help convert the client. The descriptions and ideas shouldn't have a word limit at all, or at least 500 words minimum. You would think you'd want the domain owners to write copy in order to convert sales as it's better for you and us. But I find this all too restrictive to properly do anything.
I think on the client side when they see the same basic sentences on every single domain again and again, it is no longer a place to look for legit business names, rather it's just a list that is poorly curated.
Again, I am not trying to be negative, I think your platform is very easy to use in other aspects and am happy with everything else, other than this. So I won't move my names off, I just wish I had far more control over the "selling" aspect of the business as these are my domains.
Thanks for your time on reading this. @Alter.com
Thanks for the feedback! It's much appreciated.
The reason we restricted a lot of this is to ensure consistency and a high quality experience for buyers. I don't know if you remember the MySpace days but if you do then think of this as MySpace vs Facebook (i.e. MySpace allowed anyone to add anything which created a ton of spam/disorganization and they ultimately paid the price of losing their users to Facebook which was very well organized because of the restrictions).
Effective marketing is all about the right balance of art and science.
@Bob Hawkes does a fantastic job explaining the pros and cons of shorter descriptions above so I don't want to repeat that. But it's always better to keep things short and simple especially in a day and age when visitor attention spans have drastically dropped (the average visitor attention span today is less than 7 seconds which means if we don't grab their attention within that time frame then they'll bounce). The shorter description will force you to think harder and in effect help you write something that will get the job done quicker/more effectively (i.e. the buyer will benefit much more from a 100 character description). Twitter was actually founded on this very logic even when Facebook already offered the ability to post much longer content (i.e. the only reason Twitter succeeded initially was because of their 140 character limit).
Regarding ideas, they don't need to be short, they just have to have a common suffix like "store", "shop", "service", etc. The reason being the landing page automatically creates a sentence based on those ideas so it helps ensure that the sentence is well-formed (i.e. "Perfect for business ideas like a xxxxx agency, a xxxxx company, a xxxxx brand, a xxxxx service, and more."). Right now our system checks your input against around 300 suffixes which should cover 99% of cases (e.g. store, shop, service, cafe, broker, class, service, activity, bank, brand, company, etc). Again, these are suffixes (general categories) so you can prepend virtually anything you like in the front (e.g. yoga service, consulting service, health service, gaming service, virtual reality planting service, yearbook decoration service, etc).
Regarding repetitive automated descriptions, a lot of it has to do with names being made-up and of course there are algorithmic limitations when you're dealing with such a small amount of data. At the end of the day, automation can only take you so far especially when you're dealing with creative tasks. This is why everything that's currently automated can still be updated by you manually if you like.
I agree it can be a bit of work for large portfolios but just like with anything else in life, the more work you put into something, the better the outcome with be. It's no different than the amount of work you put into finding the right names to invest in. Those that invest more effort into it generally end up coming out ahead. Our goal is to make that process as easy as possible for you without charging you an arm and a leg.
That said, please note that the default information generated should be very broad so it won't impact your listings in any negative way. Any additional effort you invest into improving it will simply boost the probability of a sale but doing nothing won't hurt it. Think of that information is being no different than any other content on the rest of the landing pages. It's there to help that small number of buyers who need convincing but it won't hurt your chances with the majority of buyers who already have their hearts set on the name.
Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it. Especially since it requires no additional effort on your part (though as I mentioned above, you still have the option to improve the listings further if you want).
When a domain is leased, I assume Alter takes care of the renewals during the lease term. Have you already dealt with renewals of premium (ngtld) domains, that can be very expensive?
Alter generally takes care of the renewals for majority of the regular TLDs but buyers would be responsible for the premium renewals. I do want to thank you for bringing this up because we had completely forgotten to mention this on our website. We added the proper verbiage now.
Does Alter share buyer and seller info like Dan or keep it confidential?
The buyer and seller information would be kept confidential. However, we do show the buyer's name to sellers if a buyer makes an offer. On the other hand, the buyer would only be able to see the seller's name if the seller decides to act on the offer (i.e. accept/counter/decline it). The seller's name will not be shown if the seller cancels the offer or ignores it/lets it expire.
Ideas and feedback:
- 'Add to Shortlist' button might be more intuitive than a heart. Some might think it's only decoration.
- Quick access to most recently shortlisted names.
- Keep shortlists permanently so they don't roll off. This is valuable data for what names are resonating most with visitors over long-term.
- Highlight the speaker icon with 'Hear This Name' text, otherwise just decoration to some.
- Automate possible uses based on newly assigned categories. Hundreds of names, too much to edit manually.
