epccompare – and they say DEAs are skint!
I look after my directory of DEAs, even if I do say so myself.
I’ll correct website URLs so they work; I’ll correct accred codes as it seems some are incapable of following instructions; I’ll correctly format entries so business names AREN’T ALL CAPS (or lower); and I’ll delete hopeless cases and duplicates (yeah, I see you).
All this to keep it credible for users and to prevent abuse.
I don’t put up Google Ads (or any ads) next to entries and I don’t force visitors to submit an email to get DEA details.
If you have a website, you can have a clean link to it too – This website throws a fair bit of traffic out to DEA sites; it ranks quite well in Google.
And it’s free!
You’ll struggle to find all the above on the web, and yet quite a few DEAs listed on here are seemingly happy to link-back to other directories with ads next to their entry, and which they've paid to be listed on, but few do to here (thanks to those that do, BTW).
I’m doing something seriously wrong methinks.
This was confirmed to me again after nipping over to epccompare.com to see how it’s been doing since launching recently.
A good-looking site, it’s basically a price-comparison website of DEAs and HIP providers.
For a limited period, DEAs pay a tenner to be listed (it plans to go pay-per-lead later this year), enter a price, upload a logo and write some blurb.
When this business model first emerged on the HIF some months/years ago, many DEAs expressed horror, understandably IMO. It’s not a new idea either: at least one other website has attempted this (I’m not sure if it’s even still up).
So I thought epccompare was destined to be a non-starter from the beginning simply because DEAs, surely, wouldn’t pay for the privilege of being undercut by low-ballers – wrong!
I conducted a little research to see if anyone had forked-out to be listed and to my surprise, before being able to conduct a postcode search, I was asked to enter my email – why?
This effectively locks out search engines and dissuades people from proceeding further… or they’ll just submit a duff email, as I did (sorry epccompare).
So I whacks in a Cheshire postcode (CH1) and got back 15 results – fifteen! Not bad; seems I may well be the stupid one.
The two top results are offering EPCs for £35; the third one £37 followed by prices ranging from £40 - £69 thereafter.
Interestingly, the results display how far the DEAs are based from the postcode area. The nearest DEA listed for my search was 11 miles away and charges £63.25. The lowest quote is 33 miles away for £35.
The furthest one is based 173 miles away (£52.50) – in fact, several are based over 100 miles away.
Back to usability, I was again surprised to find no contact details or website link to any of the listings displayed.
Instead, to find out more about the DEA, or to book an assessment, users are first required to register with epccompare, submitting email, full name, address and telephone number in doing so.
So why ask for an email just to make a search?
IMO, epccompare has imposed far too many barriers for users to negotiate.
But guess what? It’s not stupid, it's me that's stupid!
Think I might get a little stricter with my one simple request for a simple link-back; or scrap it and go pay-per-lead!
Tags: debris, dea-marketing
