Test my website/online biz valuation calculator

[JM35]

Hey fastlane fam,

I've (slowly) been working on building an online business brokerage to translate my day job expertise to my passion, online business.

I've had some success getting deals one-off - I closed 3 deals in 2019 for $650k of transaction value, which was pretty good for the amount of time I spent working on building the business.

But ultimately, what I'm lacking is a consistent lead-gen strategy to bring steady deal flow. So I've decided to sort of put a hold on finding one-off deals so that I can focus my limited time on building a lead-gen strategy that will bring consistent deals in so that I can simply focus on execution, rather than having to focus on going and hunting for new deals.

New Valuation Calculator
One of the things I'm working on building is a valuation calculator, and I would love anyone's feedback on the form and results of the calculator.

Here is a link to the calculator: Website Value Calculator - How Much is My Website Worth?

The website is still in the process of being finished and the results page hasn't been done-up yet, but will still spit out the valuation results. Also, I haven't finished this part yet, but I'm going to put an email capture box at the end of the form and require an email from all form users so that I can target them as potential sellers.

Concerns with the calculator
Do you think the calculator is too long and asks too many questions? Unfortunately, as of right now, I can't condense it without spending another probably $1,000 to get it re-coded. My alternative is an older calculator that I built:

Alternatively, I built out an excel based calculator a year or so ago that only requires 6 inputs, but the issue is that I used some pretty advanced excel formulas to build it so I haven't been able to find anyone that is able to turn it into a form on Wordpress that can capture user inputs and automatically email them the results.

Here is the old calculator I built that is a lot simpler to use, but haven't found a way to build in wordpress yet: Valuation Model Vtest

Question for y'all on marketing
Any recommendations on the best way to market this calculator/tool?

I've been working on putting some good content on it for SEO purposes and then planning on running some cheap FB ads, but not sure what else I should be doing.

Thanks for checking it out and for any recommendations!

 

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[Rabby]

The colors are screaming at me, but I'm gonna go test it now. At some point you are going to need a professional UI person and/or artist to look at this.

 

[Rabby]

Here's my take.

First, you need a confidentiality/privacy guarantee. I can't even find the privacy policy, and you're asking for in-depth business information. You should be assuring people on page one that their information is confidential.

It offers to value "service" businesses, which I guess is what I have, but most of the questions are about web analytics. It seems like this is only really a tool for affiliate sites or something. A web site is an extremely small part of a business operation. In fact, some businesses to this day are able to operate without one.

I was able to get analytics information, but I suspect many would not be. If they are able to get it, it's a little weird to have a drop-down for numbers. If my measured value in analytics is 64.5%, why am I forced to choose either 50% or 75%+ ? The values seem arbitrary, and I would probably abandon the attempt if I weren't testing it.

Some of the other dropdowns made assumptions too. I would go through those and think about the variety of businesses, and the range of owner involvement in them. What if the business has no employees? How do you answer questions about hiring and recruiting in that case? What if the owner works on the business once a quarter, or once a year? How do you answer questions about weekly involvement in that case. Loosening some of those selections up might give you better information.

The valuation seems reasonable, I guess (but I'm not selling). I wondered if it even used the analytics info, or what it used. I got a multiplier on profit, but it seems almost entirely based on revenue to net profit.

I might not be the ideal target for this, but that's my feedback. Hope it helps.

 

[JM35]

The colors are screaming at me, but I'm gonna go test it now. At some point you are going to need a professional UI person and/or artist to look at this.

Haha yeah I'm still working on all of that. I am planning on getting someone to do some professional design once I can find a trusted guy to do it, just trying to get everything else pinned down first and have it 100% operational before spending that $$.

 

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[Rabby]

Haha yeah I'm still working on all of that. I am planning on getting someone to do some professional design once I can find a trusted guy to do it, just trying to get everything else pinned down first and have it 100% operational before spending that $$.

That's good. Just wanted to point it out. No problem with placeholders.

