Posts Tagged ‘.CO’

Some ideas on marketing .CO

If you’re read this blog over the past few days, you’ve probably already gathered that we’re bullish about .CO. The numbers so far have been astounding. And Google’s decision to treat .CO as an international (generic) TLD goes even further to position it as a viable alternative to .com. So now we’d like offer a few thoughts on how you might be able to effectively market .CO based on what we have seen with other new TLDs and what we have seen from some of the first resellers out of the gate.

On Your Site

The easiest thing you can do is add some messaging to your homepage (or the beginning of your domain search path) to let users know that .CO domain names are now available through your service. But success will mostly likely be driven by how you integrate .CO into your search results. Customers in the online world are a finicky bunch. Button placement, colors, menus and user interface all play a critical role in determining how much of a consumer’s hard-earned money you will earn. We mocked up a sample search result page to give you an idea where we think you could see results.

Identify .CO domain names as “NEW.” It may also be wise to have a help button a registrant can click on in order to learn about .CO and why it’s a great choice for their business. They key is to reinforce (.com-like) universality and credibility.

Place available .CO domain names at or near the top to grab a registrant’s attention and encourage them to act. (It is actually always a good rule to give better real estate to results that are available than result that are not.) If .CO is buried too low or even behind a “more options” link, the customer might never even consider it.

Suggest a two year registration. (This is actually a suggestion for all domain names.) When the default is one year, most customers will register for one year. When the default is two, it is surprising how many customers will register for two years. So, a good suggestion might be to start with a two year offer (perhaps with a discount), but make sure it is very clear how to change the term to one year.

In Other Communications

Besides having your front-end tuned to convert, another important step is to communicate the .CO news directly to your customers. An effective way to do this is through an opt-in email marketing campaign. Assuming you have an email list of customers, here are some suggestions that have produced results for our resellers in past TLD launches:

Don’t assume your customers know about .CO. Sending a simple email about the availability of this new TLD could be enough to drive additional business.

You could perform a batch check on your customers’ current domains and see which .CO equivalents are available. Many customers will want to protect their name across all generic TLDs. For example: “Dear customer, we notice that you have companyxyz.com…we want to advise you that companyxyz.co is now also available….”

If you have the data, you can also look through past unsuccessful domain searches and reach out to customers where the exact-match .CO domain is now available.

In your marketing messages, it might be worthwhile to note that Google (and presumably other search engines) will be treating .CO domain names as generic TLDs. (This addresses fears that a .CO name will only get SEO results in Colombia!). You might also mention that the .CO registry is spending significant marketing dollars to make sure Internet users (your customers’ visitors) will know and respect .CO when they see it.

We will continue to monitor what folks are doing and what seems to be working to share with the network.

Please let us know if you have ideas or questions.

Regularjoe.co

We are seeing something exciting today. In the first day of live .CO registrations, our live .CO registrations have already exceeded our pre-order registrations. And they have exceeded our regular daily volume of all other TLDs combined. If you check out the running count of .CO registrations at http://opportunity.co/pigsfly you will see that there are happy domain name buyers and sellers all around the world today.

This is exciting because it means “regular end users” are now choosing .CO. The whole pre-order period proved what we might have already expected, that .CO domains would be hot among businesses that actively protect their brands, individuals that speculate on domains and individuals that just love domains.

The registrations we are seeing now are primarily from end users that are registering one good domain name. Maybe they are improving on an existing .com. Maybe they are coming through the domain name registration process for the first time. But they are typing in a desired domain name, they are delighted to see that it is available, they are (most importantly) not concerned by the relative unfamiliarity of .CO and they are buying it. (By the way, I know the delight of discovering a good available domain name myself because I just registered regularjoe.co a few moments ago.)

We are strongly encouraged and I know we will be strongly encouraging all of you to get on board and enjoy the ride.

dotCO-Jul21-Status

.CO General Availability Launch Update

At 18:00 UTC (2:PM EDT), the .CO registry began accepting domain name registrations from approved registrars. If you have queued .CO domain names, these orders are being sent to the registry as quickly as possible.