- Custom edit pronunciation, sometimes it's off.
- Optimized cross-promoted domains based on Suffix/Prefix/Category i.e Row 1 'Other names based on [suffix']... row 2 'Other names based on [Prefix], row 3 'Other names based on [same category names]'
- Logos on main page are kinda huge compared to other markets. Might look better scaled down a bit?
Best
Great feedback as always! I appreciate all the time you put into this.
Regarding making the favorite button more noticeable/actionable on landers, agreed and noted.
Regarding quick access to most recently favorited names, right now you can get pretty close by simply changing the date range of your dashboard (i.e. set it to "Today" or "Yesterday" and you'll be able to see the top favorited names for that time frame).
Regarding shortlists rolling off, all the data is permanently kept and you can use your dashboard's date range feature to filter through it. I think you're looking at data on the Domains page which only shows you the last 30 days worth. The reason for this is so that every domain has equal footing when you sort by visitors/favorites/offers (i.e. so that you're always looking at data for the same number of days and newly added domains don't get pushed down just for being new).
Regarding the speaker icon, we do show a tooltip when you hover over it but since pronunciation is often subjective, we didn't want to make it too distracting.
Regarding the accuracy of automatically generated keywords/categories/ideas, a lot of it has to do with names being made-up and of course there are algorithmic limitations when you're dealing with such a small amount of data. At the end of the day, automation can only take you so far especially when you're dealing with creative tasks. This is why everything that's currently automated can still be updated by you manually if you like.
I agree it can be a bit of work for large portfolios but just like with anything else in life, the more work you put into something, the better the outcome with be. It's no different than the amount of work you put into finding the right names to invest in. Those that invest more effort into it generally end up coming out ahead. Our goal is to make that process as easy as possible for you without charging you an arm and a leg.
That said, please note that the default information generated should be very broad so it won't impact your listings in any negative way. Any additional effort you invest into improving it will simply boost the probability of a sale but doing nothing won't hurt it. Think of that information is being no different than any other content on the rest of the landing pages. It's there to help that small number of buyers who need convincing but it won't hurt your chances with the majority of buyers who already have their hearts set on the name.
Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it. Especially since it requires no additional effort on your part (though as I mentioned above, you still have the option to improve the listings further if you want).
Regarding better name recommendations, agreed and noted for the future. Right now our marketplace has a very limited inventory. This would work much better if we had a lot of recommendations to show for each category.
Regarding logo sizes, I think we fall somewhere in the middle compared to other marketplaces. There's a competitor that actually uses an even larger size. Though we'll certainly consider ways to improve this as we move forward.
Your system doesn't allow to remove all these keywords and ideas.
Also I don't need their autogeneration at all.
Categorization is not necessary as well.
Yesterday I have parked 1 of my .PROs on DAN - and received $999 initial bid this morning...
No ideas, no keywords, no categories... Just domain - and just works!
Thanks for your thoughts! I appreciate it. I get the feeling that you're not a big believer of marketing? Let me try to change your mind.
Even though you personally don't see the benefits, I assure you that marketing does work. Otherwise, industry leaders in other sectors like Amazon and eBay wouldn't encourage sellers to use thousands of keywords on their product landing pages.
The whole point of it is to reach as many potential buyers as possible even ones that never considered your name in the first place. IMO, there's nothing wrong with increasing the probability of a sale if we can do it without any downsides. I mean at the end of the day, isn't domaining essentially a numbers game? The sellers who can improve their numbers generally come out ahead (i.e. by improving the quality of their names, by studying current trends, by assessing past sales, by reaching as many buyers as possible, etc).
Sure, you were able to sell that .PRO name just by relying solely on type-in traffic but you don't know if any of our innovative features could've helped sell it even quicker. In other words, if you could've sold that name a month (or even a day) quicker without paying an extra dime, why wouldn't you want to? That's essentially our goal.
That additional information on our lading pages won't make any difference to majority of the buyers who already have their heart set on your name and are going to buy it anyway (like they do on other marketplaces). However, it will help you reach even more buyers especially those that do need that additional push/convincing. So there's no downside to it, only a major upside.
Just put yourself in the buyer's shoes for a minute and think about which experience you would prefer if you were looking to name your new business/company/product/service:
Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it. Especially since it requires no additional effort on your part (but you still have the option to improve the listings further if you want).
One more transaction successfully completed here. Thanks @Alter.com
Verified.xyz sold for 14888 usd.
Wow, congrats again and keep it up!! Random idea for when you retire... you should consider offering domaining courses to aspiring sellers. I think you can help a lot of people with your level of expertise, not to mention you'd probably make a killing doing it!