Empire Flippers Marketplace Changelog 2021

Platform Update

Renamed Buyer Dashboard / Seller Dashboard

We have renamed the Buyer Dashboard / Seller Dashboard areas to a shorter simpler version Buying / Selling.

Feature Update

Multiple Addresses

This update adds the following features to the following areas:

My Accounts Page

– Mailing Address has now been renamed to Business Address.

– In the Business address page, there would be a list of address on the bottom of the business address form.

– The form still follows the validation regarding US and non-US addresses.

Seller Task Page

– Legal Address Task is now renamed to Seller Address Task.

– There are two ways for the task to be completed: using an existing address or adding a new one.

– When the task is completed, it would display the selected value.

New Feature

Sign Legal Docs to Unlock Sensitive Listings

Some listings require confidentiality documents to be signed by potential buyers before being granted access to the fully unlocked listing details.

Feature Update

Sell Your Site – Add Progress % Bar

This update adds a progress bar at every step of sell your site page so that the user may be aware how much is there to complete the process.

Feature Update

Improve Make Offer Page

This update is a redesign for the make offer popup to its own page with the following new additions:

– Intuitively display the listings overview data (niche image, listing number, listing price, niches and monetizations) in a sticky sidebar.

– More space to read the whole offers form and to make the data more visible.

– Successful offer submissions will redirect to the listing page with a popup to show an option of going to the offers area.

Feature Update

Pending Sold Section in the Buyer Dashboard

– When a listing is marked as pending sold for a buyer, the listing will be displayed in the pending sold section of the buyers dashboard

– Buyers will have a visual confirmation that the listing has been marked as pending sold for them after placing a non-refundable down payment

– The listing will only show in the pending sold section for the buyer and not other customers that unlocked the listing

– Other customers that have unlocked the listing will still see the unlock in the active unlocks tab

Feature Update

Improve Unlock Listing Popup

This update redesigns and improves the user experience of the unlock listing popup by:

– Intuitively display the listings overview data (niche image, listing number, listing price, niches and monetizations).

– Compressing the space that’s being consumed by the unlock limits.

Platform Update

Remove Notification Dropdown

Inside the notification sidebar previously existed a notification dropdown that we have decided to remove to simplify the user experience.

New Feature

Highlight Contact Owner Availability When Booking Buyer/Seller Calls

This new feature improves the buyer/seller booking calendar by highlighting availability slots specifically when the business advisor is available.

– Sales team google calendar events are synced with the platform

– This data is used to highlight availability slots if the contact owner is available to join the call

– Sales team members are required to make sure their Google account is synced with the platform

– All data from Google Calendar is synced every 6~7 hours so keep that in mind if you notice any delays

Platform Update

Investment Refund Transaction Type Added

We have added a new transaction type for the Empire Flippers Capital feature, so that when an investor is issued a refund we can now display that inside the users wallet transactions history area.

Website Update

New CTA Area Added to Scoreboard Page

At the bottom of our scoreboard page we have added a new call to action area to allow users to quickly sign up or access the login page.

empireflippers.com/scoreboard

Feature Update

New Filter Added for Country (only)

This allows Buyers to filter by Country (only) showing all listings that only operate in that particular country.

Platform Update

New KPIs Added to Ahrefs Data

We have added the Domain Rating and Ahrefs Rank to the listing details page.

Feature Update

‘Need More Unlocks’ Informational Tooltip Added

Many of our Buyers were afraid to use all 10 of their available unlocks due to the worry they could not get anymore – we added a helpful tooltip to the unlock listing popup that helps shed some light for our users that if more unlocks are needed to contact our sales department to have more issued.

Website Update

Updated Screenshot Images for Registration Info Page

On our main website we have a page dedicated to highlighting all of the features and benefits of creating an Empire Flippers account. The images were outdated displaying our older interface with the previous style menu we used on the platform. Now all of the screenshot images have been updated to now display the correct sidebar nav menu.

New Feature

Referral Program is Now Live!

– Users will have access to a referral dashboard once enrolled in the referral program.

– The referral partner then users their link to refer users.

