Author: Amreen Bhujwala

Arsenal, Per Mertesacker and Product Marketing form the three core parts of Amreen’s day to day life. A former goalkeeper for a local football club, Amreen is one of the friendliest bookworms you’ll ever come across.

Announcements, ICANN Announcements, Industry News, Press Releases, Registries

.SX – The Hottest New Domain of 2012 is Live on OrderBox!

Posted on by Amreen Bhujwala

.SX, the official ccTLD for St. Maarten, is now available on OrderBox.

Branded as the ‘Hottest new TLD of 2012’, the .SX domain is associated with adult content and falls in the same bucket as .XXX. The .SX Registry is managed by SX Registry SA and they’ve partnered with OpenRegistry to provide the back-end Registry services.

Anyone can register a .SX domain name without any restriction or requirement for local presence on the Island.

Registrars: Please contact your Account managers for introductory pricing and white-labeled marketing collaterals.

Announcements

OrderBox CSV Reports

Posted on by Amreen Bhujwala

Here’s another update from the OrderBox side of things: We’ve completely revamped the way reports are handled in the system and have created an improved Reporting Module.

We’ve gone back to the drawing board to completely re-think the flow of data and usability for this new module.

And one of the biggest features of this module is that Registrars and Resellers can now export data from the system in .CSV format.

The reports available are:

  1. Balance Reports
  2. Contact Details
  3. Customer Details
  4. Forex Report
  5. Payment Gateway Report
  6. Product Orders – Digital Certificates
  7. Product Orders – Domains
  8. Product Orders – Web Services
  9. Product Orders – Multi Domain Hosting
  10. Product Orders – Reseller Hosting
  11. Receipt Report
  12. Reseller Details
  13. Sales Report
  14. Tax Report
  15. Transactions with Customers
  16. Transactions with Parent Reseller
  17. Transactions with Sub-Reseller

The above data will help Registrars and Resellers get a much better (and factual) grip on their day-to-day business numbers and help them make strategic decisions for their future activities.

This is just the first revamp phase of the Reporting module. In the coming months, we are planning to add more enhancements and increase the functionality for this module. More updates to follow soon!

Got questions? Do comment and let us know

Announcements

New Branding Interfaces on OrderBox

Posted on by Amreen Bhujwala

We’ve revamped the ‘Branding Settings’ interfaces on the Registrar and Reseller Control Panels.

Earlier text-heavy pages have been given a cleaner, crisper and lighter look. With this new design, we’ve clubbed all branding-related tasks under one central section. Further sub-sections can be easily accessed by a navigation bar on the left.

We have clubbed these existing branding-related sections into one global space:

  • SuperSite and PartnerSite Branding
  • Control Panel Branding
  • Control Panel – Shopping Cart Integration Settings
  • Name Server Branding
  • URL Branding

Ed’s note: Yes, OrderBox is very customizable 😉

Our main focus has been on simplifying the branding tasks by:

  • Providing visually descriptive screenshots/icons to explain branding functions
  • Revamping architecture of pages for Registrars and Resellers so that they can easily navigate to all branding tasks
  • Simplifying and organizing functions into short easy steps
  • Creating no-frills interfaces, with only necessary information to perform tasks
  • Providing descriptive help information for better guidance

This is now live in OrderBox!
 

Announcements

5 ways to create Brand Value in a B2B Landscape

Posted on by Amreen Bhujwala

Before we start, our motive here is not to take a branding class, or write a preachy article on what you should or shouldn’t do with your brand. Instead we wish to share our experiences in what we have found works best for us in our industry vertical. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Show Up:
Every industry has numerous (global) conferences that bring together and unite members of the industry. This is the best opportunity for you to give a face to your brand. Get your team out there to network, even if you’re not exhibiting, sponsoring or speaking. Take prospects to lunch, dinner, or maybe just a drink and get to know the people you may be doing business with.

2. Accreditations / Awards:
Awards, recommendations, reviews, badges and Accreditations do matter a lot especially in B2B environments. These lend significant weight to your brand, positioning your company as an established player in the market. Most aspects of your business may be common to your competitors; the differentiating factors are what companies look for when choosing a business partner.

3. Be Everywhere:
We don’t need to stress on this point too much because we all know how important this is, especially in our industry. Be active on Facebook and Twitter, post regular blog posts, run promotions, write PRs, invest in SEO, etc. Some of these may be expensive, some not that much, but essential they are.

4. Create Brand Recall
Tshirts, pens, post-it notes and the likes are good as branded stationery and giveaways but, to make a lasting impact choose something that you can easily associate your brand with and that has frequent utility value.

