Love ’em or hate ’em, a better partnership between domainers and the world’s biggest registrar would benefit the industry.
GoDaddy is the most loved domain name registrar. Ironically, it’s probably the most hated registrar at the same time.
Respondents to DNW’s annual survey have selected GoDaddy.com as the best registrar for five years running. But it’s also true that a lot of domainers avoid the registrar like the plague.
It would be great if GoDaddy had an offering that courted some of the biggest domainers. After all, GoDaddy has the best retail reach of any registrar. Ultimately, that means more end users to buy domains than any other platform. Most end users also have an account at GoDaddy, making it easier to transfer domains to them once sold.
What can GoDaddy do to court domainers? First, I’m not willing to assume that the company should court domainers. It may be that domain investors are too low margin for the company. But if it does make sense to go after domainers’ business, here’s what GoDaddy should do:
1. Create a new platform for domainers – call it “GoDaddy Pro” if you like. It would have a separate login page with nothing but a login box.
2. Offer a better user interface – once logged in to Pro, domainers would get a graphic-light interface with easy access to the most domainer-common functions: pushing domains, changing DNS, etc. Perhaps even one click to change the DNS to park on popular parking platforms. Less clutter.
3. Easy checkout – Pro customers could define options they commonly select during check out. All of these options would appear on one page during checkout. Registering a domain should take about 30 seconds.
4. Tight integration with end user sales tools – namely, quick access to listing domains as “Premium Domains“. Perhaps pro users would get lower commissions on these listings.
5. Enhanced domain analytics – GoDaddy already has a feature that tells you how many times someone did a whois search for domains you own. What if you could also see how many times someone did a domain availability check on domains you own? This would be helpful in setting prices, and also spur you to list them as “Premium”.
6. Flat rate, low pricing – no coupon codes to enter and no clubs to join. GoDaddy’s Domain Discount Club has prices that match the best tiers offered at other registrars. But you have to pay $90 a year to get the good rates. Pro users should automatically get these pricing tiers. Also, throw in free privacy — most other registrars do this.
7. Show up to domain conferences – no booth necessary. Just send one or two representatives to each conference to meet with customers and show that the company supports domainers.
To make it work, Pro would have to be limited to domain owners with a minimum number of domains, such as 1,000. Customers willing to deposit a certain amount, perhaps $2,500, could also get an account.
What do you think?
And no upselling to domainers, either? 🙂
Lightweight interface, easy domain management, easy registration, flat low prices, ability to list premium names for sale… I think someone’s already come up with that idea and called it Moniker.
Terrell, good point.
However, Moniker is not the same Moniker of 2-3 yrs ago.
Moniker’s loyalty is now to Oversee first, domainers second.
Absolutely agree. Want to use them – have all of mine there now – but am constantly looking for other options. Of course, then there is the process of changing to deal with.
All of your ideas would be perfect but if they implemented even some it would really, really help.
Hate their up-selling and cross-selling techniques, which make the shopping platform absolutely messy.. But like the service, on other side.
I know they’re your sponsor and all but you seem to write far too much about godaddy.
Atleast try and make it a little less obvious.
I’ve stopped worrying about what other companies should do, and I seek out ones that do what I am looking for.
GoDaddy is well aware of who they are and what their user experience is, and it is only getting worse in my opinion.
mp/m
> Flat rate, low pricing – no coupon codes to enter …
> …GoDaddy’s Domain Discount Club.. $90 …
In the past I paid the $90 to get cheap bulk
renewals .. until I realised that GoDaddy’s
checkout system automatically discounts your
renewal price progressively, as you increase
the number of renewals processed in one go.
Essentially, if you renew 100 in one batch,
it gives you the same price as the ($90)
discount club.
Not unusual for domainers to renew 100+ in
a batch. No need for coupons, discount club etc.
Yes, there’s aspects of GD I really hate,
don’t get me started, but pricing isn’t one of them.
