White labels can be the key to driving traffic. From dating websites to price comparison services, white labels are cropping up all over the net, allowing smaller companies and big players alike to expand their range and enhance revenue portfolios without compromising brand integrity. Simon Piper, head of partnerships at Consumerchoices.co.uk, assesses why white labels are so important.
A mature market
The internet has come of age, and with it, the market in white labels has matured. As web businesses look to expand into different sectors, increasingly sophisticated white labels are one of the most expedient routes to market. Why invest the up front cash and man-hours, when a white label can do the hard work for you?
Big brands are increasingly selecting white label service providers, specialising in niche markets, to execute specific areas of their business without needing to justify diverting resources from their core business model. This pattern is emerging across comparison verticals ranging from broadband to conveyancing.
Why use a white label?
White labels offer a huge number of benefits for your company, allowing you to tap into the expertise and experience of an established business model.
A white label will do a lot of the hard work for you. For example, a real estate website might want to expand its products to offer utility price comparison services to home movers. They might not have the resources and relationships in-house to build these kind of services, but a white label could easily do it for them, allowing them to quickly open complementary revenue streams to their existing customer base, simply by contextually linking to the new services.
In this example the real estate website will also now have new ways of engaging with its customer base via emails and newsletters, extending the relationship with the customer beyond the fact-finding process of choosing a house, into the post completion phase to access lucrative commission bounties while providing the customer with assistance in all phases of the home moving journey.
Using a white label can also allow you can keep brand identity intact. In many cases, service providers can offer total white labels and ensure that the new products they are providing fit seamlessly into the rest of your website.
Offering white labels
Offering white label services can benefit your own business too – particularly if you specialise in a niche market. It will help diversify your traffic sources, which can only be a good thing. Around a quarter of the traffic we get is via our partners – showing just how successful white labels can be.
Top Tips on choosing the right white label partner:
So how do you select the right partner for your business?
You need to look at every aspect of the relationship you’ll have with any prospective partner.
• Tracking – Make sure you get full web based tracking, so that you can understand what is working and identify opportunities to optimise.
• Integration – A wide range of integration options is also key; look for providers that can give you data feeds, interactive tools and widgets that you can easily plug in.
• Support – Even the best white label solutions will underperform if they’re not backed up properly, so find out what level of support you’ll get from your prospective partner before you agree a deal.
For example, find out if:
• You will you receive weekly emails with promotional ideas
• Content and press releases
• Regular account management / review meetings.
• Stability – A little financial research will tell you a lot about the company you’re considering; if their performance is strong, they will be more likely to help you increase your own profits too.
In our business we also use white label partners, as well as offering our own services out to third party companies. As part of the sourcing process, we carry out financial accountancy searches with Companies House to ensure all prospective partners are viable entities. After all, their own performance will give you the best measure of how your white label might perform.
• Endorsement – Third party endorsements and industry regulator approvals are another indicator that you are dealing with the right kind of company. In the telecoms sector, Ofcom run an accreditation program, carrying out a rigorous independent audit to ensure price comparison calculators are accessible, accurate, transparent, comprehensive and up to date.
Simon Piper runs the partnerships team at Consumerchoices.co.uk providing white label comparison services for Broadband, home phone & digital tv.