– When users visit our site, they are cookied for 2 years.

– When the user next logs in or registers an account with us, the referral partner is set for that user in our own users database.

– When the user places unlocks, then buys a business, the unlock will store who was the referrer, and then the buyer referrer will also be set in the sales details tab of the edit listing page.

– When a user submits a site for sale, the seller referrer will be set for the listing.

– After 2 years, the referrer will be removed from users, so future unlocks/listing submissions will no longer be counted.

Platform Update

Users Must Unlock Listings Before Buying / Sending Wire Transfers

Before utilizing the buy now functionalities on our platform users must first unlock the listing / business they are intending to purchase for these options to become available.

New Feature

Marketplace Filter: Monthly Unique Users

This update adds a new dropdown filter in the filter sidebar which has 2 input fields for a range of the needed monthly unique users of a listing.

Website Update

Buyer/Seller Onboarding Pages

We have created onboarding pages specifically for Buyers & Sellers that will link to our most useful and helpful information to onboard new users to the platform.

https://empireflippers.com/onboarding-buyers/

https://empireflippers.com/onboarding-sellers/

Platform Update

Monthly Recurring Revenue Multiple

A new KPI has been added to the listing details page to show what the Monthly Recurring Revenue Multiple is.

New Feature

Terms Acceptance Documentation

This update adds the following features to the Buyer (Purchases) & Seller (Listings) Dashboards:

– When a listing is sold, there will be an additional menu item/button named “Terms Acceptance PDF” (located in both overview and detail view).

– Clicking this new action will download a PDF of the Terms Acceptance Documentation.

New Feature

Deactivate Account Feature

Users now have the ability to deactivate their Empire Flippers account. A new area under the My Account section has been added called Deactivate Account.

Feature Update

EF Capital – Phase 2 Release

EFC Phase 2 has been released. The platform is now ready for the next EFC round without using Assure. There’s been a lot of changes so I’ll post the highlights here:

– Removed the need for Assure, doing everything inside the EF platform

– Implemented HelloSign for signing investment documents

– Design updates on investments and deal pages

– Automatically create investment transactions

– Automate amount funded for deals

Feature Update

“Transactions” has been renamed to “Wallet”

The transactions and payout details sections of the platform have been combined into a single wallet section. Payout details have been removed from the my account area and moved to the wallet.

Platform Update

New EF Capital and EF Capital FAQ Pages Are Now Live!

With the second round of investments underway for EF Capital we have revamped our website sales page to include all of the most recent information along with the new changes that have been made to the EF investment platform. We have also released a new FAQ page that is very useful for anyone looking to learn more about EF Capital and investing.

https://empireflippers.com/capital

https://empireflippers.com/efcfaq/

Feature Update

Crypto Payment Option in Bank Details

Users now have the ability to use a crypto wallet when withdrawing funds from the platform or receiving a payout for the sale of a business.

New Feature

Sort Marketplace Listings By Revenue

A new sorting functionality has been added to our platform marketplace to allow users to quickly sort the listings by average monthly revenue and net profit, high to low and low to high.

New Feature

New Sidebar Menu

Today marks a new day for our EF platform where we bid farewell to our header menu. This feature adds the following enhancements to our platform:

– New sidebar menu UI with dropdown sub-menus

– Notification side bar is will now appear in the left side after the sidebar menu.

– Popups are now centered in the page’s content in desktop/tablet modes

– User transaction table is now scrollable instead of the page itself

– Modified search bar UI

– Fixed most of the legacy layout code bugs

Platform Update

Amazon FBA Brand Name

Brand name is now deployed, this will be required for Amazon FBA businesses. Since Amazon URLs are quite long and confusing, using a brand name will help with identifying listings. The brand name will be displayed in the following places:

– Unlock ticket subjects

– Buyer HS deal

– Seller HS deal

– Listing page title in the platform (only when unlocked)

Feature Update

Updated FAQ Notifications

Our platform will now automatically send notifications (in app + email) to all buyers of active unlocks whenever the listing FAQs are updated. By default the in app notification is enabled but the email notification is disabled. The notification will be sent 30 mins after the FAQs are updated, to minimize duplicate sending of notifications.

