AMA Seller Feedback

[neddy]

This is some feedback from a big user of your platform. As you know Anthony, I always try to be constructive rather than destructive.

I've used the AMA to sell some domains on a "no reserve" basis this week, and I have to say I'm really disappointed at the results. But I believe there are some steps you could take to help improve the situation.

These are my primary observations:

• Please somehow bring back the stats. This is mega urgent. A lot of buyers use them to sift and sort - I know I used to in order to give me a general idea of what I might bid on. As an example, I had a domain up yesterday for sale - currentexchangerates.com.au. By no means a stellar domain, but with 1300 Exacts, I was certainly hoping for between $150 and $450. It went for $10 right at the death.
  
  
• Allow sellers with reserve prices on their domains onto the homepage if there are bids on the domains. I know you want a seamless experience, but I believe not finding a way to do this is costing everyone. Many domain owners are bemoaning this.
  
  
• This has been mentioned before, but in combo with the above, please can you allow us the ability to change our reserve prices on the day. If bidding is getting close, it would be great to put a domain "on the market".
  
  
• Please can you return the individual bidding history on each domain (that you used to have). All the major auction houses have this feature, and it allows transparency - plus helps with future bidding strategies. I've thought I've won domains sometimes, only 10 seconds after auction to find that I haven't. This makes me , and I'd like to see what happened.

IMHO.

Cheers, Ned

 

[geodomains]

+1

 

[Chris.C]

+2

 

[DavidL]

+3/4

Not convinced on the 2nd point but 1,3 and 4 make good sense!

 

[Rhythm]

I'll admit that after my last foray at listing some what I calculated to be low $xxx names at no reserve I wasn't impressed at making $10 whilst netfleet made $50 from the buyers premium :/

(One domain was a hyphen which funnily enough sold to the operator if the hyphenless domain.)

 

[Chris.C]

I'd add another feature that will help improve sales - post auction negotiations for domains that get bids but don't meet reserve.

Allow the highest bidder to extend his offer to the standard catalogue and a typical offer and counter offer negotiation see if they can find middle ground.

Also you might find this interesting, until the recent change was made to the Snapper History page, I had actually been analyzing the results of the auction data to determine what influence big ticket domains sales have on the auction overall so that I could better choose the days to place domains on the AMA, and whilst I didn't yet have enough data to prove statistical significance, the data I had collect so far was suggesting that when domains of $1000+ are sold NetFleet on average also sells 30% - 50% more domains on that day than on days where there isn't a domain selling for $1000+!

I'd put this largely down to the "social proof" effect, whereby if people see other people bidding high, they are given additional confidence to also bid.

I'd also bet they bid more on days where big ticket domains sell as well even excluding all the domains sold for $1000 that day (though I didn't collect data on this).

So with the AMA clearly being the place where the best domains go up for sale each day, it makes sense to want to have those domains being displayed alongside all the other because it will incentivise more bidding.

 

[domainlover]

Agree, this needs to be returned --

Please can you return the individual bidding history on each domain (that you used to have).

 

[xwdomains]

I'll admit that after my last foray at listing some what I calculated to be low $xxx names at no reserve I wasn't impressed at making $10 whilst netfleet made $50 from the buyers premium :/

(One domain was a hyphen which funnily enough sold to the operator if the hyphenless domain.)

+1 I have stopped selling on netfleet ama because of this as I suspect many others have. put a few 1 word domains that sold for $10 while netfleet grabbed $50

also I noticed some good keyword names weren't showing as headline makers. Some didn't get a bid or show when I clicked 500

 

[Chris.C]

I also don't put any decent domains up for no reserve auction anymore after I found that they get substantially worse results than if you have a reserve.

 

[findtim]

This has been mentioned before, but in combo with the above, please can you allow us the ability to change our reserve prices on the day. If bidding is getting close, it would be great to put a domain "on the market".

99designs dot com have a system i saw today which allows you to hit a button that says "Guaranteed to select " and posts it on the bidding page for the designers to see, this was for a logo design and soon after we hit that button we more design applications.

i think this shows that its worth the effort as more bidders mean NF % goes up as well.

the real estate auction industry wouldn't let 2 bidders go away over a $1 miss

tim

 

[AnthonyP]

Please somehow bring back the stats. This is mega urgent. A lot of buyers use them to sift and sort

Stats are back!

Allow sellers with reserve prices on their domains onto the homepage if there are bids on the domains. I know you want a seamless experience, but I believe not finding a way to do this is costing everyone. Many domain owners are bemoaning this.

I assume by homepage are you not referring to http://www.netfleet.com.au ? as the top 10 "PREMIUM DOMAINS" section does precisely that. Assuming you are talking about /auction/ (No reserve - selling today) the answer in the short term is still no. I'm keen to see what happens as we move forwards and we will consider it but for now I think it is still early days for the new auction format and we are still gathering statistics.

This has been mentioned before, but in combo with the above, please can you allow us the ability to change our reserve prices on the day. If bidding is getting close, it would be great to put a domain "on the market".

I like this idea and I have been thinking about how to implement it as it has been raised before. Requires a bit of development work and I don't think we can put the domain "on the market" on the sellers command. We can probably lower the reserve so that a bid of $1 more will put it on the market.

