I have been excited about “Dan.com 2.0” which has been in the works for quite some time. The company launched the newest iteration of its platform a week ago, and I have had some time to poke around over the last week
Dan has been an advertiser on my blog, and I slowly started listing names on the platform a little over a year ago. I’ve sold quite a few domain names there, and as a result, I now list nearly all of my inventory-quality domain names on Dan in addition to quite a few of my highest value domain names. I appreciate that Dan is an advertiser here, but Dan has earned my business by producing domain name sales results.
After spending some time checking out the back end of the Dan platform as well as looking at the landing pages, I want to share a few thoughts about it:
- I noticed a few buggy things that I pointed out to the company in private. I think all the issues I noticed have been fixed or are in the queue at this point.
- The “Make Offer” field is more prominent for sellers who utilize this option. Previously, there was a text link to submit an offer that was less obvious below the purchase options, but now the Make Offer field is very obvious. I turned off the “Make Offer” functionality on my portfolio as a result and will see what happens. You can see old vs. new side by side here:
- Not having a minimum offer appear in the box may be helpful to warding off lowball offers from people who want to submit the lowest possible offer. I think many people will keep increasing their offer slowly until they hit the minimum offer, but perhaps people won’t want to waste time doing that. Sellers might want to play around a bit with minimums to make them a bit harder to find ($527 instead of $500, for example).
- I don’t love the 2% fee for credit card payments that did not exist before. Based on my experiences with Sedo
and GoDaddy/Afternic, I believe this is the industry standard(update – GoDaddy/Afternic does not charge a fee for credit card payments, so I was mistaken. Epik does not charge a fee, either. NameJet, on the other hand, charges me 2.5% for credit card purchases). I doubt it will hurt sales much, but time and testing will tell. If it does hurt sales, I hope and assume Dan will make a change to this. I believe the fee/discount impact sales above $1,000. - I like the 1% discount for wire transfer payments. Encouraging customers to pay via wire transfer might slow down some deals since wires take longer to process though. I would like to see a note that buyer chose this option so I know what might be causing a delay.
- My preference is the Default “for sale” theme, and I chose a color that coordinates with my Embrace.com logo. You can have a look at the theme I am using here: Chilly.com.
- It’s neat that you can add graphics, but right now that is only available on a portfolio basis. Personally, I don’t think it will be worth the time to add graphics on a domain name basis, but that is just me.
- Truthfully, I was expecting more features on the back-end of the website. I had made a few suggestions over the past year and have been told they may be added to Dan 2.0. I suspect the platform is working on launching new features slowly so people aren’t shocked by many changes at once.
Ultimately, the proof will lie in the results. Will my sales increase or not? I will likely turn on “Make Offer” at some point to see what happens when that option is selected but I may keep things as is depending on how things go. From what I understand, Dan will be monitoring results and testing to ensure this new iteration of the platform offers a lift to customers. I doubt Dan will share data, but I believe they will make changes in response to what they see if necessary.
My domain name portfolio is relatively small at fewer than 1,500 domain names. If I sell 3 domain names for $250,000 on Dan in a week, it might appear that the platform is awesome but I don’t have enough domain names to determine if it’s the platform or just luck. I have been reaching out to friends and colleagues with larger portfolios to get their take on the changes and ask what they are seeing. I am sure they are sharing their insights with Dan as well.
