.CO Renewal Season is Here

It’s been almost a year since the launch of the .CO domain extension. That means registrants who bought their .CO domains in those first few weeks and months are starting to see renewal notices and the earliest .CO registrants are already renewing their domains.

As with other domain extensions, getting over that first year renewal hump is hugely important in keeping that domain for the long term. Renewal rates on domains more than one year old (in other words, domains that have been renewed once already) are considerably higher than the renewal rate for first year domains.

Boost your Renewal Rates

There are some simple steps you can take to boost your renewal rates for .CO domains as we move into this period of high activity:

Make sure your renewal messages are setup: OpenSRS sends out renewal messages to registrants automatically. Double check to make sure that you are sending renewal emails out at 90, 60 and 30 days in addition to the notices that go out closer to expiry. And take the time to customize those templates with contact information so your customer knows where and how to renew their domain. Those templates and settings can be found in the “Renewal Management” section of the Reseller Web Interface.
Consider adding renewal reminders to your homepage or interface: A simple banner ad or notice inside your control panel might be all it takes to convince or remind a customer to renew their domain. Don’t overlook any opportunity to remind your customers to renew for another year, or more.
Send out a renewal email campaign: We have some great .CO marketing materials you can use to create a quick email reminding customers to renew their names. Point out the increasing value of .CO domains and make sure you build the case for them to hold on to their domain for another year. And don’t forget to encourage customers without a .CO domain to visit your website and search for a .CO domain that might be an even better fit for their business.

.CO Facts and Figures

CO Internet, the .CO registry operator, passed along some interesting stats about the first year of offering .CO domains worldwide.

.CO sites are being used: .CO domain growth is very similar to the growth seen in active sites under .CO domains. This is a very good trend and shows that registrants are getting .CO domains to use them. A key factor in renewal rates is whether the domain resolves to an active site, so seeing a high rate of usage for .CO domains indicates that renewal rates and customer retention amongst .CO registrants will be good.
.CO registrants are spread around the world: While about 48% of the .CO domains were registered in the US, countries like the UK, Canada, Australia and Germany are all in the top ten for countries where .CO domains are registered. .CO resonates with domain buyers around the world, in many langauges.
.CO is one million domains strong: As of last month, there were more than one million .CO domains registered and that number continues to grow. The launch of .CO domains has been one of the most successful domain extension launches in recent memory.

goMobi v1.4 Update Coming with Analytics, New Icon Sets and more

[NOTE: goMobi v1.4 is now live for all users as of July 10, 2011]

On July 10, 2011, the next version of the goMobi mobile website builder will be released. There’s nothing you need to do either as a reseller or an end-user – the update happens automatically across all goMobi accounts.

Existing sites will be unaffected by the changes, but you might want to let your goMobi customers know about some super new features that are part of the 1.4 release.

Major new features:

Analyze traffic with complete site analytics
Create and print a QR Code-enabled marketing flyer
Upload images to a new hosted image gallery

Enhancements to existing features:

More icon sets
Support for multiple locations and coupon codes
Ability to connect with popular location-based services (foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Places, Yelp and Gowalla
Better social network support (especially on higher end devices)
Improved color choices for backgrounds and text/titles

…and many more fixes and enhancements.

You can read more about the changes on our goMobi features section, including screenshots for some of the new features.

Available in Test Environment Today

The Horizon Test Environment is connected to the goMobi Test Bed system which has already been updated to v1.4. You can log into your OpenSRS Horizon Test account and see some of the new features of the Site Builder first hand. Log in with your usual OpenSRS credentials here.

Boosting Sales by Adding SSL to Your Product Line-up

Last week I had the pleasure to host a webinar with one of our new Trust Service partners, Trustwave. In that session, Dan Marfione, Trustwave’s Partner Sales Director, SSL, gave resellers some background on Trustwave and talked at length about how adding SSL to your product line up can help boost sales and help your bottom line.

Some of the key things Dan pointed out during his presentation:

SSL isn’t just for banks and big business: there’s a real need for SSL to provide encryption right across the spectrum of Internet users. End-user confidence in Internet data security is not good right now thanks to some recent high-profile hacks. Whether your customers are mid-sized businesses with an e-commerce website, or just a small business that has a small mailing list and collects a little customer data, the transmission of that data needs to be encrypted in order to instill a sense of confidence in customers.
Higher-end SSL products like Extended Validation (EV) certificates aren’t just for the big guys anymore: Extended Validation certificates provided end-users with peace of mind. Not only is their data encrypted, but they know who they are sending it to. Again, that’s key in providing confidence to end-users and customers that they can trust who they choose to deal with online.

Customer Education is Key When Offering SSL

When it comes to offering SSL to your customers, Dan pointed out that it’s important to ensure they know what is involved in the process. Whether it’s an Easy Trust domain validated certificate, a Premium SSL organization validated certificate, or a Premium EV extended validation certificate, you need to make sure your customer knows what to expect during the validation process and what documentation is required of them.

