NamePros has a brilliant idea with its fresh “buy now” feature

This approach could be the best of both worlds.

NamePros is introducing a fresh feature for its free “for sale” parking pages, and I think it’s brilliant.

Domain investors typically choose between “buy now” and “make offer” landing pages. The former displays a price on the page, and people can instantly buy the domain. The latter requires the potential domain buyer to fill out a form and either make an offer or request a price.

Buy now landers offer many benefits:

• Buyers can see the price immediately
• Buyers don’t waste the seller’s time with lowball offers
• Instant checkout = higher conversions

But there are two drawbacks:

• Buyers will ignore a domain with a price too high; you don’t get a chance to negotiate and explain the value
• Sellers don’t capture the potential buyer’s contact information

Make offer/request price landers offer these benefits:

• Buyers don’t get immediately scared away by a high price
• Can force the buyer to make the first offer
• Seller captures the buyer’s contact information
• Seller gets a chance to explain the value to the buyer

Alas, there are downsides to make offer landers:

• Many buyers will just move on; they don’t want to deal with inquiring
• More unqualified prospects

Putting this into practice, consider what happens when someone lands on Afternic’s request price lander. They can fill out a form and are promised the price within 24 hours, or they can pick up the phone and call. I suspect many people perusing domains just move on to another domain at this point.

What if there was a way to capture the person’s contact information and reveal the price to them immediately?

That’s the idea behind a fresh NamePros feature.

NamePros, the popular domain forum, began offering free sales landers last year.

The service now includes the option of adding buy-now prices. In a couple of weeksNow, the workflow for buy-now domains will include a form capture to see the price.

NamePros gave a scenario for how this could come in handy:

You price your domain name at $2,500. For years, hundreds of interested buyers want to buy it, but the price is too high for them. They don’t even try to contact you since they don’t realize that the price is negotiable or may change. Years later, you decide to lower the price to $995. How many previously-interested buyers would buy it at this lowered price? You’d never know — until now!

With our fresh Buy Now options, you can finally contact those previous buyers to increase your sales opportunities.

Here’s how:

Our landers require buyers to confirm their email address ahead of they can see the price. Once confirmed, the price is available to them and their email address is available to you. Simple and effective.

I think this is a brilliant approach, and it will be interesting to see how it works in practice.

This post has been updated with a fresh image of NamePro’s landers.