Having just taken over the “shop” at Drop.com.au, I’m really keen to get some feedback and suggestions from past and present (and hopefully future) clients.
So if you have the time and inclination, please tell me what you like and don’t like about the current set-up; and what you’d like to see in the future. In a “perfect world” of course. 🙂
To make it easier, I’ve broken it down into two separate sections.
As A Registrar
Most people that read this blog will know that before I purchased Drop, I was one of Australia’s biggest individual domain investors and domainers. And Drop was where I kept 95% of my portfolio. Whilst it doesn’t have the “bells and whistles” of other registrars, it mostly suited my needs as a domainer (particularly the online COR).
I have always “loved ” Drop, but this is what I didn’t (and don’t) like about the platform:
- Transferring in domains from another registrar – have to wait for these to be manually approved.
- Special pricing levels aren’t automatic on COR’s – must be manually changed.
- No simple “domain manager” – i.e. ability to forward domains to another URL.
- Inability to download portfolio (or selections) to a CSV file.
What are your thoughts and/or suggestions?
As A Drop-Catcher
It goes without saying that results are currently dismal, but this will hopefully change in the near future!
Putting results to one side, what do you like or dislike about the actual platform?
And once again, if it was a perfect world, would you make any changes to the structure or format?
Other
Thanks in advance for your input to the above.
I’m going to address the forthcoming aftermarket platform in a separate post on Wednesday. Same sort of thing – I’ll give you my initial thoughts, and then seek your opinions.
Best wishes for your online success.
Ned O’Meara – 6th February 2017
I’ve always thought the Drop interface was the best user-interface experience. I still believe so. It just never won any of the auctions (I know you said not to mention that, but I can’t help myself!)
I also believe Drop’s role in being a transparent bidding platform is so vital to the whole drop-catching experience in Australia. As you taught me years ago, and as a lot of new-domainers soon figure out, Drop is a good initial-indicator of how popular a certain domain name is going to be. For example, most of the “backpackers-geo-city” were marked on drop today as being bid-on by a couple of people. Domainers then knew they’d have to put some effort into their bids over on Netfleet and Domain Shield.
I love how Drop looks on both a Mac or PC screen, but it’s awesome that it is also so responsive on a mobile device. I think a lot of domainers would agree, when I’m looking at the new list each night – Drop is the platform I actually use to filter my likes/dislikes for the next day’s drops. This means, it is my default platform to browse names, but I never expect to “win” on it.
The search capability is also super fast and real-time. I know you wanted constructive criticism, but all I seem to be able to do is say how awesome Drop is, aesthetically. I think it is a great investment.
Personally, rather than spend much time on changing the look or user-interface, I would pump all my money into making it a “winning” platform at this stage. Meaning, spend money on the latest server equipment in the best and closest data centre to where AusRegistry host the central database. I’m sure you’ve already thought of this and are probably on this track already…
What you have listed and pls add a bulk transfer-in feature that functions in an automated fashion… not keen to manually approve hundreds of authorisation links
There’s a lot that I like about the Drop.com.au platform, but ultimately it all comes down to dropcatching performance; which of course you’ve flagged as a priority area.
So putting performance aside, in terms of platform features, I’ve got just a couple of suggestions:
1 – ability to approve outbound transfers for immediate transfer. This is something that would speed up transfers to my wholesale account, which is where I hold all of my .au domains. Currently it takes a couple of days to complete the outbound transfer, which is two days that it could be listed on my parking platform/marketplace! I know that having such a feature for manual approval of immediate release is possible, as I use it in my wholesale account and at other registrars (GoDaddy for example).
– As you’ve suggested in your article, it would be handy to have forwarding options.
As above but I would love to see metrics. While search volume is important I think most, if not all platforms are missing the opportunity to scoop up the market. When you look at what external tools for domain metrics it’s an obvious gap in the market place for a registrar/registry.