Registrant details will use Tucows details temporarily

The .CO registry permits a set number of active connections per registrar, so our development team has streamlined the process as much as possible to make the most efficient use of these connections in order to register as many names as possible, in the fastest possible manner.

One of the ways we’re optimizing the queue and to maximize the number of successful General Availability orders, we will be attempting to secure the name first, and then, if we are successful, we’ll assign the proper contact information. The temporary contact will use Tucows contact information. DO NOT PANIC if you or your customers see Tucows listed as the registrant – be patient, and the proper information will be added to the record soon after.

Resellers using Storefront

If you’re a reseller using Storefront, .CO will be enabled shortly. You will need to enable it and setup pricing first before your customers will have it as a registration option however. See the section on ‘Enabling or Disabling TLDs’ in the Storefront Reseller User Guide for more information.

A reminder on pricing

Wholesale pricing can be found on our Domain Service page, under pricing, but here’s a quick reminder about .CO pricing:

2nd level registrations (ie. example.co) are $25 per year,
3rd level registrations (ie. example.com.co) $13 per year.

Status updates for .CO

We maintain a System Status tool for all services we offer and the .CO registry has been added to the ccTLD section. You can access these status updates via web, email subscription and RSS. For any performance and availability related incidents we experience during the queued registration period, or afterward, this status page is your best resource for realtime information monitoring of all OpenSRS services.

If you’re a Twitter user, you can also find our updates at: @OpenSRSStatus

Rejected .CO Sunrise Names Now Available in Landrush

We’re in the Landrush phase of the .CO domain extension launch and for those looking for some great domains, CO Internet S.A.S., the registry operator for the .CO domain extension, has just published a list of domains that were originally put in as Sunrise applications, but that were eventually rejected.

Download the full list (PDF 250kB)

These domains are available for registration right now in the Landrush phase. If you had previously put in applications for Landrush domains only to find them unavailable, you may wish to re-submit the order as the name in question might be on the list of newly available domains.

Landrush Extended

Landrush was extended by the registry and will now close on Friday, July 16th at noon EDT. Landrush is open to everyone – there is a $5.00 non-refundable registration fee, and successful Landrush orders are $220 which includes the first year of registration (all costs shown are in US dollars). In the event that there are multiple applications for the same domain, that domain will go into an auction process where those who had submitted an application for the domain in question will be able to bid against each other for the rights to the domain.

General Availability starts July 20

As mentioned, .CO goes into General Availability on July 20th at 2:00pm EDT. OpenSRS is taking pre-orders for General Availability now and on launch day we’ll be attempting to register as many of those pre-orders as we possibly can on launch day.

For General Availability pre-orders, there are no fees other than the regular $25 one-year registration fee. If the order is successful on launch day, the domain is awarded and your account is charged. If the order isn’t successful, you aren’t charged anything.

Is your Reseller account funded?

For those with General Availability pre-orders in the queue, we will be putting the $25 registration fee for each pre-order on hold this week to ensure that the required funds are available at the time of attempted registration on July 20, 2010. If the registration is successful, you’ll be charged for the registration. If the order is unsuccessful, the hold on the funds will be released and you’ll be charged nothing.

Please ensure that you have adequate funds in your account to cover the full value of the domains you have on pre-order.

More Information

Be sure to visit our .CO launch page where you will find more information about the .CO launch, including a package of marketing materials you can use in your promotion of the .CO extension. You might also want to check out the .CO webinar archive if you didn’t attend, or haven’t seen it yet. And the CO Internet website is also a good source of up-to-date launch information as well.

OpenSRS rated "best bet" for securing a .CO domain name

As general availability for the new .CO fast approaches, Domain Name Wire listed OpenSRS as a “best bet” for registering a .CO domain name based on a hyper-competitive price tag of $25. You can read more about maximizing your chances of getting a .CO domain at the Domain Name Wire.

You can also learn more information (including webinars, launch dates, etc) on our .CO information page.