I just returned from ICANN’s 39th International Public Meeting, held last week in the beautiful city of Cartagena, Colombia. This was a highly anticipated meeting by many in the domain industry, as major developments were expected with regard to both the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) process and .XXX, the proposed extension for adult […]
Full service versus self-service A key strategic question in any service business is where to play along the spectrum from managed service (or full service) to self-service. This is particularly true with Web services, which can be either particularly sophisticated (necessitating full service) or particularly simple (enabling self-service). The answer, as always, will be driven by […]
The transition to the new EPP-based registry platform for .CA domains went very smoothly. The last of a couple of minor bugs have now been fixed and everything is back to the new normal for .CA domains. We thank all of our Resellers for their help and patience throughout the transition process. The result is […]
Last week we ran our very first interactive screencast with the goal of helping our new resellers learn the basics of the OpenSRS and our control panel interface. Pulling off a live video screencast, with multiple components was challenging and took some time to figure out. With the right tools and services though, I was […]
Every year, around the end of September and early October, a greater percentage of .mobi domain names come up for renewal. That’s because the .mobi domain extension launched beginning in September 2006 with a land rush on September 22nd, and general availability on October 11, 2006. Many people who bought their .mobi domain names around […]
It’s sometimes easy to forget that domain names aren’t something that the average person is familiar with. Working in the hosting or Internet industry, understanding how different domain extensions work is just part of daily life. For those familiar with how domains are bought and sold, the concept of premium domain names and the domain […]
Here’s another discovery we made at Hover that you can consider implementing. Renewals were our number one support issue, accounting for 36% of support tickets opened. A lot of those calls and emails came from customers (or friends, relatives, colleagues and assistants of customers) that could not sign in to their account. So, we developed […]
After the positive feedback we received from our first-quarter report, we’re excited to announce that our OpenSRS Quarterly for 2010-Q2 is now available for download. Have you found yourself wondering how your own performance indicators measure up against other OpenSRS resellers? Key performance metrics like renewal rates by quarter, new registrations and transfers in […]
It’s no secret that there is a perception amongst the domain name buying public that all domain names are the same, that they all come with the same basic policies and conditions and that the only way to differentiate between them is price. We know that simply is not true. Issues like privacy, ownership disputes, […]
Look around the web hosting industry and you’ll run into multiple similar-looking websites offering similar packages with similar costs. So how is a webhost supposed to stand out amongst the crowd and attract new customers? To help out, we’re presenting a webinar on August 26th, 2010. Adam Eisner, who heads up our domains business here […]
