Pretty much every domainer is familiar with Smartname.com landing pages, which often feature a picture of a women on the page with a lot of links and topics on the page.
Here is a what a typical SmartName.com landing page looks like here and here and here.
Over the last week or so, SmartName. Com has been rolling out some new landing pages with a whole different look and feel.
Here are a few new looking SmartNames.com landing pages you can check out:
According to David Hauser of NameMedia, with a very limited rollout, “the new templates are lifting RMV’s and overall revenue up to 8% versus the other templates in aggregate.”
“Some of the reasons we believe the templates have seen an uplift are:”
“1. Focus of the page has narrowed to targeted calls of action
2. Limited # of lander keywords (from 10 to 5)
3. Moved balance of most popular keywords to the tag cloud
4. Increased focus on imagery relevance
5. Inverting the colors on the ad results page adds additional focus to the advertisement rather than other page elements, resulting in a greater conversion
6. Overall, reducing level of ‘noise’ on the page.
We are continuing to work on these general principles, across all templates, to maximize conversion/return.”
Personally I like the look of new landing pages and they have some of the feel of the DomainAdvertising.com landers as well.
It appears this type of look maybe the new generation of landing pages.
Nice to see some updated landing pages coming out as they should help increase CTR and ultimately payouts to domainers.
I think the new landing pages do better because there are fewer choices. They are more like HitFarm landing pages now. I’ve also seen an increase on the new Smart Names pages.
Fewer links = More Money
I have many domains parked at smartnames and I do like the different options one has to park his domains. I have some that are simply parked, then others have an actual store (provided my shopping(.)com) and then I have some .CO domains parked that can be completely SEO optimized, and gain pagerank. One feature that Ido enjoy is the fact that you can put your own adsense code on the pages which obviously results in 100% of the profit (if clicked). I havent made too much money but I did make more than having the same domains parked at sedo.
Somebody from Smartname should look at them in IE9, it has no text on the page at all.
Donny
How do you know this is on smartnames.com end that the domain is not resolving?
Maybe is blocked due to TM issues.
Mike – In IE9, the domain resolves fine, and the domains aren’t TM’s either, but the text just doesn’t show up. Their designer just didn’t look at the domains in IE9 before going live. Not many people are using IE9 yet, but I do. 🙂 It’s probably just some CSS problem.
Thanks for the info Michael. I’ve been using SN and ActiveAudience for a few years and revenue has trailed off substantially. I’ll definitely be giving these new designs a try.
Also, not to nitpick but I think you mean SmartName, not SmartNameS.
“Their designer just didn’t look at the domains in IE9 before going live.”
===
It will be a big challenge for “designers” to “look at domains” on new Walled Garden Platforms.
The domain and parked content are not displayed to the end-user on those platforms.
Changes are coming… Domainers are like Frogs in Boiling Water
://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/dnsop/current/msg08869.html
Thanks for the feedback. We are continuing to aggressively experiment with new, innovative ways to drive conversions/revenue across the entire user experience.
Thanks for pointing out IE9 – as you all know, this browser is still in beta. We are working on this and it will be updated shortly.
Thanks.
David
I commend NameMedia for continuing to upgrade their ppc sites.
However, the same problem still exist, G &Y/B knows it is a ppc page
so they are not going to index it. Maybe even black ball it.
In todays level of seach sophistication, we are not going to fool G&Y/B.
Its great if a domain has substantial, natural type-in traffic but many domains
do not and we are hoping for SEO help from G&Y/B.
these are not I am afraid
@ Meyer. Thank you. We have devloped new ways to monetize domain names, beyond traditional PPC sites – as we look to provide our customers with more and more options. For example, we have:
1. eCommerce Sites: These are product specific sites, where consumers have the ability to find specific products to purchase that they are looking for. Beyond simply having an ecommerce call to action, we have also layered in CPL and CPM advertising. An example would be babybag.net.
2. Content Sites: These are algo content sites that pulls millions of articles across tens of thousands of sources. We use eCommerce, PPC, and CPM advertising to monetize the sites. An example would be landscaping.com
3. Hybrid Content Site: This is a PPC lander that has content integrated into the lander. An example would be abouttlds.com.
For all of the above sites, we are continuing to evaluate the best advertising mix/weighting / positioning (with new ad types) to optimize the revenue across our customers entire domain portfolio. We have found that many of the long-tail names that were placed on our platforms mentioned above, began to earn enough revenue to cover the domains carrying costs. A write up about our eCommerce platform was done a few months ago – http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2010/dailyposts/20100803.htm .
Thanks.
David
I just looked a them and the big improvement I noticed what the keywords that were selected made sense in English as menu items on a web page. I think that is the biggest issue at parking companies. If I end up at a parked page for “credit reports” and one they 2 page lander links are all stuff link like “credit reports bureaus free” or something else like that that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in English, then as a user that would raise a big BS flag to me. Of course these keywords are being autogenerated based on some metric that says they will pay better or something but perhaps something that will pay less but with higher ctr would be better in the end. Also I realize u can go and manually fix all your domains yourself at most parking companies, but I think having the automated decisions improved would make a big impact. A difficult fix though I think because how can you teach the computer what terms make more sense in English rather than just basing it off cpc and existing ctr data from just throwing everything out there and seeing what happens.