 

[JM35]

@Rabby

Thanks for the suggestions. I hadn't thought of the confidentiality nature/people being concerned about providing all this information so that's a good point to address. The main thing we are going to do is use the email to ping them after they submit the form and say "we run a brokerage, let us know if you'd like to discuss selling your business further". So I'll think of a way to incorporate this on the front-end so that people know how their information is going to be used and that it will not be shared/sold/etc. and that they will get one follow-up email and not be spammed.

Ultimately I'd like to use my shorter tool since I think people would be more comfortable only providing 6 pieces of info instead of the 30+ the form uses now, but I just haven't figured a way to make it work yet. I also agree that some of the drop downs don't make sense and are hard to input for certain businesses which is why I prefer my other calculator too.

The valuation is tied to profitability (valuation multiple x 12-month profits), but the valuation multiple changes depending on all the inputs. However, 50% of the form is still weighted to the financials. It takes some formuals of traffic and profitability to tell if these metrics is trending upwards, since these two things tend to affect valuations and "sell-ability" in our experience so far. But the remaining 50% is tied to the smaller questions, its just less hard to see the impact since most only have a 5% weighting.

Anyways, super helpful. Thanks for taking the time to test it out and provide feedback.

 

[CareCPA]

Hey fastlane fam,

I've (slowly) been working on building an online business brokerage to translate my day job expertise to my passion, online business.

I've had some success getting deals one-off - I closed 3 deals in 2019 for $650k of transaction value, which was pretty good for the amount of time I spent working on building the business.

But ultimately, what I'm lacking is a consistent lead-gen strategy to bring steady deal flow. So I've decided to sort of put a hold on finding one-off deals so that I can focus my limited time on building a lead-gen strategy that will bring consistent deals in so that I can simply focus on execution, rather than having to focus on going and hunting for new deals.

New Valuation Calculator
One of the things I'm working on building is a valuation calculator, and I would love anyone's feedback on the form and results of the calculator.

Here is a link to the calculator: Website Value Calculator - How Much is My Website Worth?

The website is still in the process of being finished and the results page hasn't been done-up yet, but will still spit out the valuation results. Also, I haven't finished this part yet, but I'm going to put an email capture box at the end of the form and require an email from all form users so that I can target them as potential sellers.

Concerns with the calculator
Do you think the calculator is too long and asks too many questions? Unfortunately, as of right now, I can't condense it without spending another probably $1,000 to get it re-coded. My alternative is an older calculator that I built:

Alternatively, I built out an excel based calculator a year or so ago that only requires 6 inputs, but the issue is that I used some pretty advanced excel formulas to build it so I haven't been able to find anyone that is able to turn it into a form on Wordpress that can capture user inputs and automatically email them the results.

Here is the old calculator I built that is a lot simpler to use, but haven't found a way to build in wordpress yet: Valuation Model Vtest

Question for y'all on marketing
Any recommendations on the best way to market this calculator/tool?

I've been working on putting some good content on it for SEO purposes and then planning on running some cheap FB ads, but not sure what else I should be doing.

Thanks for checking it out and for any recommendations!

I tested out the e-commerce one. Stopped answering after the first page. You started asking about website stats, but my imaginary company only sells on Amazon, so it wasn't relevant anymore.

The pertinent info from what I've seen in the market:
Age of business
Gross Revenue (TTM)
Profit (TTM)
SBA Eligibility (length of business history above + separate tax return/financials).
Dropship vs stock inventory (even this is questionable for valuation)
Maybe factor in if there is a hero product, but I haven't even seen that make a difference lately.

Literally every broker I've looked at is valuing between 2.5x-4x based on the above, with certain exceptions for businesses $5 million+ profit.

Maybe it's more complicated on the other types of businesses, but you're asking way more information than I'm going to spend time answering.

 

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[Rabby]

I wonder if you could leave out 90% of the questions and still get a valid range. If you have profit and the stability of profit, don't you have most of what you need? And the customer doesn't have to get all the information. Give them a screen that says their business is worth 1mm to 4.5mm depending on some other factors you can go over with them (if that's as accurate as you can get), and get in touch with them. Accuracy isn't the big issue when someone's filling out your web form... the big issue is getting them to go one more step with you.