Dan did a great job explaining the process from start to finish for each certificate type so you can be sure to not only make the initial sale, but also make sure that your customer gets that certificate validated and issued as quickly as possible.

To help you understand the buying and provisioning process, I showed you how easy the new Trust Manager in the OpenSRS Control Panel makes it to provision a new SSL certificate. I went step-by-step through the process of ordering, validating and receiving an Easy Trust domain-validated SSL certificate and showed you the emails that go out, and explained the process that your customers will go through to have an SSL certificate ordered and in their inbox in minutes.

On-demand Recording Available

If you missed the presentation, we’ve archived the session for you on OpenSRS.com. Click here and you’ll be able to view that recording on-demand, at any time.

For more information on Trustwave and the full line up of Trustwave SSL products available through OpenSRS, including the lowest cost DV certificate we offer, visit the Trustwave SSL product page.

Congratulations to Our Winners

We also want to pass along our congratulations to three lucky attendees. Thanks to Trustwave, we gave away an iPad 2, an iPod Touch and a $25 iTunes gift card to three attendees in a random drawing following the webinar.

Jason Klien was the winner of the iPad
Doug McIntyre won the iPod Touch
Arvind Parmar will receive the iTunes gift card.

Decommissioning the Older OpenSRS SSL Service

Late last year we rolled out the OpenSRS Trust Service which is meant to replace the existing older SSL Service. At the time we said that we would be migrating existing SSL certificate orders to this new Trust Service sometime in the future and that we planned to eventually decommission the older SSL Service.

Today we’re announcing a few things around that migration and decommissioning plan to all Resellers so you can plan accordingly:

Effective November 1, 2011, we’re going to decommission the older SSL Service platform along with the TPP API for SSL.

After that date, it will no longer be possible to use the RWI2 to provision or manage SSL certificates Use of the TPP API for SSL will also be disabled.

Please note: the Managed DNS Service which also uses the TPP API and RWI2 will continue to function normally after November 1, 2011.

As part of this shutdown, we’ll be migrating existing SSL orders from the older SSL Service to the new OpenSRS Control Panel Trust Manager. That migration will also happen on November 1, 2011.

If you are wondering if this has an impact on you, here’s some help to figure that out:

API User Impacts

For resellers with API integrations with OpenSRS for SSL:

If you have an API integration for SSL with the older TPP API:

If you have an API integration that uses the older TPP API, then you are affected – you need to move your API integration to the newer OpenSRS API prior to November 1, 2011.

If you have an API integration for SSL with the newer OpenSRS API:

If you have an API integration for SSL that uses the OpenSRS API (the same one as the Domain Service uses), then you are already using the new Trust Service and there’s nothing you need to do.

Non-API User Impacts

For those who don’t use the API, but who do provision and manage SSL certificates through OpenSRS, there are two possible scenarios:

If you use the RWI2 to provision and manage SSL:

If you have existing SSL orders in the older SSL system (managed from RWI2), those orders will be migrated to the new Trust Service on November 1, 2011. You won’t need to do anything to make that migration happen, but you should prepare by familiarizing yourself with the new Trust Manager.

If you use the Trust Manager to provision and manage SSL:

If you already use the Trust Service and Trust Manager in the new Control Panel for all your SSL orders, then you are all set. Nothing will change.

End-User Impacts

In all cases, there is no impact on existing SSL certificates. You won’t need to reissue any certificates and there won’t be any impact to your customers’ SSL certificates.

More Information

We have more information available including a list of frequently asked questions. If you have any concerns about this move and how it may impact you, or your customers, please don’t hesitate to call Reseller Support. Contact information is available here.

Holiday Hours: Canada Day, Friday July 1st, 2011

This coming Friday our offices will be closed to celebrate Canada Day.

Canada Day, also affectionately referred to as Canada’s Birthday, is a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British North America Act, today called the Constitution Act, 1867, which united three British colonies into a single country, called Canada within the British Empire.

Originally called Dominion Day, the name was changed in 1982, the year that Canada gained full independence from the United Kingdom. Canada Day observances take place throughout Canada as well as internationally.

Historical facts aside, we think it’s the perfect long weekend for our pet polar bears (each Canadian has one you know) to just chill out and enjoy a cold one on a warm, sunny day. The beaver on the other hand… we’ve tried to get him to relax, but without resorting to prescription meds, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of that.

For those of you more interested in serious business, here are the hours of operation during the holiday:

Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.

Please note that during this closure, there will be:

No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk, .com.mx
No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

Hours by department:

Department	Dates and Hours
Technical Support	Regular hours
Payments	Email support: payments@opensrs.org
Compliance	Closed July 1st (Friday)
Service Bureau	Closed July 1st (Friday)

Page 11 of 116« First «...7 8 9 101112 13 14 15 16...»Last »