Domain investing does not stop at buying and selling domains. You purchased a premium domain, and you were ecstatic that you sold it in a short period of time. You bought a few more, but not all of them were sold.
What happened? Why were some sold and some were not? What is going to happen to your unsold domains? What could possibly be the best course of action for these domains?
These are the questions that analytics could help you answer. Just like any business, it is important to study the sales performance of your product (in your case, domains). Not only will it lead to an increase in sales, but will also help you in making the right decisions for your business and building relationships with your buyers. Let’s dive into analytics and domain sales.
What is Sales Analytics?
Sales analytics is the process of gathering and examining data that would be beneficial in structuring sales strategies. It used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service and of your sales tactics. Some businesses compare current sales performance with the previous period’s data, while others compare it to their predefined expectations.
Importance of Analytics in Domain Sales
Market
Analytics will help you learn more about your market. You will know from which demographic most of your prospects belong to. You will also discover which types of domains are commonly looked at by potential buyers. Getting familiar with your target market will guide in developing strategies that would boost your domain sales.
Sales Trends
Sales trends help you forecast your sales results for the next period. It also displays the buying habits of your prospects. There may be a certain time of the year when your sales are up. There may also be a change you made that affected your sales performance. Analytics assists you in discovering the cause of these trends.
Domain Performance
You can measure the performance of your domains with sales analytics. The results of your analysis will show you the strongest and weakest domains in your portfolio.
Sales Team Performance
If you have a sales team, you can also examine their performance by analyzing the sales of the domains under their account. Know what strategies they are using and know what works and what does not. Their engagement with prospects may also be affecting your domain sales.
Strategies and Initiatives
Most importantly, sales analytics help you develop improved strategies and new initiatives to increase and maximize profits. This may be adding new channels for selling domains, revamping your sales process, enhancing negotiation skills, etc.
4 Basic Steps in Domain Sales Analysis
1. Define the sales metrics
Sales analysis is not about comparing current sales from previous sales alone. It involves different metrics to get a better understanding of the performance of your sales strategies and the customer engagement methods you put into place.
Identify the sales metric you want to analyze and work at it before analyzing another one. Different metrics may need different data for its analysis. Some of the significant metrics for domain sales are discussed further below in this article.
2. Gather data
After defining the sales metrics, you will then collect the data that you will need to evaluate them. There are several analytic tools you can use to gather data.
If you have a digital asset management system, it has reporting tools that will provide you with the details you need for the analysis. Some of these track website traffic, user engagement, and geo location of users. There are also sites and extensions that are useful in collecting the data you need.
3. Analyze
After getting all the data that you need, it’s time to analyze. Depending on the metric, you get to study what affected the increase or the decrease in sales.
What challenges did you face? What channels gave you more profit? How many prospects did you have? How did potential buyers interact with you? By analyzing, you will have a clearer idea on what caused the sale or non-sale of your domain.
4. Implement plans of action
As mentioned above, one of the importance of analytics is for you to develop improved strategies and initiatives. After studying the results of your analysis, you will be able to build plans of action that are more beneficial in domain sales. Apply these tactics and then go back to analyzing their efficacy on sales in the next period.
Metrics for Domain Sales Analysis
Lead Conversion Rate
Lead conversion is the percentage of prospects that take steps into buying your domain. Visitors on your landing page who contact you are leads. They did not only visit your landing page, they took it a step further to inquire about the domain.
Lead conversion is when these leads turn into buyers. To calculate the lead conversion rate, you take the number of conversions you had in that period and divide it to the number of leads you had in that same period. Doing this would help you determine which of your domains are attracting more prospects and turning them into paying clients.
Sell-through Rate
This is used to measure the number of products sold over a specified period. In domain sales, it can be computed as the number of domains sold within a certain length of time divided by the total number of domains you have on that same time. It is the percentage of your domain portfolio that was sold for a period of time.
If you had 500 domains in your portfolio and sold 10 in a year, your sell-through rate will be 2%. Though it may seem like a small number, it is commonly acceptable for domain investors. A small increase in the sell-through rate creates a big impact in the total sales.
Sales Funnel
Sales funnel begins from the very basic step in selling. It starts with potential buyers being aware of your domains. Next is when they show interest by visiting them and then inquiring about them. It studies the number of visits your portfolio had, the number of visits that led to inquiries, and the number of inquiries that were converted into sales.
The term funnel is apt since you start with a number of prospects and then end up with fewer potential buyers along the way. By evaluating your sales funnel, you will be able to recognize the methods and channels that were effective in attracting investors, and the ones that need improvement or change. These may be ads you placed, the structure of landing pages, or different marketplaces.
Sales Pipeline
Sales pipeline, on the other hand, is the whole process that a buyer goes through from being a prospect to being a customer. While the sales funnel is focused on the prospective buyers, the sales pipeline is focused on the stages they go through in the sales process. It tackles more on the seller’s side of the sales activity. It is where you study the different stages of gaining a buyer.
How do you make prospects aware of your domains? How do you engage with them? How do you negotiate with them? How do you arrive at a successful deal and close the transaction?
Sales Cycle Length
In this metric, you will determine the amount of time prospects spent from your first interaction with them to having to purchase your domain. If you have sold several domains in your portfolio, you will get the sales cycle length by adding the total number of days each sale took and divide it by the number of those domains sold.
By doing this, you will get an average of the number of days it takes before you get the sale. This will assist you in budgeting your operational expenses and in forecasting your sales.
Sales Churn Rate
Contrary to lead conversion rate, churn rate identifies the potential buyers you lost. By knowing the average rate of failed transactions, you will be able to form plans of action to improve your portfolio and your sales strategies. To compute for the sales churn rate, you get the total number of customers lost and divide it by the total number of prospects you had at the beginning.
Additionally, you can also use the churn rate of domains in buying domains. This is to evaluate them before making a purchase. This type of churn rate for domains examines the renewal of the domains. Was the registration renewed or left to expire? What are the possible reasons it was not reregistered? This will also help with your sales strategy by knowing if the domain is sellable or not.
Conclusion
Sales analytics is a vital aspect in selling domains. You have to know if your sales strategies are working or not. Investors should not solely rely on marketplaces and brokers to sell their domains.
From the results of your sales analysis, you will be able to develop a blueprint that would help increase your profit. It is not enough that you focus on the domains alone. As analytics also provide data on customer engagement, you will know more about your prospects and will be guided on how to interact with them better. This helps boost your reputation and to attract repeat buyers as well.
Consider the metrics discussed above to come up with the most suitable strategy that could win you more buyers and increase your profit. Analytics does not stop at comparing current sales from the previous period. Study how you came up with those numbers and examine the whole process of the transaction, from domain awareness to a successful purchase. Remember that in domain sales, it is best to analyze to maximize!