At one of the recent conferences, we gifted Clockys to some partners and prospects. It’s a hip clock on wheels which runs away and hides if you don’t get out of bed. Just above the alarm off button, we put our prominent logo, and a line that went ‘It’s time to get Accredited!’. It’s a likeable, usable product with effective messaging.

5. Be Focused on Sales and Numbers, but Not Too Much:
At the end of the day, what matters is how many clients you bring on board and manage to retain, through these activities. However, to drive those numbers, you need to work with real people. And to keep people happy, you need to have some fun, right? Be innovative in what you do to achieve this; throw a bash, a theme party, or organize a short trip. After all, you need to make sure your audience remembers you when they need to make the switch.

That’s about it from us, what strategies do you follow for your company?

Industry News

The ICANN Registrar Community

Posted on by Amreen Bhujwala

A Little History:
It started way back in 1993 with a Cooperative Agreement with the US Government and Network Solutions, making them registrar ‘numero uno’. At that time, they enjoyed a monopoly of the market and the much envied ability to charge $70 for a 2 year registration.

As all good things come to an end (for NetSol), the agreement was amended in October 1998 to introduce a more competitive spirit. Five fresh registrars were given access to the shared registry system, and registrants had an option to register domains from AOL, CORE, France Telecom, MelbourneIT and Register.com. Register.com was first out of the blocks and was active and using their registrar credentials from June 1999. Ironically, one of these five was deaccredited by ICANN in April 2010 due to a likely non-renewal of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

While the rest have flourished, they also opened the gates for more competition, entrepreneurship and the ability for any company to become a domain registrar recognized and officially accredited by ICANN.

Since then we’ve seen many registrars successfully get accredited by ICANN (and also terminated – out of 1231 companies accredited as of today, an astounding 215 have been deaccredited). Some of these are registrars purely for Batchpool purposes and there are some that are repeat accreditations of an existing registrar. But the more we look at the 1200 odd registrars from 65 countries that have joined the registrar community, many of them enter unaware of the plethora of resources at their disposal that an immensely helpful community has laid out for them.

We decided to jot some of them down as a welcome for all recent and future members of the registrar community.

Statistics Portals:

DotandCo is an immensely useful resource that lists registrars in alphabetical order, by accreditation/ deaccreditation dates, domain volume/TLD/country amongst other categories. The site also highlights the pricing at various registrars. Off late we’ve seen instances where the zone file hasn’t been updated, but it will always be a worthy pitstop if you’re hunting for information.

Run by Enom, RegistrarStats delivered delightful accuracy. Their focus on only registrar volumes in a no-frill manner made them a must visit resource for registrar stats (no pun intended). They’ve recently revamped their website and have started charging for their services.

Last but certainly not least is WebHosting.info run by the Directi Group (LogicBoxes’ parent company). WHI presents some nifty stats and graphics on webhosts, registrars and registries. Especially handy is the ‘Gain By Transfer’ and ‘Loss By Transfer’ section.

Community Portals:

LinkedIN: With LinkedICANN probably the most popular group, there are others like Top Level Domains by Jean Guillon and Beyond.com by the good folk at AusRegistry, which provide a forum to interact with other registrars and get a community take on the current hot topic – the new gTLDs. You can also catch many of the registrar representatives on the Hosting groups as well.

Formerly the Registrar Constituency, the Registrar Constituency / Registrar Stakeholder Group is the representative body of accredited registrars that is fully recognized by the ICANN Board. The group is the voice of registrars in ICANN policy making processes. All accredited domain registrars can join the group, to get more involved in policy formation that directly impacts their business.

ICANNWiki is an all encompassing site for almost everything you need to know about ICANN, registries, registrars and members of the community. Another must visit on your way to knowing your fellow registrars.

 
News Sites / Blogs

Any new entrant would be really fortunate with the steady flow of information from some of the most heavily involved members of the domain community. While it would take a while to list all the blogs on our reader list, there are some sites that have garnered industry attention.

These include the eagle eye of Kevin Murphy at DomainIncite, ccTLD news from CENTR, a more encompassing domain related take at DomainNameWire and TheDomains, the always helpful Michele Neylon’s InternetNews.me and not to be confused with each other but equally informative, DomainNews and DomainNameNews.

We also look to the stat happy numbers that get crunched by DailyChanges, DomainTools and HosterStats.

Anything else you would like to add to that list? Do comment and let us know!

Thanks to the ICANN Wiki article and the IANA page for helping us with the facts.
Data accurate as of 25th August, 2011.