opinion Landing Page: Contact Form vs. Email Address

i think your thinking is good. email addy is nice and clean. no complex forms or pages.
like u say, anyone who wants the name, will open gmail or someghing to email you.

thats why many pages just show two lines of text.. top or center... and lots of them are top names too... :

This domain is for sale.
Please email to inquire: [email protected]

I think a contact form with several fields requiring first & last names, phone number, email address and message will also serve as a good filter. Remember to add recaptcha to the form to filter out the bots. Depending on what platform you're using, you can gather a LOT of information about your prospect and automatically add their names to your mailing list. Don't forget that once they buy a domain, they are going to need hosting AND a website as well. Your mailing list is always an opportunity to upsell even to tire kickers.

I gave up on Contact form as well. I use wordpress for most of my sites. And contact form there a) is spammy, unless you take some measures regularly; b) the plugin loads even on home page and every other page, even though none of them has any contact form. This is annoying and slows down the website. So I opted for email address, business address, phone there with no form.

I would also stick with a contact form page where you can collect their details and filter out the parts you wish to have.

If the prospect wants the domain they will make an inquiry, and because you have given him an easy way to contact you (which is filling in the blanks) you are making life easier for him.

And as you will have prospects' email addresses then you will have this email address to offer more promotions too in the future, and offer domains and/or services to them.

Why Not Test Both Versions?
As for using a contact form vs adding your email address on the page for them to contact you, you can always test both versions for 3 domains each.

For 6 months:
Have these on the contact form version page.
(An Efty/Epic type contact form page)

• Domain 1
• Domain 2
• Domain 3

For the Next 6 months
Have these on the Email me version page.
(a simple page where you have your email address written, and you request them to email you.

• Domain 1
• Domain 2
• Domain 3

After 6-12 months of testing, you can see how each version performs, try to put them on good domains,

there are many factors involved which can mean some people will only contact in the 1st 6 months compared to contacting you in the 2nd 6 months, such as they might not be able to afford it in the 1st 6 months but they might be able to afford it in the 2nd 6 months, but this will just be a general test.

Matt Morgan