How would you make it worth their while to do this only for domainers with 1000 or more domains. You may only court 50 domainers of a potential 200 domainers and potential 50000 domains that are not already with them ?
While if it were 100-200 domains,
It would most certainly be worth while as the number of domainers could be as high as 5000 and the potential domains could be as high as 2000000 that are not already with them.
But I agree that the multi-upselling pages and slow pages often make me do most of my biz elsewhere when I’m in a hurry.
And you can’t explain it to them so it is their loss and I do not apologize for it.
Why court domainers ? They typically don’t buy the upsells, want the cheapest renewals etc. We’re probably the toughest customers. No lie.
Oh and btw I think Fabulous has this down too Terrell 🙂
Domain selling platform – Check
Easy interface – Check
Parking platform – better than GD – Check
Experienced/Reliable/Trusted Staff – Check
Good prices – check
They can definitely get rid of clutter but they have the best user interface of any registrar I’ve seen and I have accounts everywhere.
They don’t cater to domainers probably because there are not enough of us to ask even though we bring lots of revenue to godaddy each year with renewals and auction purchases.
Count me if for the GD lite version.
When it comes to domainers I think that the best feature at godaddy is their Premium Listing Service, it’s even better now that the commissions have been lowered. I just recently added some domains to this service and I can’t wait to have my first sale. 🙂
PS: I just wish they would add .US to the premium listing service too.
@ojohn – “PS: I just wish they would add .US to the premium listing service too.”
Ditto. .US for sure … biz/info too.
Try Dynadot.
Much better than this cluttered mess that feels like it’s always rooting around in my pocket for loose change.
I agree that they should add .info to premium listings, but feel that they have good service.
I don’t think Godaddy needs to change all of the things people are comlainaing about; most people are very happy with their services.
“I agree that they should add .info to premium listings”
Isn’t that an oxymoron? 🙂
pick up a registrat with API access and don’t loose time to click like a crazy on the Web UI.
You will have a chance to save time and start develop your domains into a (maybe) successfull publishing company, as there is IMO no future for domainers.
Why don’t your never speak from serious and real issues with domainer activities? As a very basic comparison with real estate (domainers love that): you certainly noticed for the US home market that a 10% vacancy in real estate (California, Las Vegas, etc.) caused the prices to be severely hit, and not speaking with non developed lots. But with your domains, which 99,99% are undeveloped, and maybe 99% of the so-called premium domains, you don’t see any issue.
Hum, hum.
Andrew:
No, my statement isn’t an oxymoron, pay close attention to what I said. I didn’t say that nothing needs to be changed, I said that most of the things that people are complaining about don’t need to be changed.
Godaddy’s target market is well served for the most part; I feel that domainers are a specialized market.
In my opinion, the .info extension with 5,781,000 registrations is wholly overlooked because everyone is biased towards .com. Despite the fact that .info has more daily registrations on average than .org,.biz,.us and occasionally .net, you rarely hear about it in forums.
I know you are going to say that there are a lot of .info’s being registered because you can get one for $1.00, but keep in mind that this extension has an 80% renewal rate at the regular price.
I had one fool tell me the reason for the high renewal rate has to do with the fact that these people don’t want to lose their initial investment.
How much sense does that make? Who is going to spend $10.00 to save a $1.00 initial investment?(first time registration fee)
@ Allen T – I was joking. I own some .info’s, too.
That said, I don’t think a .info should show as a Premium Domain unless all of the other major extensions are taken.
“GoDaddy already has a feature that tells you how many times someone did a whois search for domains you own”
How do you access this feature, cant seem to find it. Thanks.
@ Ben Vardag – in account manager, go to “exportable lists”. Then check the boxes for whois.
Thanks Andrew – really helpful feature, i was surprised that one of my domains had over 50 whois searches, im sure some of you have more than that!
Cheers
$2,500 deposit with a minimum of 1,000 domains? I can already get low flat-rate prices and a slick interface with API access for $500 deposit and no minimum portfolio size at Dynadot 😀