Samantha Sweetland
Head of Marketing & B2C, Registry and Public Benefit
At Nominet we always aim to support all our channel partners to grow their businesses, no matter what their size, and as such all of us here in Marketing put a lot of effort into building ways to drive awareness of .UK domains and at the same time generate leads and opportunities for our channel to follow up on and (hopefully) convert.
The UK Domain website was built for exactly these purposes, enabling us to promote not only the benefits of the .UK namespace, but also the wider benefits of running a business/blog/CV/hobby website and/or email on a personalised domain.
We do that through a blend of content and social media marketing, covering a range of topics such as digital marketing, growing a business online, legislation, compliance and cyber security – all aimed to further engrain a domain at the heart of a business.
However, the true power of The UK Domain is our registrar comparison tool (aka “the spinner”), an impartial tool built to help both our channel of registrars and the field of prospects that are searching for a domain name provider to connect.
The spinner is open for all Accredited Channel Partners (ACPs) and becoming an ACP is open to any registrar. The spinner allows prospects to search for a domain, select their preferred domain ending and then review a selection of potential partners – in much the same way many other ccTLDs offer. Calculating the monthly ranking order in which registrars appear on the spinner is tricky (and a regular topic of discussion among the community of ccTLD marketing peers). Our approach is based on a % weighting by performance for each TAG, each month, which means regardless of size, every registrar can reach the upper rankings. Our monthly ranking algorithm has three key metrics:
- Rolling three month Same-Day Conversion Rate (80% weighting) – the percentage of domains registered on the same day that a registrar received the domain lead
- Mature Renewal Rate (10% weighting) – the renewal rate for each tag three months prior
- Growth Rate (10% weighting) – the percentage change in total domains under management (DUM) for each tag
This formula ensures that the rankings are fair by focusing more on the conversion rate and using percentages. This means it’s not about volumes and therefore doesn’t offer preferential treatment to larger channel partners.
The spinner offers potential registrants the ability to compare registrars before securing their domain, as well as a great opportunity for registrars of all sizes to be able to advertise their offers, and the results speak for themselves! Since its launch in 2017 we’ve generated over 130,000 leads for our channel. We constantly review the user interface to ensure we’re providing the best user experience, generating the best conversion rate and testing ways to improve the performance of the spinner as a whole.
“Sounds like I could get some business through this, how do I get included?” I hear you ask… To be included on the spinner there is a set of criteria so we can continue to offer a fair comparison to our registrants – the application process can be found on our self-serve marketing portal, or you can email [email protected] and one of our team will be happy to help you get set up.
Further information on the spinner is available in our marketing portal.