 

[JM35]

I guess maybe where I'm going wrong is that I'm trying to provide too accurate of a valuation.

There are "typical" ranges that things sell for, so maybe I'm better off just making people enter:

1. URL (this would just be for my informational purposes, I could exclude it but its helpful for telling if people are being serious users or not - could maybe test it with and without to see if requiring a URL scares away too many people)
2. Monetization Method (ecomm, media, SaaS, service, etc.)
3. Profit
4. Email (I could also exclude this and just put a pitch on the results page trying to get people to contact us for an in-depth valuation or to discuss the selling process further)

Then I just take the profit and multiply it by the typical ranges that that type of business sells for.

It won't give the most accurate valuation, but it will give a big range, so maybe it'll make people be more interested in reaching out and getting in touch with us after they fill it in since they'll want to know: "well my valuation was $250,000 to $400,000, thats a pretty big gap, am I on the low end or high-end of that range?"

 

[Ethan S]

What if you changed to the 6 point calculator on the front end and gave them a wide range.. (And explained in detail why it's a wide range).

Then on the thank you page or in an email you could 'sell' the 30 point calc + a printed report made manually by a professional that has sold X number of businesses (you probably already make this for your clients anyways) that you'll send them in 7 business days. Plus your e-book for how to sell your business, checklist for prepping business for sale and a one hour consultation?

Not sure what you would price this at but something nominal like a couple hundred dollars.. (This is probably all stuff you would give away for free anyways).

That upsell offer gives you enough room to pay for traffic and have it liquidate itself (without having to wait for a big deal). Even if only 1 in 10 buys the 'thank you' offer it probably pays for the traffic.

The upsell also 'qualifies' your prospects. Gets you on a call with them. And positions you as an expert that is worth X number of dollars. (Which probably makes the sale easier than 'get on a call with me' after a free service).

Not sure if that makes sense! But it's one idea..

 

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[CareCPA]

I guess maybe where I'm going wrong is that I'm trying to provide too accurate of a valuation.

There are "typical" ranges that things sell for, so maybe I'm better off just making people enter:

1. URL (this would just be for my informational purposes, I could exclude it but its helpful for telling if people are being serious users or not - could maybe test it with and without to see if requiring a URL scares away too many people)
2. Monetization Method (ecomm, media, SaaS, service, etc.)
3. Profit
4. Email (I could also exclude this and just put a pitch on the results page trying to get people to contact us for an in-depth valuation or to discuss the selling process further)

Then I just take the profit and multiply it by the typical ranges that that type of business sells for.

It won't give the most accurate valuation, but it will give a big range, so maybe it'll make people be more interested in reaching out and getting in touch with us after they fill it in since they'll want to know: "well my valuation was $250,000 to $400,000, thats a pretty big gap, am I on the low end or high-end of that range?"

Plus, if you give them a range, it opens the conversation to "what can I do to ensure I'm getting the top of the range?"
Now all of a sudden you're a trusted advisor that will help guide them to top dollar.

 

[Rabby]

Plus, if you give them a range, it opens the conversation to "what can I do to ensure I'm getting the top of the range?"
Now all of a sudden you're a trusted advisor that will help guide them to top dollar.

Exactly. Don't just give them some mechanical answer that they file away. Give them an opportunity to work with you and make their goal a reality.

 

[JM35]

Hey guys - changed up the calculator here and got some professional web design done.

Still have some final touches/edits to make, but its 90% of the way there so wanted to shoot it back over and see if anyone had any additional thoughts. Made the calculations way simpler and the form way shorter.

Currently setup on a staging site as I finalize: Home2.0 - Website Value Calculator - How Much is My Website Worth?

Edit: I'm still working on adding in some type of upsell or consultation to attach below the final valuation results, along with some content to provide helpful tips/insight on how to increase value for the specific monetization method selected. Also the email function works, but I haven't customized it yet, but plan to add this stuff into the email as well.

 

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[Rabby]

Looking much better, and it's a lot easier to get started.

You miss a comma if the valuation is 7 figure:

 

[valuecreator]

stick with the blue color scheme and you need a good video.