Contact before ordering -- does it work?

[lenasemenkova]

After I became a TRS, I updated my gig and my portfolio, raised prices 50% and for a year or so the results have been great. I’d say, up to 70% of potential buyers would contact me first giving me an opportunity to weed out the projects that weren’t a good fit or appeared sketchy in any way.

As for the projects I was interested in taking, I could get all my questions answered and minimize a chance for any misunderstandings this way. My completion rate would get to 100% every other month (which was a fantastic result that never happened before) and I was overjoyed.

Around April this year things changed. The ratio switched and now I have 30% of potential new buyers contacting me before ordering. The number of canceled orders has doubled as a result.

I don’t know what caused this. It’s either something in UI has changed and the requirements are even less noticeable and accessible or, perhaps, an overall tendency of prices going up across the platform affected me and now my prices don’t appear to be that “high” in comparison to prompt an inquiry.

Or maybe fiverr’s running a promo campaign somewhere with the overall message of “Buy whatever no questions asked”.

I don’t necessarily need the buyers to contact me before the purchase. Most of them can be contacted for clarifications after the fact. BUT I absolutely need them to fill out the brief that gets at least partially ignored most of the time. Especially when it’s an extra fast 48 hours delivery made on Friday evening with the buyer is unresponsive till Monday morning.

I know that buyers are not required to contact us prior to placing the order. But I’ve read a few positive accounts of sellers putting the “contact me first or I am not accepting this order” requirement in their gig descriptions and enforcing it somewhat successfully by canceling orders that don’t follow it through CS. It is, from what I understand, the way to deal with the situation that fiverr considers acceptable if the seller is willing to jeopardize the completion rate.

In my case, I don’t want to refuse service to anyone who hasn’t messaged me first but I’d really, really like to take some active measures to encourage more buyers to do it as the prices don’t seem to protect me anymore to a degree I’d be comfortable with.

My question is: has anyone tried a strict “no contact - no order” rule with their gigs and how successful was it? Did you notice any improvement at all? Or does it get ignored just like the rest of the requirements are? Is there even a point of trying? What is the best way to express it so it gets noticed?

[uk1000]

The “contact me BEFORE purchasing” is only highlighted in colour on one of your gigs. You could try highlighting it in the same way on the other. And/or maybe put “please contact me before purchasing” at the top of the gig description instead of near the bottom, maybe leaving out “if you have any questions” if you would really like them to almost always contact you first.

[catwriter]

You may want to ask them to contact you before ordering in your profile description, too; "So whatever you may want to be done in terms of graphic design, I can create quickly and with love for the craft. " doesn’t make it look like it’s important to you to discuss the project first.

[czarekpiast]

I’m working on Fiverr for a few years now and I have contact me before ordering’ highlighted everywhere where I could, since day one. Gig description, packages, video, photos and even order requirements. It was always a super, super important part for me to have a discussion before ordering to figure out all the details (if I’m able to help, if it’s possible to do, price, delivery time, etc.)

A couple of months ago, I got the TRS badge and it’s more important than ever. On average, I got 20 messages a day from different people asking me if I’m able to help with their project. Only 1-3 of them is something that I can assist with and the budget they have is accurate. It would be a total disaster for my completion rate if those people won’t contact me before ordering.

Yes, I’m still getting people that don’t follow my request and purchase a random package without contacting me. It’s fine - they have a total right to do so. However, there are not too many of them, right now my completion rate is 100% but most of the time it was around 97-99%. Also, most of the people who order from me without reaching out on inbox are fresh accounts. They just don’t understand everything (once again, completely fine, they don’t need to understand) and after having a little chat within order page, in 90% of the cases, we are able to come up with the proper price and delivery time for their project - unless the requirements are not doable of course. Too bad when someone doesn’t reply, it’s weekend, he ordered fast delivery gig extra, didn’t provide the materials, etc - in such a situation, I’m just forced to request a cancelation and move on.

To summarize, I think that putting this request everywhere you can definitely work. It might not give 100% perfect results but most of the time it works. I consider it one of the key points of my Fiverr business.

[lenasemenkova]

You may want to ask them to contact you before ordering in your profile description, too; "So whatever you may want to be done in terms of graphic design, I can create quickly and with love for the craft. " doesn’t make it look like it’s important to you to discuss the project first.

My question is more about whether making the request super visible ever worked for anyone, I suppose. I am a bit worried that the “I WILL ASK THE QUESTIONS” attitude may scare people off.

But great idea to put it into the profile description, I forgot I even had a profile description. Thank you.

[lenasemenkova]

The “contact me BEFORE purchasing” is only highlighted in colour on one of your gigs. You could try highlighting it in the same way on the other. And/or maybe put “please contact me before purchasing” at the top of the gig description instead of near the bottom, maybe leaving out “if you have any questions” if you would really like them to almost always contact you first.

I’ll try to move it on top, shuffle things around. I wanted to keep the brief on top but most people don’t care it’s even there in any case. Thank you.

[miiila]

This reminds me I need to revise my gig descriptions; anytime I finally get ready to do it, I get too busy.

Anyway, I have “Please read ‘About This Gig’ BEFORE ordering.” right up in the little boxes of my main gig’s standard and premium description which you see on the top right when looking at the gig tiers, before you even see the actual gig description. That was my plan to make people read the long gig description, it seems to work well enough, maybe if you put your “Contact me before ordering” there instead of/in addition to the long gig description (which some people apparently don’t read before buying), it might work. After all, it’s very hard to not read the short texts in the basic/standard/premium boxes when you buy a gig, I’d think. No guarantees, though. 😉

[lenasemenkova]

This reminds me I need to revise my gig descriptions; anytime I finally get ready to do it, I get too busy.

Anyway, I have “Please read ‘About This Gig’ BEFORE ordering.” right up in the little boxes of my main gig’s standard and premium description which you see on the top right when looking at the gig tiers, before you even see the actual gig description. That was my plan to make people read the long gig description, it seems to work well enough, maybe if you put your “Contact me before ordering” there instead of/in addition to the long gig description (which some people apparently don’t read before buying), it might work. After all, it’s very hard to not read the short texts in the basic/standard/premium boxes when you buy a gig, I’d think. No guarantees, though. 😉

maybe if you put your “Contact me before ordering” there instead of/in addition to the long gig description (which some people apparently don’t read before buying), it might work.

That’s risky and frankly terrifying but I’m so frustrated right now that I might give it a try. Thank you.