Feature Update

New Seller Resource Added

We have added a new resource to the Sellers area called “The Definitive Field Guide to Selling Your FBA Business” available as a downloadable PDF.

Feature Update

EF Capital Round 2 Essential Changes

Lots of exciting new updates have been released for our investor/deals feature. This update includes changes creating a solid base for the next phase.

– Updates to customer facing screens. Cleaner layout and improved UX

– Added FAQ section for each deal

– Improvements on the EFC admin side including filters & column settings

– New internal statuses for investments to help our team manage deals efficiently

– Investments are now synced to HubSpot

Feature Update

Now Accepting Canadian Banks via Plaid (Connect Your Bank)

Canadian banks are now accepted when using the ‘Connect Your Bank’ functionality to verify your proof of funds.

New Feature

New Platform Filters for Marketplace

This feature adds a completely new filter set called ‘Platforms’ and will allow users to filter the marketplace listings by i.e. Amazon FBA, Drupal, HTML, Joomla, Shopify and more.

Feature Update

Disable Buy Now Button for Active Offer Circulation

When a listing has an active offer in circulation we will now disable the Buy Now button so that users cannot use the Buy Now functionalities until the offer circulation process has been completed.

New Feature

Seller Onboarding Task for $1M+ Listings

A new onboarding task for $1m+ businesses has now been deployed. When a seller accepts a final valuation, and the valuation is >$1m, a task is created asking them to book an onboarding call.

Feature Update

Duplicate Documents Upload

We have implemented the functionality to automatically detect documents that have already been uploaded to our system and display a notification to the user.

Feature Update

New Lock Listing Reason

Users have a new option to select from when locking a listing, the ability to choose ‘Other’ as a reason is now available.

Platform Update

UX Batch Improvements – Release #1

As part of the mission to continuously improve the user experience for our customers we released a ton of small updates that polish the platform to make it better overall for our Buyers & Sellers.

– When Seller connects Google account from tasklist page it no longer redirects them away, it will now keep the Seller on the same page

– Add sticky header functionality to Buyer & Seller sub pages

– Add ability for Buyers to be able to lock a listing from the Buyer Dashboard area

– Improved the clarity of important text on Verify Identity popup

– Improved the layout of the instructions for uploading documents

Feature Update

New Scoreboard KPI’s

If you visit our Scoreboard page we have added new KPI widgets for the following metrics:

– Number of $1M+ Businesses Sold

– Volume of $1M+ Businesses Sold

– Total Verified Liquidity of Buyers

Feature Update

Seller Availability Update

We have released some updates to help the issue with sellers not having any availability slots setup to allow Buyers to book calls with them.

A bar will appear at the top of the platform that will not disappear for sellers who have buyer seller calls enabled for a listing. If they have seller availability, the bar will not appear at all.

If a seller’s availability dries up 7-14 days in the future, the platform will automaticall copy the previous 7 days availability into the next 7-14 days. This is a background job that runs every Sunday evening.

New Feature

Sellers Can Submit FAQ Questions/Answers

Sellers now have access to a FAQ tab section to fill out frequent or common questions / answers, once submitted our team will add those to the Seller’s listing which then appear on the Seller’s listing page.

Platform Update

Successfully Signed Out Page

We have released a new page that users will land on after successfully signing out of the platform. We included some useful links to different areas of the website such as our support site.

New Feature

Commission Calculator

We have created a new commission calculator available to the public to use here https://empireflippers.com/commission-calculator/. The new commission is blended, meaning the commission rates are stacked on one another based on the value of the business.

New Feature

Withdraw Funds Feature

The withdrawal request feature has been released. Users with COF can now withdraw their funds using the new Withdraw Funds button on the Transactions page.

Feature Update

Offers V3.1 Release

Offers V3.1 has been released. This is a small update to the offers system with the following changes:

Sellers can’t submit multiple counter offers at a time

Buyers can only submit one offer at a time

Unlock can’t be closed when the buyer has an active offer

Added new admin functionality so staff can reset the circulation period

New Feature

Extended ID Verification

We now have additional ID verifications for users that are deemed likely to copycat, or to not have a real buying intention. This additional ID check is a video call with a member of the sales team, who will interview them about their intention on buying a business.

