Fruits hits 2.6 million domains, launches fresh features
Fast-growing domain sales platform adds fresh features to improve conversion rates for domain sellers.
Fruits didn’t set out to become a domain name-only sales platform. It just sort of worked out that way.
When the business launched in 2022, it was a marketplace for all types of digital goods. But the founding team quickly realized that domain names were the best market to tackle.
“With domains, it doesn’t take any time for sellers to create the products,” stated fruits (the firm stylizes its name with a lower-case f) founder Dr. Fabian Heuschele. “When working with content creators, they first had to build an ebook — often with our help — and then sell it for just a few euros.”
Indeed, domains are easy to create and sell for a lot more money.
It didn’t hurt that one of Fruit’s investors knew the domain name market inside and out. Investor Stefan Wiegard was a founder of the domain monetization firm Team Internet, which was later purchased by what was then called CentralNic (and later changed its name to Team Internet).
Focusing solely on domains has helped fruits laser in on the faults of existing domain sales platforms.
Looking around the industry, Heuschele notes that many of the legacy platforms are “old and bad looking.” Innovation is lacking.
So fruits decided it could improve on existing platforms with a modern, fast system with low commissions (9.9%).
It also set out to solve a big problem with selling domains in Europe: VAT. The value-added tax can be a headache for domain sellers and buyers alike.
“If you’re in Germany and sell a domain to a private individual in Spain, you have to apply Spanish VAT and remit it to the Spanish tax authorities,” stated Heuschele. “Fruits does that automatically and 100% correctly without any manual processes.”
Fruit’s simplicity, speed, and features have helped it attract 2.6 million domains, up from regarding one million a year ago.
Of course, there’s a big elephant in the room for many domain investors: will they use a domain platform that uses the domain fruits.co?
Heuschele stated the firm chose the domain based on the idea of “the fruits of your labor.” As for using a .co, he admitted that some people have bugged him regarding that. Now, he views it as just one more unique thing regarding the firm. (The fruit firm Del Monte owns fruits.com.)
From a buyer’s perspective, the firm has little name recognition. But Heuschele stated no other competitors, other than GoDaddy and Sedo, really have name recognition with buyers.
To gain buyer trust, the firm has focused on credibility markers, such as displaying Trustpilot reviews on landing pages. It’s also a German firm, so its imprint is linked to on each page.
This stretch, Fruits released a couple of fresh features. It has fresh, simplified landers that it believes will convert better (pictured above). It also resolves each domain to its own domain name, rather than forwarding to a page on fruits.co.
Looking to the future, fruits is working on partnerships to syndicate listings to other platforms and domain name registrars.
The market for domain sales platforms has gotten crowded during the past few years. Fruits thinks it has the formula to stand out in this crowded field.
