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By: OpenSRS Team on March 8th, 2011
Posted in: Industry News
Tags: .ORG, AU, domain names
Comments: 0

It has been a busy start to the year across the domain name industry. A couple of registries have already reached significant milestones this year, and the industry as a whole continues to grow at a steady rate.

.COM.AU and .ORG Hit Milestones

On the ccTLD-front, AusRegistry reported that they reached two million .com.au domains under management this week. There are some pretty tight rules surrounding the registration of .com.au domain names, so the figure represents an impressive milestone for Australia. Given it’s relatively small population, it’s clear that Australians see value in .com.au domain names and that the extension provides a sense of trust for both those using .com.au domains and also for Internet users in the country.

Public Interest Registry (PIR) who operate the .org registry also hit a milestone, announcing recently that they had surpassed nine million domains under management. They also noted that growth in 2010 was 10.3% for the extension. The .org domain has added more than five million domains since 2005 and is the third largest generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the world.

VeriSign Domain Industry Brief

February also saw the release of the latest issue of the VeriSign Domain Industry Brief. This quarterly report looks at all sectors of the domain world and identifies interesting trends and stats in gTLDs and ccTLDs, and provides a good evaluation of the health of the industry as a whole.

The latest brief showed continued growth in domains under management with 205.3 million domain registrations across all TLDs. That’s a year-over-year growth rate of about 6.3%. In ccTLDs, a total of 80.1 million domains are registered representing a year-over-year growth rate of 0.3%. Its important to note that growth in ccTLDs was affected by a contraction in the number of .cn domains under management as a result of significant restrictions placed on new and current .cn registrations by the Chinese government.

Strong growth seen in .org and across a number of ccTLDs

Of the 205.3 million total domains registered, 105.2 million are .com or .net, showing that those two gTLD extensions still command some impressive numbers despite the rise in ccTLDs over the past few years. On the ccTLD side, .de leads the way, outpacing even .net to stand as the second largest registry in the world. Second amongst ccTLDs is .uk, followed by .cn and then .nl, .eu and .ru.

Growth wise, a number of larger ccTLDs experienced better than industry-average growth this year, including Poland (.pl), Australia (.au), Canada (.ca) and Switzerland (.ch).

How to Take Advantage

While these numbers and reports make for some interesting reading, it’s also important to note that they can be a great help in identifying potential growth markets, and in evaluating your own businesses. ccTLDs with above average growth rates are often indicative of countries where the Internet industry as a whole is seeing expansion. You don’t have to look far to see opportunities in places like Poland, or in Central America and Mexico in particular. Currently the top 10 ccTLDs represent 61% of all ccTLDs registered, but as countries and economies emerge, expect to see that number drop as the Internet penetrates new, growing markets.

To evaluate your own business, look at industry renewal and growth rates. Renewal rates for .com and .net rose slightly to about 73% in Q4, 2010. Is that in line with what you see in your business? Keep in mind that your rates should probably exceed that as the renewal rates for domains “in use” or attached to hosting tend to be higher than the overall average.

All in all, it has been another good year for the industry as a whole. Based on early news from registries like .au and .org, 2011 is looking solid as well.

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By: Ben Lucier on July 23rd, 2010
Posted in: Industry News, OpenSRS Services, Reseller Resources
Tags: .CO, domain names, marketing
Comments: 0

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.