The users who need to undergo Extended ID Verification are based on the country of the ID they use to verify their identity. This information is gathered from both document uploads and Persona. We use the Corruption Perceptions Index (https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020) the top 60 countries in this index do not need to undergo extended verification, everybody below rank 60 will need to. Generally speaking, developed countries are excluded from extended ID verification.

Feature Update

Verify ID on Listings Page

Users can now go through the process of verifying their identification without having to leave the listing page they are currently on. This significantly improves the user experience by keeping them on the page they are interested in unlocking or potentially purchasing.

Platform Update

Removed Reference to VIP Codes

We have transitioned away from VIP Codes altogether and now only referring to them as ‘Unlocks’ – we have updated all references across the platform to reflect these changes.

Platform Update

Toastr Notifications

To help improve the user experience we have introduced toastr notifications to the platform, these notifications will provide beneficial feedback for interactions across the platform, keeping users updated with the actions they have carried out and any errors they might come across.

Feature Update

Improved Lock Listing Feedback

Previously the lock listing button was situated at the very bottom of the unlocked listing page, making it hard for users to locate it. We have moved the button to the top of the page in a much more visible position, along with some improvements to the lock listing feature:

– The lock listing button has been renamed to “Not Interested”

– The button has been added to the top of the unlocked listing

– The buyer is no longer redirected to another page to provide feedback

– The feedback box is in a popup for the buyer to provide feedback and lock the listing

– The buyer is redirected back to the marketplace after submitting feedback to lock the listing

Feature Update

Marketplace Grid View – Default View

For this update we decided to make the marketplace grid view the default layout for users visiting the marketplace on the platform. Our new re-designed grid view provides a more user friendly approach for novice users and we don’t want to scare anybody away with our data heavy list view layout 🙂

Feature Update

Buyer Profile Quiz CTA

Under the Buyer Profiles area on the listing details page we added a quick call to action for users to easily take our Buyer Profile Quiz.

Platform Update

Unlock Referral Tracking

Here is a list of updates released for the Unlock Referral Tracking feature:

– Listing preview with niche, monetization, listing price, and first paragraph of listing description displayed on unlock page

– Listing preview shown to existing customers with steps to unlock

– Listing preview shown to new referred customers with register form

– New option of “Buyers Referrals” added for enabled accounts

Feature Update

Payout Details Task

This was a big update on our end to build a payout details task allowing Sellers to submit their payout details early on to our accounting team so that once the listing is sold payment can be promptly transferred to the correct parties without delay.

Feature Update

New AdSense Terms Task for Sellers

We have created a new task for AdSense sellers that explains some downtime during the period of Migration whilst ownership is transferred over. The Seller must agree to these terms before proceeding with the remaining steps of the vetting. Otherwise time will be wasted for both parties if this is not made aware up front.

Feature Update

Listing Details Page Layout Updates

For the listing details page we decided to add a new niche image and to break out the listing price on it’s own line to make it stand out. Over subtle changes include some dividing lines to separate the content and help clean up the layout.

Feature Update

Improved Buyer Dashboard Layout

A significant layout improvement has been made to the Buyer Dashboard > Active Unlocks / Closed Unlocks area.

Feature Update

Setup Call with Sales Advisor Task

A task is now created for Sellers in vetting that require them to set up a call with a Sales Advisor to help our team understand the Seller’s goals and answer any questions they may have.

Platform Update

2021 State of the Industry Report

We analyzed 844 businesses we sold over the last 3 years for trends and predictions, so this is the only report that reveals the REAL sales price the market is paying for an online business.

Website Update

Updated Design for Landing Pages

We have significantly improved the design for a couple of our landing pages, you can checkout the new pages here:

https://empireflippers.com/call

https://empireflippers.com/industry-report

Platform Update

New Copyright Policy Page

Users can now verify funds using their bank account directly from the My Account area under the Verification tab. This option was usually only presented when users were going through the Unlock process, but we decided it would be beneficial to allow our users to complete this action indepentently from unlocking listing.