You should bear in mind that this will ultimately alter the behaviour of buyers as they adjust their bidding tactics to counter this.

Please can you return the individual bidding history on each domain (that you used to have). All the major auction houses have this feature, and it allows transparency - plus helps with future bidding strategies. I've thought I've won domains sometimes, only 10 seconds after auction to find that I haven't. This makes me , and I'd like to see what happened.

We like transparency and we are not trying to hide anything I have just not designed the page yet.

 

[neddy]

I'd put this largely down to the "social proof" effect, whereby if people see other people bidding high, they are given additional confidence to also bid.

So with the AMA clearly being the place where the best domains go up for sale each day, it makes sense to want to have those domains being displayed alongside all the other because it will incentivise more bidding.

All good points Chris.

With regards the "social proof effect", there is no question that momentum builds upon itself. If I see a domain that I hadn't previously considered getting a few bids, it makes me have a rethink.

 

[neddy]

Stats are back!

Good stuff.

I assume by homepage are you not referring to http://www.netfleet.com.au ? as the top 10 "PREMIUM DOMAINS" section does precisely that. Assuming you are talking about /auction/ (No reserve - selling today) the answer in the short term is still no. I'm keen to see what happens as we move forwards and we will consider it but for now I think it is still early days for the new auction format and we are still gathering statistics.

Yes, I did mean the "selling today" page. It's disappointing you're taking this stance - I believe it would be a win/win if you changed this. You are going to miss out on a lot of good listings in the interim imho.

Chris.C referred to the "social proof effect" in a previous post. It really is a factor. e.g. I'm sure that if some of OMG's domains with higher reserves were allowed on the "selling today" page, they would attract a lot more bids than they are getting now. That could flow on to other domains.

I like this idea and I have been thinking about how to implement it as it has been raised before. Requires a bit of development work and I don't think we can put the domain "on the market" on the sellers command. We can probably lower the reserve so that a bid of $1 more will put it on the market.

You should bear in mind that this will ultimately alter the behaviour of buyers as they adjust their bidding tactics to counter this.

Anything you can do would be good. Can we do it manually at the moment? i.e. Can we email / phone you on the day and request a change?

I don't necessarily agree with your last comment. It has been proven many times in real estate auctions that when a property's status goes from "not meeting reserve" to "on the market", it tends to focus buyers minds. They know it is going to be sold, and so if they want it, they'll bid accordingly.

We like transparency and we are not trying to hide anything I have just not designed the page yet.

Not suggesting in any way that you are trying to hide anything. It's just that this feature was on the original Domain8 and Drop platforms that you designed; and then it was on the previous Netfleet platform from the "get go". So I'm just surprised it's not available now as a standard feature.

Any timeline on getting this in place?

----------------

This is not a "beat up on Netfleet thread". I've said it before and I'll say it again - what you guys have developed is fantastic.

But as with any "supplier situation", it's good to listen to some of your bigger users. We're only trying to help make it better.

At the moment, NF has a fantastic head start in the AMA. But it's only a matter of time before you will have competitors.

Cheers, Ned

 

[Chris.C]

Assuming you are talking about /auction/ (No reserve - selling today) the answer in the short term is still no. I'm keen to see what happens as we move forwards and we will consider it but for now I think it is still early days for the new auction format and we are still gathering statistics.

I'm glad you are considering it.

And already there are a number of sellers within this thread saying they don't use the AMA how you intended it because the incentives aren't there.

So I suspect it's only a matter of time before this anecdotal evidence is reflected in the statistical evidence and will reveal that merging the two together is what will achieve the best outcome for NetFleet as well.

I like this idea and I have been thinking about how to implement it as it has been raised before. Requires a bit of development work and I don't think we can put the domain "on the market" on the sellers command. We can probably lower the reserve so that a bid of $1 more will put it on the market.

Once again I'm super excited that you guys are looking to change this.

That said, one thing that I think is critical to note is that in my experience AMA domains don't receive bids in the final 60 minutes.

I'd say approximately 95% of the highest bids are placed many hours if not days prior to the auction ending. So just giving is the ability to drop the reserve won't actually increase the clearance rate.

I can't speak for others but I would only bother dropping my reserve on domains which were within striking distance of the reserve, and I will likely be doing it in the final hour or so. So given the way the AMA bidding works presently I fear that it wouldn't matter if the reserve was $1 or $1000 above the current bid...

Then of course there is the issue of, dropping the reserve to $1 above the current bid is pointless from an exposure perspective because if it still wouldn't be on the front page...

 

[GGroup]

Stats are back!

Where do the stat's come from (did Google change it's T&C's back, or whatever it was)?

 

[AnthonyP]

Thanks for the feedback guys, it is always useful to get lots of points of view on these things and I'll try get the history back next week.

 

[neddy]

Thanks for the feedback guys, it is always useful to get lots of points of view on these things and I'll try get the history back next week.

I told you I would bump this Anthony!

Bidding history is so important - particularly for those of us who get sniped and feel robbed!

 

[AnthonyP]

I told you I would bump this Anthony!

Bidding history is so important - particularly for those of us who get sniped and feel robbed!

The bidding history is back and can be accessed after the auction ends via the research tab.

http://www.netfleet.com.au/research/

http://www.netfleet.com.au/auction-history/

Then just click on the domain name you are interested in.