Challenge: Increase clients’ purchasing decision

For over 10 years Flippa has been helping a global network of online business owners, acquisition entrepreneurs, designers and developers to buy and sell sites, stores, apps and digital real estate. The type of business and the way these assets have been bought and sold has changed greatly and with that change, Flippa has had to evolve its platform.

As data collection and analytics have evolved through the years, buyers now want to be more informed before making a purchase. Whether it's direct, organic, referral, social, email, or paid traffic, having insights into this information would provide the buyer with more confidence in the purchasing decision. If a website barely has any traffic, that may be a questionable acquisition and understandably, a cause for hesitation.

In June 2020, Flippa chose Semrush, a leading online visibility management platform, as the traffic insights provider for its listings.

Solution: Give potential buyers insights

As a marketplace, Flippa aims to connect buyers and sellers, but also to streamline the decision making and negotiation process. Semrush insights help buyers to get a better understanding of the asset, the asset’s marketing performance and opportunities for growth.

Look out for the Semrush module on each Flippa listing. Any potential buyer can get instant access to In-Depth Traffic Analytics through API:
 

1. Set up .Trends API

This section provides estimations of desktop and mobile traffic. It shows where a website’s traffic comes from; how users engage with the site, what devices they prefer to use, and more.

Traffic Overview

This part of the report estimates the total website traffic to the primary domain and the subdomains and includes:

— Visits

— Unique visitors

— Pages per visit

— Average visit duration

— Bounce rate

Traffic Sources

Review referring sites, search engines, and social networks.

Geolocation

See global traffic distribution (traffic by country)
 

2. Provide authority score and site rank

Authority Score

This proprietary metric grades the site’s overall quality and influence. The score is based on the number of backlinks, referring domains, organic search traffic, and other data. The score tells you how impactful a backlink from the site can be. A higher score means it’s more impactful for other websites to acquire a backlink from this site.

Site Rank

The Site Rank is a proprietary ranking of all domains on the Internet, based on how much organic traffic they receive. The lower the rank number, the bigger the site’s presence.
 

3. Show organic traffic details

The Organic Traffic Report tells Flippa’s users which keywords are driving organic traffic and if they are ranking for any SERP Features (Featured Snippets, Knowledge Panel), and more:

— Organic traffic estimate

— Total organic keywords

— Top organic keywords

— Top 10 organic keywords with Featured Snippets

— Top 5 organic keywords with Knowledge Panel

— Top organic pages, Including their traffic percentage and number of keywords

4. Give paid traffic insights

The Paid Traffic Report tells a buyer which keywords the site is currently paying for and provides the following information:

— Paid Traffic estimate to primary domain and subdomains

— Total Google Ad Keywords

— Top Paid Keywords, including the top 10 non-branded keywords

5. Provide a site's backlink profile

The Backlinks Report provides insights on a site’s backlink profile:

— Total Backlinks

— Percent Follow vs. No-Follow

— Percent Text/Image/Form/Frame

— Top 5 Anchor Texts

Referring Domains

The Referring Domains Report gives potential buyers a list of top domains that are linking back to the site.

Top Referring Domains

See the top 10 referring domains:

— Most authoritative - ranked by Authority Score

— Most prominent - ranked by number of links

— Most recent - ranked by most recently referred

6. Offer competitive insights

This report shows a potential buyer which domains the site shares the most common backlinks with. Use this to understand who the site’s top competitors are:

— Top 5 competitors by number of common referring domains

— Top 5 organic competitors, based on shared keywords.

All these insights are available for Flippa users for just US $10. The premium insights report covers an in-depth Traffic Analytics Review, Site Rank, Backlink Profile, Keyword Analysis, Referring Domains, and a Competitor Analysis. In all, over 150 data points are covered in each report, allowing for a comprehensive set of data.  

“This is a super exciting partnership for those that trade digital assets and small business owners looking to buy or sell. We’re working together to make analysis of digital properties – an ad-based site or an eCommerce business – more accessible. The integration is a result of direct feedback from our buying community who are looking for ways to analyze sites suitable for acquisition,” says Blake Hutchinson, CEO of Flippa.

“In addition to the listing integration, Flippa, along with Semrush, will be running ongoing, customer-focused initiatives to gain a stronger understanding of how the insights can be used to not only make an informed purchase decision, but also to grow a site’s presence, visibility, and performance during the post-acquisition stage,” adds Blake.

Semrush Chief Revenue Officer, Del Humenik, also commented:

“We are excited and proud to be partnering with Flippa and their users to provide comprehensive analytics to make better-informed decisions and acquisitions. Through this new venture, we look forward to working together to align strategy and data-driven insights to better serve a rapidly growing marketplace.
We look forward to your feedback and making buying and selling even more efficient moving forward.”
 

Results: $16,662 in revenue

• 1,662 reports purchased, for a total of $16,662 in revenue.
• 510 buyers purchased a report and went on to make an offer on that specific listing.
• 869 buyers purchased a report and went on to make an offer on another listing.
• 668 listings had at least 1 report purchased.

Key Takeaways

• Data enhances key decision making and can empower potential buyers. Providing access to traffic data and SEO stats, Flippa enabled buyers to make more informed purchasing decisions, fostering trust and confidence in the acquisition process.
• The acquisition process can be streamlined when digital assets are more accessible. By offering detailed reports covering over 150 data points, Flippa users gained valuable insights into site rank, backlink profiles, and keyword analysis.
• The collaboration between Flippa and Semrush was driven by direct feedback from Flippa's buying community, highlighting a commitment to understanding and addressing users' needs.