Feature Update

Connect Bank Account from My Account Area

Users can now verify funds using their bank account directly from the My Account area under the Verification tab. This option was usually only presented when users were going through the Unlock process, but we decided it would be beneficial to allow our users to complete this action indepentently from unlocking listing.

Feature Update

New ‘Vetting Completed’ Status

To improve the user experience we have added a new status to the Seller dashboard so that when a listing has passed the vetting process it will now display a new ‘Vetting Completed’ status.

Feature Update

Improved UX for Rejected Listings

We fixed an issue on the Seller dashboard area after a listing had been rejected, incorrect information was being displayed to our Sellers, so we fixed the problem by updating the message and making sure it was displayed for all rejected listing, and also added a call to action to submit a new listing.

Feature Update

Trailing Twelve Months Multiple Added to Scoreboard

We added a new metric to our scoreboard page that shows the Average Sale Multiple for the Trailing Twelve Months (The sale price divided by the average monthly net profit of the trailing 12 months).

Feature Update

Google Analytics Web Properties Notification

An issue occurred for a number of our users that had reached the number of allowed web properties on their Google Analytics Account. We have created a new email and in platform notification to make users are aware of reaching their max allowed web properties limit and to take action by freeing up space on their existing account by removing some other web properties or by using another Google Analytics account.

Feature Update

Marketplace Design Updates

We made significant design improvements to our Marketplace Grid View layout by changing up the information displayed, we added new niche images to each listing and they can also be seen on the Marketplace List View page.

Feature Update

Offers V3.0

Offers V3 is now live. Besides a bunch of bug fixes this is the list of the biggest changes and improvements:

– New improved offer overview design for both Buyers and Sellers.

– Increase text limit for offer details (1,000 -> 10,000 characters).

– For sub $100K deals add a “Negotiate” button so buyers and sellers can communicate and discuss offers.

– Closing an unlock closes any pending offers for the buyer.

Feature Update

Improved Listing Steps for Mobile

On tablet and mobile devices we have improved the listing progression / steps bar so that it saves screen space and improves the overall user experience with a cleaner approach.

Platform Update

New Monetization Added

We’ve now added the “Subscription-Box” monetization method. This is in addition to the existing “Subscription” monetization method.

For businesses that actually are Subscription-Box companies, we now have a better monetization for you to choose. Although right now for things like the Valuation Tool, etc, both Subscription + Subscription-Box are treated identically, in the future we have the freedom to make their estimated valuations diverge.

Feature Update

Updated Valuation Result CTA

On the Valuation Results page we wanted to move the call to action to start the process of selling your business higher up the page and we added some fancy animation effects to your valuation price.

Feature Update

Users Must Verify Identity for Incoming Wires

We now ask for our users to verify their identities before being able to submit incoming wire transactions.

Feature Update

A New Accepted Form of Proof of Funds

‘SBA Documentation’ has been added as an available source for accepted Proof of Funds when proving liquidity inside the EF platform.

Platform Update

Updates to the Sell Through Rate Statistic

The sell through rate stat has been updated to reflect the change in exclusivity period from 6 months to 2 months, meaning it has changed from 91% to 76%. The formula is:

– All listings that have sold in the last 12 months as a percentage of:

– #1 + listings that were listed at LEAST 60 days and removed

This stat is displayed on the homepage and on the scoreboard.

Feature Update

Verify Email Task

At times in the past a few of our Sellers have typo’d their email address when signing up via Sell Your Site and then proceeded to complete all of the Seller Tasks (ID Verification, etc) … Only to subsequently get locked out of their Empire Flippers account because they don’t have access to that email address with the typo in it. We have implemented a few fixes to help solve this issue, one of the main ones being the new ‘Verify Your Email’ task.

Feature Update

Re-Unlock Tooltips Added to Closed Unlocks

As a Buyer if you have unlocked a listing and then re-locked it, you can re-unlock that same listing at any time without using up one of your available Unlocks.