GoDaddy demotes new TLDs from the home page, 1&1 not offering sunrise registrations through its largest brand.
Here are a couple noteworthy items related to new top level domain names.
First, over the weekend I noticed that promotions for new top level domain names are nowhere to be found on GoDaddy’s home page. After promoting them for the past month or two, it’s been kicked off the home page. (It is front and center, however, on the “Domains” tab.)
In response to my tweet about this over the weekend, GoDaddy responded:
That’s true. Like a lot of companies, GoDaddy is constantly tweaking its home page to improve conversions. I suspect that new TLDs weren’t converting into enough orders, or it just wasn’t as important as promoting new products such as managed WordPress hosting.
As I’ve argued before, new TLDs are coming out with a bit of whimper. I’m not sure if the current offering of TLDs and pre-registration opportunities is enough to warrant front page exposure, depending on who a registrar’s clientele is.
One company that has invested very heavily in promoting pre-registrations is 1&1. Although I’ve seen a number before, I reached out to the company to verify its spend on ads promoting pre-registrations. The company confirmed to me that it has spent $50 million across all media channels (online, print, TV).
That’s a lot of dough.
One thing that’s missing from its 1and1.com website, however, is any way to place a sunrise order on a domain name. Sunrise is proving to be a bust for most new TLDs, as there are only 23,000 or so registered marks with the Trademark Clearinghouse. I think a lot of brands will just wait for general availability to protect their domains.
I bet most sunrise orders are taking place at brand protection registrars such as MarkMonitor.
1&1 said it is offering sunrise registrations through United Domains, which is one of its sister companies (as is Sedo, which is offering sunrise and landrush auction services).
We promoted new TLDs over the last 7 days, we usually sell on average 20 domains every day (only .com´s), we used the same method and tools, we certainly had much better leads than we have for .com´s and we did not sell a single new gTLD domain. We gave up there is no conversion at all, I believe its the same for GD. Maybe in a year again.
It may just be cheaper to UDRP someone then it is to pay the outrageous prices that some new TLDs want.
Just speculation on my part.
Frederick Felman of MarkMonitor wrote on January 3, 2014 on Mediapost.com that brand holders may change from a defensive registration mode to a enforcement mode.
The Godaddy.com website has been experiencing problems since they started marketing those new TLDs. Whatever they did made the website so slow that some people I referred to the site wondered if their own websites will be that slow if they buy their products. I have abandoned certain transactions with them in frustration and completed my business with Moniker.com instead on a few occasions.
I think it’s more of a technical issue forcing them to move them out of the front page, and for the better I might add.
As a sister company of 1&1 and one of the largest registars in the b2b sector, InterNetX also offers registrations in the Sunrise phase and its own TMCH service. Find out more at http://www.internetx.com/en/ or http://www.tmch-agent.com/en/
As our tweet suggested, at GoDaddy we have to balance the promotion of new gTLDs (and domains in general) with the rest of our offerings. It’s been a busy few weeks for us, as we’ve launched a partnership with Microsoft to sell Office 365, introduced Managed Wordpress, and launched Get Found – a service to help small businesses get discovered across the web. And now it’s Super Bowl time – so the home page is changing again! So don’t read too much into it.